Blogger Mix And Match: "Mixing RL and SL – The dynamics and pitfalls of living and playing in SL with your RL significant other"

I participated in the Blogger's Mix And Match, allowing my neglected blog to receive a much needed new post and a good dose of something that I know nothing about, playing SL with a RL partner. That matches my post to Vint's blog about Non-profits in SL, another topic I know nothing about, but still wrote far too many words regarding.

Cat Magellan, owner of the Get A Second Life blog, wrote this wonderful post about her meeting, falling in love, and relationship with her partner. Thankfully, she didn't write in Portuguese like the rest of her blog, so I could read and appreciate her story.

Merrick Thor of the N0nslensical blog suggested the topic.

Without further blabbering by me...

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I wish – for the sake of my readers – that I could write a spicy piece about love, disgrace, sorrow, treason and flying plates and knives, but my impressions about the subject are boring, since my story is plain and simple. However, lately, I've found out that it was a very rare thing, so maybe by telling it, it may help some people. Or maybe not, who knows? These things don't depend solely on us…

Starting from the beginning,: one day I entered the grid and blogged about it on my RL blog. A lot of readers followed me. Some of them were bloggers and blog-friends for a long time. So, I've entered the grid and soon, some friends were sort of around. Everybody knows how this works: people get together and start exploring. And doing talking, a lot of talking.

To cut the story short and because 99% will remember that the same happened to them at some time or other, and know how things get going in SL, I became very close to one of these friends. We would walk around, talk, find places, talk, meet people, talk, discover things, talk and then, SL offline, send emails, then talk on the phone and write a lot of weird stuff on our blogs. And one day, with no fuss, not telling anybody else, no parties, we became partners on SL. And very very close friends in RL. We wanted to meet each other, but we lived on different countries, so that was quite difficult to implement, and we continued to talk and talk and talk (and not getting enough sleep…). For a long time we were friends and virtual lovers. For something like 8 or 9 months.

Let me tell you, it's hard. Very hard. Being together everyday and, at the same time, being apart, kills you. It's a very difficult mixture to manage; the completely stupid total happiness and the angst of not knowing. Oh, you know, you are so sure that this is the person you imagine it will be in RL. We started by playing houses in SL, we bought land, then a sim with some friends. You know your partners' favorite curtain colors and you know your partners' soul, inside out. Yes, you are completely sure…except for that 0,000001% of probability that there will be no "klick", no pheromones kicking, no hearts beating fast when you meet face to face. This is all very well, the soul side and soul mating stuff, but RL is made of more than that, let's be realistic.

Well, we survived all those months. Not without efforts, not without guts. As time went by, the more anguished we became. In the end we might as well had forgotten the whole thing, give it up, maybe it wouldn't be worth it. Your friends support you but tell each other you have gone nuts and need medication. I guess that what kept us both going, besides the romantic feelings, was our very strong friendship. We would dream about perfect encounters, but then talk about how we felt very openly with each other. We were very honest, from day zero. That's something to keep in mind, if you want to survive something like that.

Finally, D-day arrived. We met. We survived the first terrible five minutes and the next few hours just talking and looking at each other. And then it seemed like we knew each other forever. We became partners RL, till now. We are together for almost 2 years. We still do not live in the same country, we both have our lives quite settled where we are. We speak every single day, we spend all our holidays together. Some months ago, we found out we were speaking about SL too much. Funny this and a danger to a relationship: we meet in SL and speak about everything possible, and then we go from there and talk about SL most of the time. My partner almost left the grid. I took SL more slowly, and things started working out better for us from then on. Of course, all of this is not without pain or fights: we are an absolutely normal couple who gets mad at all the routine stuff. We argue about, well, almost everything, it seems. We also laugh a lot. Guess we are on the right track here. :)

Oh and btw…he's arriving tomorrow. :D

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Thank you Cat for the wonderful post and good luck with the relationship.

I'm Entering My Terrible Twos

Today, October 13th, 2008, is my second Rez-Day. Last year, my first Rez-Day passed without a post - I was in the middle of a two month hiatus in posting, it was a pretty down point in my life. However, things are looking better and better all of the time, I'm having a lot of fun building in Second Life, writing a bunch of scripts, and in general enjoying myself. When I started, I never would have guessed two years ago at all of the people I'd meet, the fun I'd have, the good times, and the sad times. I can hardly wait to see what will happen in the next two.

