SL has been acting strangely since the downtime.
- During my search for Gibson girl hair, hair kept getting stuck in mid-wear, so that it didn't appear, but I couldn't put on any other hair.
- Today, that continued, and I had the problem of hair and other attachments moving to one's crotch when teleporting, too. (There was a ring with bling that was kind of embarrassing...)
Just now, shortly before the grid was switched to provide access only to Lindens, I signed on and found myself half-Ruthed. I had my skin and hair and dress... but my height and other settings weren't as I had them set. Rebaking didn't help, and I could click on "Appearance," but it didn't make any difference.
That was a bizarre experience. I felt like a child, and felt out of control. Mordecai and I started out to gather data for an article, and I feared that someone would see us and think we were involved in ageplay.
I hope that things are back to normal soon.
It's turning out that the shape is not hard to come by. The hair, OTOH, is.
Shape
(Quoted text is from the Wikipedia "Gibson girl" article.)
The Gibson Girl was tall, slender yet with ample bosom, hips and bottom in the S-curve torso shape achieved by wearing a swan-bill corset; she was fine-featured, and achingly beautiful.
OK, that last bit is subjective, and I definitely need a bustle to be ample in some respects, but I think we're getting there, comparing this photo
with this photo of Camille Clifford, who Wikipedia says was probably "the most famous Gibson girl":
Hair, OTOH, is proving more difficult. There are "updos" to be found in SL, but so far I've found nothing that is anywhere near the "big hair" of the Gibson girl. I dare say that Victorian hair is an unfilled niche in Caledon.
Mordecai has started on a residence in Caledon Tanglewood; his delightful posts on the site and the work he's done are well worth the reading (and viewing the photos!).
I don't wish to cause a scandal, so I doubt I'll be wearing, oh, say, something like what I wore in Bryggen in Caledon! I already have several Victorian dresses, but I would dearly love to find the following:
- The dress worn by the Lady of Shalott in Waterhouse's famous 1888 painting. (To me, at least, it looks a lot like a houppelande.) The basics don't look very difficult... I will spend a little time trying to make it myself. Of course, the hair is important to the look, too. I'm hoping that's sufficiently period-independent that I can find it without much trouble.
- An outfit or outfits, and hair, of the style of the "Gibson girl." Her hair is a lot more specific to the time, I fear.
I'll be keeping my eyes open.
As I've mentioned before, I've taken to posting photos I take on flickr. It's interesting to see the number of times people have looked at them, and the most-viewed ones are sometimes not the ones you expect.
In any case, Vint Falken, a fine photographer (and perhaps her own most gorgeous model!), took notice of one of my photos, and asked permission to postprocess it and put the result up. I was flattered, and of course said yes!
The result is in this entry of her blog, which I urge you to read if you have any interest in photography in SL. (And yes, I use the P-word, whatever flickr may think. Ha!)
OK... during the scheduled downtime, I figured, "What the heck! I'll do my patriotic duty and try out the beta client." (Maybe this also shows signs of addiction...)
After some trouble (my computer's clock is wrong? I don't think so...), I finally got signed on. It was then I entered the Planet of the Ruths.
Essentially everyone is Ruthed, and most are naked. A few have put on barrels. I'm stuck half-rezzed, with the Gollum look one gets when one's skin isn't fully rezzed. Can't change clothing until my clothing and shape are fully loaded, and it looks like that will never happen, at least not before the main grid comes back up.
So... we've been coming up with ideas: Ruth Aid (could we get SL performers to sing for it?), remaking the Apple 1984 commercial with Ruths, redoing the Declaration of Independence ("We hold these Ruths to be self-evident...") and everybody just wishing they were ruthless.
I've crashed a lot. A very few people have rezzed and look like themselves. I envy them a great deal.
Is this what hell is like, I wonder?
[UPDATE: I did manage at one point to take off clothes, but never was able to put any on!
At one point, I went looking for a relatively unpopulated spot, hoping that I'd thereby get enough CPU cycles devoted to me to fully rez. It never happened... but I did inadvertently wind up in front of a building labeled "FREE SEX" with a fair number of people milling about. I suddenly burst into laughter at the thought of all the people who'd probably have loved to take advantage of it, but found themselves Ruthed... Oops. Then I left.]
There's now a search option on the blog; you can either search Google as a whole, or search the blog in particular. (Gosh, I could have used that a few entries ago...)
I got a couple of "ridiculous" comments over the past few days. I'd like to publicly thank Mr. Ridiculous #2, because he added a comment that was useful, i.e. that I'd not done a good job of matching skin color. It's surprisingly hard to do; something that looks good at sunrise may look bad at noon... and I wonder whether local lighting behaves differently for skin versus attachments, given a recent experience.
In any case, I've improved the match, I think.
[UPDATE: I've confirmed it; local lighting does behave differently. Up at the Bridge to Nowhere in Apollo, I had to set the skin of my prim breasts to dark gray to make it come close to matching my skin... but when I went elsewhere, they looked... dark gray. (Who'd've thunk it?) I switched back to something that looked reasonable in Huchu in the open at sunrise, noon, and sunset... but at the Welcome Center, suddenly my prim breasts looked almost as if they were metal glowing white hot, without a similar change to my skin. Aargh!]
All those interested in SL aviation of the steampunk variety should take a look at Mordecai's new blog, Scaggs Aeronautica. It contains verbal and pictorial descriptions of many marvelous flying machines, full of the charm that exemplifies the steampunk genre.
The Goddess and Banana Christmas music show this past year was a wonderful sequence of songs... including a gorgeous piece by Matthew Ebel. Ebel is a fine singer/songwriter/pianist whose podcast you should run right out and subscribe to, not just for his music but for other fine music and talk as well.
Why am I waiting this long after Christmas to mention this? Because I just got some email; Ebel is going on virtual tour of Second Life all this month. Check his website for dates and places, and check him out.
(Apologies to Brian Eno and David Byrne...)
When I initially set up my avatar, I made various choices that arguably conform to a conventional Western (or perhaps more specifically American) notion of beauty, or maybe even the exaggerated version thereof that some disparagingly label "Barbie." (And boy, did I agonize over it, at least for a while...)
In particular, especially if you've read my many references to Proposition 125 and Proposition 2072, my sheepish admission to running a certain slider all the way up, and my delight at buying cleavage, you know that I really enjoy being able to have large breasts in SL, once again verifying the wisdom of the title cut of The Shaggs' album Philosophy of the World. (You may be tempted to look for samples of their music. I should warn you that they are an acquired taste.)While waiting for Linden Labs to move Prop 125 further along than "acknowledged," I've taken the plunge and started using a set of prim breasts from Rhenworks. They're nicely constructed and easy to use within (and because of) their limitations, since they have the (portion of a) top built-in. Here's a photo:
They're copyable, so it's possible to experiment and to retint/texture to work with the top of one's choice...as long one chooses one that works with them.
I've been wearing these for a while (and hope to start with a more sophisticated scripted set soon, alliteration not intentional).
So what's it like?
Well... of course, in many ways it's unlike RL. There are none of the back problems or skin problems. It doesn't affect one's center of gravity or otherwise impede one, though seeing one's arms sticking through one's breasts wrecks verisimilitude. (I'm still looking for a suitable typing animation override.) A very big difference: in RL, you can't right click and click "Detach." (Also, like prim hair, clothes, and shoes, prim breasts may take their own sweet time to rez. Keep a full top on.)
The big difference: despite the description below of reactions as a similarity, in SL this appearance is a choice made by an adult, reversible at any time. It's very different from not having any choice and growing up getting those reactions from one's peers/classmates (a group notorious for exquisite and relentless cruelty towards anyone who is different, and who pounce on perceived weakness like frenzied sharks sensing blood) as well as strangers.
In two ways, though, it's very much like RL:
Diffficulty Finding Clothes
SL clothing, apart from prims, is literally painted on your body, like those trompe l'oeil body paint jobs you see from time to time. Most attached things should not be painted over with clothing, since they're intended to show, e.g. jewelry... and I would bet that the pertinent part of the SL client code simply assumes that to be the case for all attachments.
Unfortunately, this means that prim breasts do not work and play well with SL clothing; you must build clothing out of prims and link it to them. (Rhenworks does this for you; other vendors set it up so you can do it yourself. Again, an ease versus flexiblity tradeoff.) All those lovely textures that the fine clothiers of SL painstakingly assemble... unavailable, at least the parts on the front of one's torso. Very frustrating! Also, the clothing one builds and links will only fit reasonably well with certain outfits.
Reactions
One day, I was flung into a Welcome Area when SL couldn't put me where I wanted to be. It was actually kind of fun, aside from the outrageous lag, so I've gone back occasionally.
A lot of people say nothing. Some approach and ask questions out of honest curiosity ("Oooh, where did you get those?"). Replying with good humor or feigned innocence and working on the assumption that most people are good works very well (and maybe that's why I've had mostly good experiences with SL from the beginning, though part of it is that there's not much that would-be troublemakers can do to you, very much unlike RL!).
Sometimes I feel that I should paraphrase Al Capone--you can get much farther with a kind word and enormous breasts than you can with a kind word alone. :) A conversation starting with the, um, obvious can turn to a chance to point a newcomer to New Citizens Plaza or information about Linux. (I didn't realize I was that much of a proselytizer!)
Then there are those unencumbered by subtlety. I can but say that muting is my friend.
Some German-speaking people may have thought I didn't realize what they were saying, but I could figure out some (with the help of the occasional obvious cognates). I suppressed the urge to reply "I like my ballast tanks, thank you very much!"
Back in the early 1980s, Bob Greene wrote a column about Morganna, the "kissing bandit." She said the rude behavior she got came from women--"That's disgusting!" (The column ended with Greene going home to his SO and telling her who he'd interviewed. "That's disgusting!" she said...)
I've gotten little to none of that, thank goodness, but OTOH... I've put up a number of pictures (mostly self-portraits, I'm a little ashamed to say) on flickr. In a number of them, I'm dressed rather skimpily, but nary a "Barbie" comment. Yesterday, I uploaded this:
and got the comment "Good to see people using SL to stamp out old-fashioned fascist beauty standards." Guess Godwin's Law applies to aesthetic discussion, too.
[UPDATE: Mordecai got a response to the message he mentions sending in his comment. Apparently the commenter in flickr thought I was being ironic and mocking the aforementioned beauty standards. Sorry... I'm not a very ironic person. I was just trying to take a good picture!]
So... was it worth it? I think so--I like them! I'll not be wearing them all the time, though. (I do hope to figure out how to adapt them to Victorian clothing...) With all due respect to the builders who make them, though, I hope they're just a stopgap until LL comes through on Prop 125. (Actually, just being able to mark selected attachments as things clothes should paint over would help a whole lot.)
I've succumbed. If you scroll down far enough, you'll see a Google AdSense ad on this page.
I doubt that much will come of it... as I said before, I'm mostly curious about just what Google will put there as supposedly related to the blog content. Have any SL vendors signed up with Google, I wonder?
There are two competing tendencies that seem to be at work in the world. Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but let me talk through this in public here.
Excellent, But Not Good Enough: Competing with the Whole World
Not all that long ago, communities were relatively isolated. Few people traveled far from where they were born. If you were the best at something in your town, say the best singer, you had a job. Where else would people go?
Time goes on, and communication and technology improves. Suddenly, people are exposed to not just all the singers in town, but all the singers in the state, the country, the world. With that vastly increased population, there are more at the extremes—far better than the rest, including you.
Not just at the extremes of the distribution of singing ability, but others as well... and the intersections of those extrema aren't empty, either. Oh, you're just the best violinist? Well, {Anne-Sophie Mutter, Vanessa Mae} are excellent violinists, and they're babelicious, too. (If you're male, plug in "Joshua Bell" and "hunk.")
How is one to compete in such an environment? Maybe there's an answer...
Long Tails, or Joe Tex as Futurist
The increasing population at the extremes can be beneficial. If the distribution is one of preferences, it means that it becomes more and more likely that someone wants what you have, even if it's not what the majority wants... or as Joe Tex put it in his song predating The Long Tail by decades, "Some man, somewhere will take you, baby, skinny legs and all." You may not come out on top, but you can find someone for whom you are the top.
Conversely, if you're on the customer side and in the long tail, you're more likely to have company (and hence collective clout) as well as someone who provides what you want. You needn't settle for the mass-market product.
Sigh. Romantic and economic issues are getting mixed here, perhaps nudged by my referring to that old song. OTOH, the same issues do apply. Over and above the question of image enhancement, women are compared with Carmen Electra et al., men with Kevin Sorbo and so forth. For the flip side, search for any aesthetic preference in SL and you're likely to find a group devoted to it.
Perhaps I'll come up with some nice conclusion to tie it all together... or perhaps I should've stopped before bringing up the application to relationships.
Once upon a time, movies were silent. Actors emoted with grand gestures, with the occasional shot of a pasteboard with crucial dialog. ("I'll pay the rent!" is hard to get across via pantomime. :))
Then came talkies... and suddenly actors had to sound good, too. Oops...