It's time for my 'terrible twos'. I pity you all, you thought I was bad before, I'm just beginning .

You Know It's Been A Good Night When The Police Get Involved...

Earlier this evening, I Plurked that I was going dancing this evening. I normally don't talk about real life, the last major post was when I was a real life neko exploring dirty talk in the back of a car. But, I'd like to give you another little glimpse into my real life and why I like policemen.

I went to my usual dance club, the bouncers know me, the bartenders know me and serve me my favorite drinks (without charge), and the DJs know me, playing my favorite music. I'm there about once a week. I go dancing, not to hook up but to dance, a fact that many men seem to not grasp. I frequently close out the club, dancing all night until they throw me out pouting.

Often, especially towards the end of the night, men become desperate and attempt to hit on everyone or anyone, hoping to get lucky. A usual night for me involves fending off 10-15 guys who won't take 'no' for an answer. Most guys who hit on me are fine with me saying 'no' and they go their way, the dozen or so each night that persist too far - grab me, grope me, forcibly kiss me, grab my hand and won't let go, grab my hand and put it on their dick (both outside and inside of their pants), show me their dick, tell me about how big there dick is and all the women they've had sex with, attempt to 'dirty dance' with me, and all manner of behavior that I'd normally associate with ill-mannered baboons.

Just because I gyrate my hips when I dance, that is not a license to expect sex from me. Speaking of licenses...

One guy towards the end of the night was particularly persistent, trying to dance with me, kiss me, put my hand on his dick through his pants, etc. Basically, your typical persistent creep. I left towards the end of the night as usual, saying goodnight to everyone who worked in the club on my way out, I jumped in my car, and drove away; heading home to rest my weary feet. Dancing for 4 hours straight in 5" stilettos makes even my feet tired.

As I pulled away, the creep waved to me from his silver Mercedes. I ignored him and drove away. I went a few blocks and turned to pull on the highway. I looked in my rear mirror and noticed a silver car behind me, could be a Mercedes, could be nearly anything. He can't be stupid enough to be following me, can he? I drove for a while, watching the silver car behind me, hoping it wasn't the creep. But, every time I changed a lane, a few moments later the silver car changed lanes. I began to wonder what to do, should I call 911, what?

I decided to test my theory that it was the creep, I pulled off at the next exit, noting that the silver car swerved over two lanes to follow me off. Crap, it had to be him. I decided to drive around a few blocks quickly in an attempt to lose him, otherwise it would be time to find a policeman and try to attract his attention, or call 911. My sore feet just wanted to get home, but I also didn't want the creep to follow me there and rape me.

I went around a couple of blocks rather quickly, and I noticed that he was falling behind, a few more blocks and I could zip back on the highway and he wouldn't see me. I sped up a bit and slid around a few corners, just one more corner to go and I would be around it before he could see which way I turned. I zoomed around the corner and headed for the highway...

Then, I saw the red flashing lights behind me. Darn! Where were you about two minutes ago?

I pulled over, turned off my car, rolled down my window and waited for my erstwhile savior. The cop swaggered out of his car and came to my window, I greeted him with, "Thank you so much officer for pulling me over, you saved me." I then babbled about leaving a dance club, a silver car following me, trying to lose the car, etc. The few times I've been pulled over have nearly always started with a 'thank you' to the officer, I think it confuses them, they probably hear nothing but excuses, insults, pleading, etc. Never a 'thank you', 'you're doing a great job', or any other acknowledgement. It's my mission to I brighten their day; they have a rough enough time without me making it worse.

"I didn't see any car following you Miss."

"I'm just glad you came to my rescue, Officer... Jim," I said glancing at his name tag and flashing him the biggest, most grateful smile I could. The name has been changed to protect the besotted.

"Anyway Miss, I'd like to see your license, insurance, and registration."

"Anything you want officer. It was sliding through a stop sign wasn't it."

"Yes, Miss."

I rummaged in my purse, produced my license and handed it to him. I then opened the glove compartment and began to look for the rest of the documents he wanted. Who knows if they were even in there, I haven't had an accident or been pulled over by a cop in years.

I started to pull things out...