LL has announced that voice is coming to SL. This is proving a controversial issue, and not the unalloyed benefit that one might think:
- There's the voice, and then there's the avatar. Bela Lugosi may have met a Brooklyn Gorilla, but will you be able to suspend your disbelief if you meet someone with a gorilla avatar and a Brooklyn accent, using voice? It will be Tony Curtis's apocryphal line, "Yonda lies da palace of my faddah, da Caliph" writ large. When the folks at a Texas Renaissance fair close with "Fare thee well, y'all," it's for laughs. Someone on SL portraying a knight but having a Texas accent will have a hard time keeping up the illusion. (Not to mention the gender and age issues...)
- Some of us lisp; some of us stutter.
- Some of us are deaf.
- Voice is often urged as good for lectures or discussions... but OTOH, text gives one an immediate transcript, reliably identifies the speaker, and save in extreme cases, avoids the cacophony of voices one hears at, say, a party in real life. Will public gatherings sound like the ends of net@nite podcasts, where Leo Laporte throws the controls open and tells everyone to talk at once? Will there be sufficient cues that you will be able to tell when to start talking again without talking over someone?
- It opens up a whole new world for griefers... will you be able to tell whom to mute?
- What if you use SL in a noisy environment, or one where quiet is important? Sure, you can turn off sound, but if everyone's talking, there's no point in being there without being able to hear them. You can use earphones, but where others are talking, there'll be pressure for you to talk, too, even though you don't want to make noise, or be overheard.
I'm not sure what I think of this yet.
Mordecai pointed me at Google Analytics. Establish an account, insert a little blurb at the end of your web page(s), and it will keep track of a wide variety of information. A lot of it only makes sense if you're using Google Ads (which I occasionally contemplate, if only to see what on earth it would come up with to advertise!), but I like it because it provides evidence that yes, people actually read what I write. :)
One thing I have found out is that almost 44% of the visits here since I turned on the tracking are done with some version of Internet Explorer. If you use Internet Explorer, I'd like to take this opportunity to urge you to switch to Firefox. Do it for your own computing safety.
Every so often, I notice that I'm arbitrarily stood up from a poseball without my intending to do so. Putting on or taking off something is a sure way to make that happen, but sometimes it happens without apparent stimulus.Such was this morning. Up I went from a poseball on a bench without having done anything to provoke it. "OK," I muttered, "I'll sit back down," and I did, but then I noticed... this.
Somehow, a snapshot of the scene had been painted on my skirt. It's nominally a miniskirt, but I think it actually goes below that and is just transparent up to the nominal length, because as you can see in the picture, the sky goes all the way down. As you can see if you look closely, there's a tree, and a bit of my IM conversation with Mordecai resides on my posterior. I sat back down, and took a picture for posterity... ah. The IM wrapped around to the front, too!
To show that this isn't by design (though maybe it should be... a sufficiently scenic landscape could make a heck of a skirt!), we append a shot from after I logged off and back on:
This is using the latest First Look SL client for Linux. I'll be posting on the LL forum about the bug and linking back here, since the pictures are here. (I suppose it might drive up blog readership, too, but that wasn't my intent, honest!)
I've always had a hard time with opera. It requires independent twin I-beam suspension of disbelief to hear Mimi belt out one last aria while dying of TB, you know?
Second Life isn't quite that bad, but it does differ from RL in a lot of ways. Some are good. I'm glad I can fly, and that falling doesn't hurt me, and that I can teleport. I can do without having to eat or sleep or do other tedious physical things in SL. I love having an unbounded closet that doesn't take up any room, even if it's currently disorganized.
Some things still bug me, though. Others strike me as weird. Still others are kind of a bummer, but can be passed over with sufficient motivation.
"We are the hollow men..."
If you zoom in closely enough, you'll see that your avatar is hollow! It's probably not worthwhile to change, but it sure is weird. (Cheyenne did a nice blog entry on this a while back.)
"Whoa... those jeans look painted on..."
In SL, they are. Shirts and blouses, too, so if they come down far enough, it looks like they're vacuum sealed to your posterior. That may give rise to imagined discomfort and very unfortunate mental images, but as far as damage to verisimilitude, it's worst for shirts and blouses. The better endowed you are, the worse the effect... well, if you're interested in realism.
(Actually, that may not be entirely true. I have some jeans that I can put on and then look up the legs... and see that it looks like the jeans were filled with flesh-colored stuff after I put them on, and my ankles and feet stick out from it. I bet they are at least partly prim-based.)
"In one ear and out the other"
SL doesn't always bother with that thing about matter... you know, the bit about no two pieces being able to occupy the same location at the same time? This is useful for building, no doubt, so you can approximate a non-prim shape as the union of overlapping smaller prims, but it can lead to weird results, like having your prim hair go through your body.
Animations, poses, and the non-average man (or woman)
At least so far, animations and poses aren't parametrizable; they're made by someone who's got two particular figures acting it out, and it looks good on them. The more you vary from those figures, the more off the animation looks. In an embrace, you reach up and grab the air above your sweetie's head (if you're tall) or attempt to strangle him or her (if you're a bit short), or you gaze lovingly into your partner's torso (if you're very short, and for purposes of discussion, we will ignore the chorus of "So what's wrong with that?" that might arise). You sit... and if your legs are too long, your feet go underground.
I could believe it's computationally intensive to customize such things on the fly, so one might as well grin and bear it. If you're in an embrace, you're paying attention to other things, anyway... but in a photo, everyone will notice the glitches, darn it.
Don't they sew those skirts up all the way?
Ah, flexi-prim skirts. They look so beautiful... until you sit down. Then you find out just what those "glitchpants" are there for. Or, you start your descent, after fastening your seatbelt and raising your chair to the full upright and locked position... and have your vision blocked by your skirt, which looks like a beautiful if wind-blown flower with your legs as the stem. (And you really discover what glitchpants are there for.) Ah, well. One must simply deal with it... and stand up if someone's taking your picture.
One of these days, SL and graphics technology and processors will improve, and we won't have to ignore things quite as doggedly. Even now, though, it's scary how easy it is to immerse oneself in it, so I can't imagine how hard it might be for some to tear themselves away from it when it gets really good.
Mordecai has already written about his start as an SL journalist. I'm particularly happy to note that the new Metaverse Messenger is out and his byline appears on two columns therein!
(OK, by definition, the new Metaverse Messenger is always out, because whichever one is out is the new one... better to say that a new issue has just come out as I type this.)
I look forward to more of his work appearing in (virtual) print!
There are folks on SL who have worked around the constraints of SL avatars. The main group is that of the creators of furry avatars. Some have figured out how to overcome the size limits on SL avatars, by building enormous avatars with prims. All the examples I'd seen were furry... until the other day.