"Hmm, no this isn't it, but... is this a tire gauge officer?"

"Yes Miss."

"I needed one the other day, I have to remember that I have one in here..." I toss it back in and continue to look.

I bent over, trying to show as much of my legs under my tiny black miniskirt as I could. Yes, I'm shameless, but I didn't want a ticket.

Everytime I brought something back from the glove compartment, I made certain to look into his eyes with my blue eyes, bat my long black lashes, and show off all of the cleavage I could muster in my gold sequined low-cut camisole. A few flips of blond hair never hurt either.

I began to hand him all sorts of junk, asking him very politely to hold it while I continued to look. I pulled out the owner's manual, flipped through it, took out a few random papers, unfolded them, glanced at them, and handed them to officer Jim, while I babbled on about him rescuing me, the silver Mercedes, how afraid I was, etc.

He had quite a pile of random odds and ends in his hands when he finally said, "Miss, please take these back, I'd like to check on something." Finally, I was wondering how much stuff I needed to pile on his hands before he'd just go check my record. He took my license and headed back to his car, looked it up in the database, obviously found out that my record was spotless and wandered back. While he was gone, I did eventually find my registration and insurance.

He handed back my license, "Here you go Miss, I'm letting you off with a warning tonight, make certain you come to a full stop at all stop-signs."

"Yes, officer," I looked directly in his eyes and smiled as sweetly as I could, "let my say again, thank you for saving me, I was so afraid." I blew him a kiss, waved, and drove off. Even if he'd given me a ticket, I wouldn't have complained, just to guarantee the silver Mercedes creep wouldn't find me.

All the rest of the way home, I kept looking in my mirror, paranoid about silver Mercedes cars near me. This incident is just another example of why I love cops.

M Linden, Here's Why...

Reuters reports on SLCC and the reception Philip and M, received:

“Last year when I was here I had the ‘Missing Image’ T-shirt,” Rosedale said, alluding to his apology for bugs at SLCC 2007. “I think we made pretty good progress.”

The Second Life community has its own ideas. New Linden CEO Mark Kingdon followed Rosedale and asked the crowd: “We’re working hard to improve stability. Are you seeing that?” But Kingdon’s question was met with a stony silence from the crowd.

In the last week:
9/4: Logins unavailable to some residents (Duration: ~20 minutes)
9/4: Multiple Regions Offline (Duration: ~2.5 hours)
9/5: 600 Regions Down (Duration: ~2.5 hours)
9/5: Live Chat Temporarily Unavailable (Duration: ~9 hours)
9/5: Network issues (Duration: ~11 hours)
9/6: Network Troubles (Duration: ~1.5 hours)
9/7: Network Issues Again Affecting Inworld Functions (Duration: ~3.5 hours)
9/8: Network Issues Affecting Inworld Services (Duration: ~2.5 hours)
9/8: Issues with Public Issue Tracker and Wiki Access (Duration: ~9 hours)
9/9: Network Issues Affecting Inworld Services (Duration: ?????)
9/10: About 400 to be restarted shortly (Duration: ????)
9/11: Server Crash Affecting Logins (Duration: ~1 hour)

Granted, some of these are more significant than others, and I'm very glad LL actually provides the status blog; it was worse before that.

But everyday for the last week (I was not inclined to go back farther), there has been something happening. It seems like every day or two when I'm in-world, there is a global message, "there is an issues yadda, yadda, yadda please don't spend money or do anything useful."

They ought to be glad that it was only a stony silence that greeted them instead of stones.

I Got Pwned!

Tiessa's New Look
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

Oh wait, I purposefully sold myself. To my complete surprise, I was not purchased by Codie, who seemed to purchase everyone else that day. She did bid on me, but the person who finally paid over L$14,000 for me was the wonderful and delightful Celebrity Trollop, editor-in-chief and publisher of Second Style magazine. I think I had only been at events with her once or twice in the past, and I don't believe I've ever spoken more than a word to two to her. But, I always assumed someone with such a clever name must be fun - I was right, she's very fun and amusing.

I think she's tired of my fashion disasters and wished to save the world from being exposed to them. Interestingly enough, she'd never heard of my Mistress Strangelove series, but assumed I was kinky. I wonder if selling yourself at a slave auction gave that away?