I was over at Northstar, which caters to size extremes, and saw a large human avatar!
I talked a bit to Selsey, the lady with said avatar, and she was nice enough to let me take a picture. I'm there for scale, 7'6" tall in heels, so I'm guessing that she's close to forty feet tall.
Selsey said she had adapted a large furry avatar. I'm still very impressed, and look forward to seeing what she does next.
Sweden's decision to establish an embassy in SL made the news recently... but after a brief but fun trip to Second Sweden with a dear friend a few weeks ago (and being moved to track down Radio Sweden, one of my regular childhood listening stops on the shortwave dial, online and subscribe to their podcast), I'd not given any thought to things Scandinavian until yesterday, when I found out, a few hours too late, that the wonderful Bill and Pam Havercamp were performing in Bryggen.
I was curious (no, I'm not alluding to those silly movies, which in any case were made in Sweden, not Norway...), so despite having missed the performance, I went to take a look. I'm glad I did.
Bryggen is built around a small inlet (fjord?)... ah, excuse me for a second.
(THERE WILL BE NO REFERENCE TO THE "DEAD PARROT" SKETCH! IF THERE IS, THOSE RESPONSIBLE WILL BE SACKED! OH, WAIT, I JUST REFERRRED TO IT... RIGHT! I WILL NOW SACK MYSELF!)
There, that's better.Bryggen is very music-oriented. There's a lovely outdoor stage, with seating (and tables!) for the audience, as well as an indoor stage in one of the shops in town... a guitar shop, come to think of it. (If you ever wanted to do a Pete Townshend-style windmill guitar chord, the "air guitar" poseball gives you your chance.)
One can also indulge in what IMHO is the real obsession of SL, fashion, in two stores featuring the work of the multi-talented Neferia Abel. (Mathematicians will recognize that last name and its appropriateness.) One features clothing for men (which Mordecai seized upon with a cry of delight when I was there with him later. I didn't give in to the temptation to run my hands over his new shirt... sorry, darling).Brumm Bricklin is the man behind Bryggen in SL. Bryggen in the real Norway is the oldest part of the Norwegian city of Bergen, and if you take a look at a panoramic photo of Bryggen (warning: really big graphic image!) and visit SL's Bryggen, you'll see the amazing work Mr. Bricklin has done in reproducing the look and feel of the actual Bryggen (though prim constraints make the SL version necessarily smaller).
His attention to detail is quite impressive, and shows in his architecture as well--one of the buildings features prefab houses he sells.
Speaking of detail... Norway is famed for its seafood, and at the end of the inlet is a table bearing an assortment of seafood. I couldn't quite persuade myself to defy the gull standing guard over it, so I can't say much else about it!
By the seashore there is a small spot where one can relax and enjoy the sea. (I'm not sure whether you'll want to go swimming; I've seen jellyfish in the water...)
Don't confine your travel to Bryggen proper; the surrounding region is mountainous and beautiful, with waterfalls and two spheres (built by Alex Ge) suspended in mid-air. Actually, one is a three-quarters sphere, set up for meditation, while the other is a half-sphere, filled with water and available for floating. Very relaxing, but I'd urge not playing the streaming music there if relaxation is your goal.
Do check out Bryggen. It's a beautiful place. Alebi 68,92,24 will put you right by that table and the ever-vigilant gull, and you might wish to head north from there to a spot where a shaft is driven straight into a mountain...
I'm way overdue for writing about this...
Mordecai, as he says in his blog, does not associate Valentine's Day with happy memories. (Truth be told, for a long time I didn't either, though my Valentine's Day woes are small potatoes.) It is therefore all the more touching that he went to a great deal of effort to turn our home into a magical place.
There's not much I can add; the pictures say it best. Thank you, love.
I'm way overdue to write about how wonderful Valentine's Day was, but I hope you'll forgive me a brief technical diversion.
People concentrate on what graphics card one has in discussions of the SL client, and indeed it is an important thing... but there's something else that's important, as one can tell from checking on the processes running...
do-not-directly-run-secondlife, resident memory: 277.9 MB
(That's just after starting it; I've seen it in the 300s and pushing 400.)
So, yesterday I finally installed an extra stick of 512 MB of RAM, bringing me to a gigabyte... and it makes all the difference in the world.
Basically, you name it, and the SL client eats it: CPU cycles, disk space, graphics, and RAM. If your system is thrashing while the SL client is running, life is far worse. Make sure your system has enough RAM. Your Second Life will be much happier!
If you wish to impress a special person this Valentine's Day, seriously consider following the example of my wonderful partner Mordecai. Make something for said person! In SL, it's particularly easy, and a gift made by loving hands is truly special.
Above is a picture of me in an outfit Mordecai made for me... in a burst of misguided modesty, I increased the opacity of the skirt panels, but upon reflection realize that doing so was a mistake, and I'll be changing it back.
It's a few days early, but... happy Valentine's Day, and thank you, love.
I try to keep RL and SL scrupulously separate, but of course they can't help but affect each other in some ways.
I just ran into one of those situations. I've been laid off.
Looking for a job is itself a job, so it shouldn't greatly affect my time in SL unless things don't go well.
Wish me luck, please.
In this proud land we grew up strong,
We were wanted all along;
I was taught to fight, taught to win,
I never thought I could fail.
No fight left, or so it seems,
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.
I changed my face, I changed my name,
But no one wants you when you lose.
—"Don't Give Up," Peter Gabriel
Yesterday Mordecai took me to see an amazing castle.
Angelic Harbor Nights Castle is a huge, beautiful castle (with quite a modern kitchen!). The amazing thing about it is that it is all done in lavender. The stones are lavender, as are the roof tiles. The stained glass windows are purple, and even the fireplace burns with a lavender flame.
The rooms are huge and imposing. We went out and found a cozier spot to sit and chat. Eventually I want to go back and take pictures of the castle proper and the beautiful rooms.
I've not been sleeping well lately, so yesterday morning when Mordecai asked me whether I had time to go somewhere, I almost said no. What a mistake that would have been!
We went to La Promenade des Papillions [sic, and apologies to all Francophones reading this]. It's a beautiful seaside walkway ending in a circular area surrounded by benches with spots at which one can dance. In accordance with the name (papillon is French for "butterfly"), all the poseballs and dance balls are in the shape of red and blue butterflies! We couldn't resist, and soon Mordecai and I were oblivious to all but each other and the glorious music of Albéniz ("Asturias" from the Suite Española).
The poseballs are romantic and tasteful; go there with someone special. (Next time, we'll visit the lighthouse just offshore!)
I know what the subtitle says, but this is too important to let pass without comment. So, all you young computing whippersnappers, gather 'round and let Auntie Melissa tell you a story about the Bad Old Days of mainframes, and how they may return in a new form...
Long ago, in a galaxy... er, when computers were huge things only owned by large businesses, universities, and government institutions, you bought, or at least in the case of IBM rented, a computer from a manufacturer, and all the parts were made by that manufacturer (until the "plug-compatible manufacturers" came along, but that's another story...). You looked at their product list, talked to their representative about your requirements, and bought (or rented) a computer accordingly.
As time went on, your needs would grow; you'd need more memory, or a faster processor. Then you would pay for an upgrade. In some notorious cases, this upgrade came in the form of a maintenance person who would shut down the computer, open it up, and go to a particular board and clip one wire or change a single jumper.
Then he or she, though in the Bad Old Days it was pretty much always he, would close the computer back up, and when you turned it on again it ran faster, or had twice as much memory. In other words, you had bought or rented something already capable of the increased performance... but the manufacturer intentionally crippled it so they could lower manufacturing costs by only making one version of whatever board it was, and charge you more money for what you already bought.
Nowadays, you can buy computer components from a wide variety of manufacturers who compete on the basis of price and performance. They are motivated to give you what they think are the best combinations of each; after all, you can always go elsewhere. That tends to work against the kind of sleazy arrangements described above from the old days.
Now, though, news has arrived of a patent Microsoft has applied for. From the title, it sounds good: "System and method for delivery of a modular operating system." Modularity is a good thing. It lets programmers confine their problems to a limited area, avoiding obscure bugs caused by interactions between things that have no logical relationship. It's good that Microsoft has discovered it; before, they made a point of avoiding it, though for political rather than technical reasons--they inextricably wove the code for Internet Explorer into that of Windows, so they could claim with a straight face before the Department of Justice that there was no way to provide a version of Windows without IE.
But the proverbial devil is in the details, and the details are ominous. The method for delivery is DRM, that code that takes control of your computer away from you. You will pay for each of those modules, and the examples MS gives correspond exactly to the mainframe scenario:
- paying extra to be able to use the full bandwidth of your Internet connection
- paying extra to be able to run more than one program at a time
- paying extra to be able to hook up more peripherals
- paying extra to be able to use the full throughput of your hard drive
Surely in a free market third parties will provide alternatives, you say? Well... that's what the DRM is for. MS will retain control of what modules it will permit to run. In theory, that could give MS the ability to control what programs you install. So much for that pesky competition.
You'll also recall that DRM allows for situations such as rental, in which you can only view a movie so many times, or until some expiration date. Combining a modular operating system with DRM allows MS to move you to a regime in which you rent the capabilities those modules correspond to. That model, in which you never stop paying for the privilege of using your computer or accessing your own data, is something they've wanted for a long time.
For more information, check out Groklaw, LXer, and Slashdot. If you wish to retain control of your computer and your data, I hope you will consider moving to Linux.
When I first started listening to podcasts, somehow--I don't remember the cause any more--I happened upon Jonathan Coulton's amazing "Thing a Week" podcast in mid-run.
Mr. Coulton had set himself the task of putting out a song a week. Sometimes it was a cover (but what covers! e.g. his great cover of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat"), but most often it was an original song. All were, IMHO, at least good, and most are very good. In one case at least it was genius, namely the anthem of all terminally shy nerds, "Code Monkey."
I think of that artistic effort when I read Natalia's Second Life Diary. Natalia Zelmanov has, for 129 days at this writing and still going strong, come out with pretty close to an outfit a day, when she hasn't been writing tutorials so that you, too, can create clothing and shoes (and now hair). The outfits are accompanied by stories of the places in SL that inspire them. The results of her effort are available now at her store, Sirena Designs.
Seeing all that amazing work does have the drawback of reminding me that I've done close to none of the scripting and building I told myself I'd do when I first came to SL... so far, I've managed to be Mordecai's muse (if you ask him) or placebo (if you ask me). With tutorials such as Natalia writes, and that are available on the Grid, I have no excuse... so we'll see whether I actually do anything about it.
I've picked the time of day to get the light I want. There's the subject. I move around to get the right point of view, make sure the tree doesn't look like it's growing out of anyone's head and no gratuitous detail is there to distract the viewer, and push the button.
...but according to flickr, it's a screenshot, not a photograph, because I did it in Second Life.
OTOH, if I pull out my camera and take a picture of my monitor with a spreadsheet on it, that's a photograph. I used a camera, and actual photons were used in the creation of the image.
In Second Life, a good... whatever it is... requires attention to lighting and composition. I've used forced perspective. <church_lady> Techniques used in... oh, I don't know... could it be... photography? </church_lady>
I can't take advantage of depth of field, as far as I know, or control the exposure to get (or stop) motion blur. OTOH, with a digital camera you need GIMP or Photoshop to get the equivalent of double exposure, or Sabatier effect... does that mean using a digital camera isn't really photography?
If you have had enough of the RIAA and the way most record labels are set up to screw the musician at every possible opportunity (see "Courtney Love Does the Math" and Steve Albini's "The Problem with Music" for some details), then I hope you will head right over to Magnatune. We'll be right here when you get back.
(The short version, if you didn't follow the link: Magnatune is a record label that makes a point of not screwing the musicians who sign with them. Said musicians retain the rights to their work, and when you buy a CD from Magnatune, the performers get half of the money you pay. You decide what you want to pay, within limits, and get for your money a link to a place to download a burnable ISO file. Magnatune also does a great deal to let you listen before you buy, and is quite accomodating to streaming internet radio and podcasters.)The good news: Magnatune now has an elegant presence in SL.
In an open field, you're greeted by a sign and a screen that can display a video about the label.
Surrounding you are separate listening areas, each dedicated to one of the wide variety of musical genres Magnatune offers recordings in. You can listen to selections and view the surrounding fields. Very relaxing! (Now to find an animation that will blow my hair back in the style of that famous Maxell ad...)
The little blue box on the pole is for comments which you are invited to leave; there's one by each listening area.
A lovely site for an excellent recording label... and Mordecai's decision to use a Magnatune stream for the beautiful teahouse he built was one of the factors in their decision to have a presence in SL.
If you didn't visit Magnatune's web site before, I hope you'll do it now... and visit their SL area, and the teahouse. You'll be glad you did.
I've found a wonderful combination of outfit and hair that I will definitely take some pictures of... once I can make one little change.
Some places that sell hair give you small, medium, and large versions for small, medium, and large heads. Others don't. This utterly gorgeously over-the-top hair comes in one size, and is perfect, save that one strand appears to grow from the middle of my forehead when I put it on.