The reason I know she wanted to save the world from my current style, is that she immediately took me shopping and did a make-over on me.

Let's just say I'm stunned by the results. I realized I hadn't spent much time shopping for skins in SL in over a year - yes, a year. When I last looked at skins, semi-decent ones cost over L$3k for one skin and it wasn't much better than the L$1k for 5 I had already purchased. Also, I was away for a while and not very active for some time, but I didn't realize things had changed this much.

I'm very happy Mistress Celebrity or Mistress Trollop broke me out of my rut. But now she's re-awakened the shopping addict in me, there goes the credit cards again.

I'm having problems deciding what I should call myself, Mistress Celebrity's Pet or Mistress Trollop's Trollop.

Who Wants To Own Me?

Today, at the blogger party, I'm being auctioned off. Come, place a bid, and win my services for 24 hours.

I'll make it worth your while ;)

Wearing Latex In The Garden

Mistress Veyron instructed me to post a picture of myself in this latex outfit while in the garden at my palace.

AlienHearts "Die In Heaven" Homemade Video

These are pictures I took of the 2008 New Year's Party that AlienHearts played. The music is Amathaa's awesome song, "Die In Heaven"

South Gate Museum And Library's Rotundas

Museum Entrance Rotunda
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

I'm building a municipal museum in South Gate, part of the City of Lost Angels roleplaying group of sims. This is a view from above the third floor of the entrance rotunda looking down the twin spiral staircases.

One of the major difficulties in building this is the 12-sized symmetry of the room, a dodecagon. Getting all of the angels and position correct was difficult until I discovered the LoopRez script and the excellent tutorial by Natalia. After much less grief and with far more symmetrical results, the LoopRez script can generate my rotundas with ease.

Museum Entrance Rotunda
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

For size comparison, this is me at the top of the stairs in one of my favorite gowns.

Museum Library Rotunda
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

This photo is a view from above the fourth floor of the Library Rotunda looking down through the enchanted circle etched in the glass floor towards the central stone floor below.

Tiessa In Rose Gown
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

Here I am in my rose gown by CanDy, in front of one of the art deco framed stained glass windows.

Tiessa In Rose Gown
Originally uploaded by Tiessa

Finally, a close of of me in the rose gown in front of the window.

If you ever want to come see the museum in South Gate, feel free to join me.

Lively Is Anything But

Well, it appears that Google's Lively does not allow sexual content of any kind.

"Our community standards prohibit sexually explicit images and rooms intended for sexual activity, even if virtual. When we become aware of 'sex rooms' that violate or Terms of Service, we'll work to remove them."

No sex chat at all. Period.

"We don't allow nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. This includes making sexual advances toward other users."

You can't even flirt with someone - that would be "making sexual advances." There goes the breast cancer education photos as well - that would be nudity. This makes "the nipple controversy" at SL5B seem downright trivial.

"When browsing or searching for rooms, some Lively citizens come upon these rooms as the top results, which can erode their Lively experience...Lively is intended to be a place for Lively citizens to connect with each other and express themselves freely and in a safe environment," Google said.

You can express yourself freely, as long as you adhere to Google's Puritanical sense of morality and their sense of "free". Free as in you cannot create your own content and you cannot express yourself without fear of the "sex police" finding fault with what you said.

What does that leave?

"Hey, nice weather we're having. What about those Mets?"

"Let me show you this *awesome* hat I got!"

To which everyone takes out and wears *the exact same hat*.

Zero differentiation on appearance, on action, on conversation.

Oh, did I mention that it's slower than SecondLife?

I think I'll stay with SecondLife where I can have all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll I desire. Even if I'm not allowed to show a nipple...

Everybody Wants To Write A Book

It's been said that everyone wants to write a book. But, it's hard, time consuming, and you have to find a publisher. Self publishing is expensive and problematic. In others, it's hard work.

Until now.

Blurb has an application where you can design a book, get it printed, etc.

But where to get all of the content...

Did I mention, that Blurb's application, which runs on both Mac and PC, can slurp data, pictures, etc from the web? From your blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, and others? It can download and auto-typeset for you, all of your blog's content, then you can go in and tweak it to perfection.

Well, now I mentioned it :)

And when you're done, you can sell it on the web through Blurb.

Prices begin at $12.95.

To all you bloggers wishing to be an author and who have already authored a bunch of content, slurp your photos and articles into a book and put it up for sale.

Feedburner Better Be Wrong...

I was going through my Feedburner stats just a moment ago and everything seemed fine...
Traffic. Normal. Check.
Subscribers. Hmmm, a bit down. Check.
Incoming links. Usual suspects. Check.
Outgoing links. Usual...

Hey! wait a minute!

I don't remember writing about "Huge Teen Tits!"

Hmmm, or did I...

Nah, that'd be weird, even for me.

Search blog. No results.

Weird. Use Feedburner to track it down...

Darn! Some spammer slipped an ad into my blog...

Photo Meme Using Flickr

From The Winder Market, Nadine shows off a nice new meme - a photo mosaic from Flickr.

Meme Rules:
You type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search. Then, using only the first page, pick an image. Then, copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the mosaic maker from fd's Flickr Toys.

1. What is your first name?

Tiessa. the view from the top of Tiessa's Palace

2. What is your favorite food?

Nectarine. Nectarine Blossoms

3. What high school did you go to?

Paradise Lost (in SL :). paraiso perdido / lost paradise

4. What is your favorite color?

Duh. Pink. Rocks of Gold. Why its labeled pink, I'll never know, but its a pretty picture.

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

Veyron Supercharge ;) Vint & Veyron. And I got to pick a picture that had my #2 in it, Vint Falken :)

6. Favorite drink?

Strawberry daiquiri. Strawberries, anyone?

7. Dream vacation?

The stars. Fly me to the Mooooon...

8. Favorite dessert?

Cherry Pie. ~I smell sex & candy~

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

Me (Tiessa). Tiessa. Who or what else could I possibly want to be? I'm perfect already :)

10. What do you love most in life?

Me (Tiessa). Just Kidding :) Freedom. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

11. One Word to describe you.

Bimbo. Bimbo.

12. Your flickr name.

Tiessa Montgolfier. Tiessa at the May 20, 2007 blogger party

This Is Considered Good News Analysis?

Reuters makes some interesting conclusions from Linden Lab's economic statistics. I just happen to think that the analyst didn't think it through enough to give reasonable causes, or rather they preferred to reach conclusions that were sensational and would sell more newspapers rather than boring and reasonable ones that people wouldn't get worked up about.

Here's a relevant excerpt:

Second Life had 88,585 of the subscription-paying accounts at the end of May, down from 89,845 a year earlier.

The overwhelming majority of avatars use basic accounts, which are free. Premium accounts, which cost US$10 a month, come with additional privileges including enhanced support and the right to own virtual property on Second Life’s mainland.

Even as Linden Lab’s base of paying customers shrinks over the past year, the total hours spent by avatars inside Second Life has increased dramatically. In May of 2007 total usage of Linden Lab’s virtual world was about 20.8 million hours. A year later the number spiked to almost 32 million hours, a gain of 54 percent.

With hours up but premium accounts down, the data suggests that while Second Life is failing to attract to new users, existing customers find the virtual world more engaging than ever, spending ever-greater amounts of time there.

The facts of a 50% increase in hours spent in SL and the falling number of premium accounts led the analyst to conclude that the increased number of hours spent in Second Life is due to the old users using it more? Huh?

Did the analyst bother to read their own paragraph talking about the vast majority of users being basic not premium? Linden Lab states there are over 14,000,000 accounts in Second Life and growing at the rate of over 1,000,000 per month. Did the analyst not even bother to think that many of the new sign-ups over the last year actually used the system? Nope, they'd rather conclude that SecondLife is atrophying.

Following that dubious conclusion, Reuters, goes on to talk about OpenSim.

A wild card that Linden’s statistics cannot account for is the rapid development of open-source Second Life variant OpenSim. The zero growth among premium accounts may represent a shift in the most die-hard avatars.

Avatars unable to find a home within Second Life including banking institutions and ageplayers have already migrated to OpenSim.

Doom! Gloom! The sky is falling and I'm selling more newspapers because people want to read about the non-existent rock about to hit their head.

I think a simpler explanation for the drop in premium accounts is that there are few benefits for having a premium account. First land is gone and the stipend no longer covers the cost of the membership. Two big benefits have disappeared.