Remember the bit about details you'd normally pass over standing out in photographs? If I take a picture now, I swear you could not look away from that one strand of hair!
So... I have an IM out to the excellent designer of that hair, and I'm sure there's some trivial adjustment I can make that will solve the problem. Then the pictures will be taken!
I've started putting some of my flickr pictures in the Second Life group. It's been well under a day, and they seem to be accumulating quite a few views.
I just hope I don't get to like that too much.
UPDATE: A gentleman politely IMed me to say he likes my pictures... and someone I don't know gave me a red leather jacket. Goodness.
An entry in the Electric Venus blog claims that, at least at the time of the entry, there was a bug in SL that actually permitted giant avatars. Given the problems associated with the bug, I can understand not revealing the technique... but I wish I could try it just for a little bit!
Mordecai and I had some time to explore this morning, so we decided to try Opal Island.
I'd forgotten to save a landmark, so I searched for "Opal Island," unlike the time I first came upon it when I searched for "beaches." All that turned up was a landmark for the gaming area on the island. I should have seen this as an omen.
I teleported there and, after some exploring to reorient myself, offered Mordecai a TP. We wandered by the meditation dome and by Mount Pele, which looked even less impressive than I remembered, and then found the beach again.
We changed into appropriate clothing... and found nearly nothing appropriate for a couple! One place large enough for two to lie down had poseballs, but the positions were awkward, almost random-seeming. For a bit, we sat in adjacent chairs beneath a yellow umbrella... and giggled at the synchronized animations. (If there's an SL Olympics, that should be an event!)
We ended up on a log, with Mordecai lying on the log and me sitting in front of him. Very frustrating, though we did have a laugh with the jingle for "Log" from Ren & Stimpy.
It's not that I'm expecting anything that would, as they say, frighten the horses... but there are discreet and romantic poses and animations for two, and I would have liked for one to be there.
So... Opal Island was as frustrating with wonderful company as it was alone, at least for me.
Here's a picture without forced perspective to give some idea of the real scale. In it, I'm standing by one of the lovely torches that light one's way through the Lost Gardens of Apollo at night. It's the one apparently just behind me in the photos from the previous entry. I stand 7'2" in my woodnymph stocking feet, so the torch is something like 14' tall; maybe 16' if you count the flame. So... I have Allison Hayes beat, especially since by design I consist largely of legs.
I was wandering about and shopping (a dangerous combination) when I happened across a store with some very nice clothing.It's Chaospire, and if you're interested in fantasy/goth inspired clothing, it's well worth visiting. It's not inexpensive, but... you're getting some beautifully detailed work with wonderful flowing shapes and forms for your money (and service after the sale, from looking at the note that accompanied the clothing I bought!). There are three stories to the store, though only one has inventory at the moment. I am very much looking forward to the time that all three floors are full!
So... off I headed after changing into "Woodnymph" and rummaging through inventory for a little wilder auburn hairdo, in search of woods to appear in. The Lost Gardens of Apollo leapt to mind... and the spot by the statue of Icarus (if it's not Icarus, it should be!) that is beautifully lit at midnight. I took some pictures there, though for my purposes sunset turned out better than midnight, and then headed off to look for other places.
There was a spot by a waterfall that looked nice, so I sat there.. and seemed to sink waist-deep into the ground! "All right," I grumbled to myself, "I'll use this sit pose that seems to raise one up a bit." I ran it in the world... and rose a few feet into the air. Mutter, mumble, mutter, mumble... all right, I'll rotate the POV around so it looks like I'm on the ground! I did so, and then I looked at myself with a wild surmise, like stout Cortez' men (actually Balboa, but that's not important right now)...
Forced perspective.
Flashback to fourth grade: for a time, my sister and I stayed with our paternal grandparents. We got to stay up on Saturday night and watch the late night horror movies. I only remember two of them from that time: Frankenstein 1970, a sad rehash of the Frankenstein story that I guess at least got Boris Karloff a paycheck, and Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman.
My fourth-grade mind didn't understand the arguments between Harry and Nancy Archer, or why Harry went off with whatever her name was (played by Playboy playmate Yvette Vickers, as I learned later--I thought Allison Hayes was far prettier). It didn't care about the wretched special effects, which featured the black and white equivalent of the weatherman who forgets and wears a suit of the chroma-key color. It just saw the fifty-foot Allison Hayes and was impressed, and wanted to be her.
Back to the present. I took a picture or two..
...and a gentleman walked up and greeted me. We talked about Linux a bit, and I noticed that he was positioned perfectly for my purposes... so I asked whether he minded appearing in pictures I was taking. He didn't, so I took a couple more and then finally undid the pose, stood up, and walked over and conversed, said thanks, and introduced myself like a civilized being (as John Bigbooté would say).
Thanks to Leonardo Delvecchio for allowing the use of his image!
P.S. Since there are tiny avatars out there, I should explain about forced perspective. Signore Delvecchio is of normal height. No avatars were harmed in the making of these images. This is the SL equivalent of standing close to the camera and holding out your hand while your friend stands way back in the field positioned just right to make it look like he or she is tiny and you're holding him or her in your outstreched hand.
It was something ridiculous thirty in the morning, RL time... I'd forgotten to turn the TV off, and the theme from Without a Trace blasted me awake as the credits rolled. I was all the way awake, so as they recommend, I got out of bed and, as they don't necessarily recommend, got on the computer and headed back to SL...
...where I was IM-ed, thanks to belonging to the group Rowan Carroll has associated with her "She's So Unusual" shoe store and blog, with those two little words that mean so much... "L$50 SALE."
I TP-ed right over to DollyRock and in turn invited the ever-stylish Xaxoqual over as well. Not everything was priced at L$50, but everything was quite reasonably priced. DollyRock has quite a variety of dresses, from formal wear to silks and some items a bit too daring for shy little me. I couldn't resist "Sara," with its just slightly midriff-baring top, patterned hose, and flexi miniskirt (and base/glitchpants, never fear), especially in the unusual color of mustard (don't think French's, think the good stuff :)).
Rowan asked for volunteers to model, and I volunteered. So, if you take a look at this entry in her wonderful blog, you'll see Rowan in a cute pink sweater and a seriously mini skirt, along with the very elegant Xaxoqual and the equally elegant Beverly... and me in mustard. (I hope you'll relish it... ouch. Comedy is best left to professionals.)
We caught the very end of the sale, but DollyRock is still very much worth checking out... and do join Rowan's group!
(Sorry, Otis; I never could whistle that high G...)
I said I'd go to the beach, and by golly, I did.
Opal Island has many delights to offer the visitor... but I was a bit saddened when I arrived and was immediately faced with a notecard explaining the rules and stating in no uncertain terms that violating them, or trying to skate around them, will earn one immediate and permanent eviction from the island. Sad that there should be such people as to make that notecard necessary.
I wandered the beach, went up to Mount Pele, and over to the shopping area... and I was lonely. I guess I'd gone there at the wrong time, for not another person was there to be seen... except for some jerk who walked up and uttered the deathless line "u see my [portion of male anatomy]". I replied "I'd rather not, thanks" and ignored him until he went away... and then, as usual, a snappy comeback sprang to mind too late for use. Just as well. (It did inspire me to search a little, though, and I can report that two places in SL do sell microscopes.)
I went on to the meditation sphere, a lovely place, but my heart wasn't in it. I missed Mordecai. Exploring alone isn't quite as much fun any more. Perhaps there's some contrary of Callahan's Law. Don't let my downer keep you from visitng, though; it is worth it.
In some ways, photography in SL is like photography in RL... because the viewers are people in both cases. For example, the principles of composition still hold.
People are very good at ignoring things. When you look at a scene, you don't take it in all at once; your eyes jump around from place to place. Some things you label important, and those you pay attention to; the rest can for the most part go fish.
When you hand someone a photograph, that photograph becomes the important thing...as a whole. Then the viewer notices the telephone pole appearing to stick out of Aunt Bertha's head, the building peeking out from the left side, the gum wrapper on the ground in front of Uncle Joe.
So... you as a photographer have the job of being the substitute low-level visual processor for your audience. You select what's important, and then make sure the other stuff isn't there, or is all fuzzy so the viewer can still ignore it.
(I've discovered that this can be hard when you're emotionally attached to the subject, because your ability to ignore things works overtime. You have to be able to step back and be professional... and perhaps that's the basis of the old joke about the photographer who had visited some poverty-stricken area and afterwards told a fellow photographer about seeing a truly tragic woman, clearly barely surviving. "What did you give her?" "Oh, 1/120th second, f/2.8.")
You also have to deal with lighting...to an extent. I tried to get a silhouette picture taken at sunset, and couldn't quite manage it; the portions away from the sun were too well lit. Even so, you still can manipulate light sources, and even create objects to serve as fill lighting.
But what about depth of field? In RL, you can take advantage of it to blur unimportant items. Is there anything analogous you can do in SL, aside from hauling out Photoshop or the GIMP after the fact?
I think there'd be interest in some SL photography classes. I know I'd take them!
(What? You say that's not what Van Morrison was singing?)
In RL, winter finally got here last weekend. As I type, it's three degrees Fahrenheit outside, and they're talking 24 for a high. (That's something like -15 and -4 Celsius respectively, I think.)
I think I'm going to find myself a nice beach in SL. Pictures after I get back...
Mordecai asked if we could go shopping yesterday. Anyone familiar with information theory will know that my reply carried zero information, since it had a probability of one... more briefly, I answered "Yes."
We went to places that Rowan Carroll describes in her fashion blog She's So Unusual... first to Trinity and then to SF Designs. He had this tendency to look at lingerie... but we did find him some boots at Trinity that look quite good with jeans and his "Amoeba" T-shirt by Masterblaster Ay. Along with sunglasses, he had quite the Billy Idol vibe going.
(Sigh... on one hand, if someone wants to go find these things, it's important to provide pointers, but on the other hand, I look at what I just wrote and say "God, I sound like a shallow name-dropping twit whose company I couldn't bear for a minute!")
I had to leave unexpectedly, which I fear removed any constraint I might have provided, for when I signed back on, rather a lot of things appeared in my inventory. (They're wonderful, and thank you, dear...)
Herewith, two pictures: in one, I'm relaxing at home with a good book, and in the other I'm admiring the flowers by the waterfall. Both are set in places that are the result of Mordecai's wonderful construction work. He's described it in his blog, but I think I need to go take pictures and post about it myself.
About the picture of me reading: in it, I have on some shorts and one of the lovely Triangle tops that Trinity sells. Dare I say there is a certain, um, inconsistency between the enthusiasm Mordecai showed for it and the attitude he takes towards his little sister Sorcha's choice of attire? Perhaps you shouldn't look at that photo, Sorcha... :)
This occurred to me during a Goddess and Banana show titled "Full Moon," but I'm sure I'll forget about it before next Halloween...so we'll see whether anyone thinks up "Werewolves of Linden" for an article or blog entry. :)
I'm now set up on flickr, so that you can see my photos there. I'll put more photos there than are here in the blog... at least that's my intent.
To paraphrase Lord John Whorfin, "Haven't you heard? Linden Labs has done it!" The Second Life client has been open sourced. You can grab the sources and compile it yourself.
(Admittedly, current open source JPEG2000 libraries aren't up to the speed of the proprietary library the official client links to. I hope that will be corrected.)
So... predictably, the rants have started from people unencumbered by knowledge of security. (Also logical inference. I've seen one complaint that on the very morning of the announcement, a place on the Grid was plagued by copybots. Never mind that copybot has been around for months...)
People have been thinking about security for a long time. Back in the 19th century, Auguste Kerckhoffs did so in the context of codes and ciphers, and wrote it up. (He was quite an interesting fellow; big in the Volapük community.) He set forth a principle that remains important to this day, though how it's stated varies:
- Assume the enemy knows the algorithm/has captured one of your devices.
- Security must reside solely in the cipher keys.
In the computer field, it's that so-called "security by obscurity" is not security at all.
As has been stated repeatedly, things sent to your computer, such as textures and prims, can be copied. There's no way around it. You can go off in another window and look for a directory where the client keeps its cache, or fire up a debugger and trap calls to routines that expect a pointer to the thing you want to copy, or just press "Print Screen."
I hope that the open sourcing will lead to a great deal of experimentation with the user interface and with the way information is displayed, to improvements in security and performance as more skilled programmers have a chance to look at the source code, and that the improvements will, after study and verification, get back into the LL client.
Does this mean that you should go grab Nachtflugen Storm Doors and MMORPGs's custom SL client and use it? Not necessarily. You will have to decide whom to trust. (I doubt there will be many such clients, at least not in wide use. Changes to the SL client will have to run the same kind of gantlet that patches to the Linux kernel do.)
This is the same kind of trust you put in any program when you run it. You don't directly do anything on a computer; you run programs that you trust to perform as advertised and do what you want and nothing else. (That's why you should always run with the least privilege required to do what you need to do at the time. It minimizes the damage if your trust is misplaced.)
An SL client could, in theory, send your name and password to someone other than the server to loot your account at his or her leisure. Perhaps it's written by a left-winger who wants equal distribution of wealth, so that it gives away all your L$ and transferable inventory to the first N people you see, after making everything you created transferable. Maybe SpamCo commissioned a version that makes your avatar shout "Buy Gesornenplatz Beer!" every twenty seconds... or even worse, makes you actually buy Gesornenplatz Beer every twenty seconds, buying L$ when you go broke so you can keep doing it.
For that reason, I seriously doubt that there will be many SL clients out there in wide use. Most will be small experimental branches off the LL code used only by the person or persons experimenting, unless and until their creators have some way to establish the kind of trust needed for people to actually use their client.
P.S. If anyone reading this in time (unlikely at this point) gets to the meet with Cory, could you ask how people working independently on the client will be able to keep up with the changes/bug fixes in the versions that LL will no doubt continue to come out with?
UPDATE: The answer to my question: yes, it will be a pain for a while to have to update one's experimental client with changes in the official one, but one of the side effects of upcoming redesign is relieving that difficulty.
Proposition 125 has been marked "acknowledged" by the Lindens, with the not terribly committal note "We agree avatar customization and quality should improve over time."
If you voted for the proposition, then
- Your votes for it have been returned to you to apply elsewhere.... and I respectfully request that you consider applying at least some of them to Proposition 2072.
- You have my thanks, and I would bet also the thanks of the proposition's author, Snakekiss Noir.
Now we wait... which we did before, admittedly, but now, I hope, we're a step closer to a time when I can really fiddle with the sliders, and when one needn't choose between exquisite fashion and being well-endowed.
Be sure to check out Mordecai's blog entry about the contest; he took far better photos of it than my effort. They're beautifully composed and they capture the feel of it very well indeed.
"Look down from in high places..."
The last few times on the Grid I've spent much of the time hundreds of meters in the air. I hesitate to call it a skybox, because it's not a box; it's a square plot of ground (with grass!) floating in the sky and fenced on three sides.
There's nothing to render there but the two of us... and this morning I came close to 30 fps. Animations are truly amazing under those conditions.
It makes me want to not come back to the ground.
I took advantage of my last day before work starts up again to wander around a bit... and then was IMed about a party and contest. It was a dance party at Elevation in the HotShop Mall, and the contest was "Best Formal {Men's, Women's} Clothing." Two prizes (one per gender) of $300L were up for grabs. I arrived in one outfit, but thought better of it, and changed to Nicky Ree's beautiful Shanae gown (of the deep red persuasion), deciding it was more formal.
Then I danced for an hour and a half! (Too bad that doesn't count as aerobic...) During that interval, Mordecai came on (yay!) and was willing to come dance and enter. I zipped over to give my opinion, for whatever it's worth, on which suit he should wear, and back we went.
Good heavens, there was such a concentration of utterly beautiful women and dashingly handsome men. Most of the men went for the conventional tux or black or slate gray suit... one amazing red vest made me want to rush right over and feel the material, but I decided propriety was the better choice, and in any case, all thoughts of that were pushed away by Mordecai's presence... no, not out of guilt! I'd suggested that he wear a wonderful plum-colored suit of his, to contrast with all the black and gray, and he definitely did contrast, as did his striking blond dreadlocks. Once he was there, I was sort of "Oh, there are other people here, aren't there?" when I noticed at all. Time passed much faster then!
Time came to vote, and with a reasonable half hour for people to vote (it was pretty laggy with all the beautiful people present), the results came. Mordecai tied for best men's outfit, and I won women's.
I was dumbfounded at having won. There were so many other women there, gorgeous women, impeccably dressed. I'm still in a bit of a daze.
The other wonderful thing that happened was that Sorcha, Mordecai's SL adopted little sister, showed up to dance and vote. She more than held her own among the stunning women there, and afterwards we had a lovely chat back in the calm of the teahouse. (I really needed that calm.)
At the top is a photo of our slow dance after the results were in and the crowd thinned out; lovely Sorcha is in the red dress over by the zebra-striped bit of the floor, dancing and kindly waiting for us to complete our dance and me to fumble through taking the picture.
Thank you, Mordecai and Sorcha... and thank you, Nicky Ree.
Postscript: ...and thank you, Cheyenne.
I realized that the name of the place had fallen out of short term memory, and they deserved to be named, so that any who read this could go there and have fun as well...so back I went. The place was almost empty, save for one lovely young woman who asked me if I had any clothing of a certain sort.
Well, I said, I might... but she should try New Citizens Plaza, and the Free Dove, and various other places... and then I remembered Pixel Dolls and the kindness Cheyenne had shown me some time ago, and that I had $300L sitting in my virtual pocket...
May I do something for you that a wonderful lady once did for me? I asked.
Yes, came the reply...but by the time I got into position and offered the teleport, she'd gone offline. I figured she might be having difficulties, waited a bit, and reluctantly signed off.
Fortunately, I'd befriended her before that... and when I came back on this evening, there she was!
I asked her over again, and this time it worked. I gave the spiel, set her up, urged her to check out all three floors, and stole silently away.
OK... Rambam wouldn't approve totally; we knew each other, so it's not at the top of his hierarchy. But it felt awfully good, and he'd approve partially at least. So thank you, Cheyenne, for a fine end to a wonderful day.
Post-Postscript: I don't know my Rambam. The top of the list for tzedakah is preventing the need in the first place, by helping the person who'd otherwise receive the charity become self-sufficient.
I suppose that New Year's Eve, which in the US at least is associated with drinking to excess, is a good time to discuss this.
A couple of times in SL I've seen animations of intoxication. It makes me very uncomfortable, and very sad; I'd hoped that we as a culture had outgrown that.
Back in the Mesolithic Era when I was a child :), it was acceptable in popular culture to make fun of the intoxicated. Foster Brooks and Sheb Wooley's drunken alter ego Ben Colder both had that as their shtik.
(UPDATE: And who could forget Dean Martin? Well, actually, I could, because I did.)
It was even in cartoons! One WB cartoon I remember from my childhood featured a mouse trapped in a food processing plant. At one point, the mouse fell into a vat of "pickling solution" and emerged "pickled" (one of the endless euphemisms for drunkenness), staggering down a conveyor belt barely escaping fatal injury. It was supposed to be funny; I was in tears.
I don't think that one can build a career on such routines now. At least I hope not. (Actually, that wasn't the worst of it; remember Frank Fontaine's recurring character of "Crazy" Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason Show? He added possible brain damage to the mix.)
I'm sorry if I'm Puritanical... but it's just inherently sad to me. (Yes, I have been intoxicated; it happened when I had dinner at a friend's house, and he served an appropriate sort of wine with each course. I became rather silly... but the next day I was embarrassed, and even more shocked at how I didn't realize at the time how I was slipping into that state and out of control. Never again.)