Mainland/Sim ownership and access to better support are the only benefits left. Could it be that people are realizing they can buy/rent on the non-mainland sims and have parcels that look the way they want instead of being next to ad-farms? As people flee the mainland for the private sims, the benefits of being premium go away and now they can use that US$10 per month to pay the tier on their new parcel.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think the dramatic growth in private sim land-size and the current freeze in new mainland (or is that over already), are far better indicators of where people are spending their money. Not that they are going to OpenSim.

And why on earth would the bankers go to OpenSim? There aren't very many people on it to make banking a viable business.

As usual, simple use of logic shows that most "news" is actually "hype" designed to sell more "news".

A Bimbo's Guide To Retrieving Lost Inventory

One thing that I've found useful is to clear your disk cache and relog. That forces the client to download all of the inventory information from the server again. Often, inventory loss is just a matter of the client forgetting about what's in your inventory for various reasons.

I had this happen to me the other day when I was copying a few hundred animations and scripts from my inventory into a prim. It eventually timed out with an error message after only copying some of the animations and scripts, there was a lot of lag in a laggy sim so the copy took forever. Unfortunately, my inventory window showed that all of the "no copy" items were not in my inventory and checking the prim, they were not in the prim.

Like any good user, I panicked and cursed Linden Labs as my first step.

Then, I realized that my client had told the server to do all of the copying, but did not handle the error of "only some of the stuff successfully copied" that the server returned. Probably because of laggy communications or other load related issues. Since the server had not actually copied the inventory, I hoped that refreshing my client's cache of the inventory would work.

It did.

For more extensive inventory loss, over on the Huddles site, there is a post on how to retrieve lost inventory, one of the comments provides nice step by step instructions on how to do it.

Ok, finally retrieved both my huddles… here’s what you have to do:

1) sign up as a premium member - you can’t do the below without it…
2) go to the support page
3) go to live chat
4) tell the operator everything that happened to the best of your ability and request: I need an inventory repair. Be as specific as you can. It will take sometime, approx 30 minutes. Be patient.
5) they will come back and say check your inventory. It likely won’t be in there… you need to REBOOT SL. When you come back in it will say Repairing Inventory Folders.
6) check to make sure it’s there - report this back to the operator.
7) If this doesn’t work, the last resort is to submit a ticket — good luck getting it heard.

GOOD LUCK! I hope it works for you as it did me, I’ve spent most of the day trying to get this back together!

Xanthia Lisle

What Girl Band Are you?

You Should Be In The Donnas

You've got that a bit of an edge to you The bad girl that all the good boys want!

What Girl Group Should You Be In?

Because everyone else is doing it...

Copyable Animations

Most animators do not sell copyable dances - I don't understand this. I like to have a copy in my inventory and another in my AO in case of the dreaded inventory loss. If they think transferrability is so important, why don't they use some of the very nice vendor systems that allow you to buy for other people and have it sent directly to the gift receiver?

In general, I dislike "no copy" anything. I like to mix and match, wear a set of shoes with more than one outfit, etc. And I like to put an entire outfit into a single folder, where a quick "Add To Outfit" will put the entire thing on. No rummaging through my shoes folder, trying to find the pair that I know works perfectly with the outfit, no trying to track down which folder that piece of underwear that I'm wearing is hiding in, nothing like that. I put it all in one folder along with sub-folders and happily don't care.

Except for the "no copy" objects. If I want to use a single piece with something else, I have to always go track it down. But maybe I'm strange, I don't like hunting through tons of folders trying to find the one piece I can readily see in my mind but that I can't remember the name of.

The maker of the Huddles animation tool is keeping a list of animators that sell copyable animations. She receives tons of requests for how to recover animations lost through inventory bugs.

I for one plan to patronize those merchants who sell copyable animations and outfits more and more. I'm tired of it. When I lost an important piece of inventory, it included L$20,000+ worth of animations, *poof*. And very few merchants are willing to give you another copy, that is if you can even remember all of the animations you had, which I did not.

RestrainedLife Amethyst Collar Plugin v1.2

A couple of months ago, I began selling a plugin for the Amethyst collar that implemented all of the features of the RestrainedLife client's features. a couple of months ago and that was a huge success. A few days ago, Marine added to the RestrainedLife protocol, adding a few new features that I have put into an updated version of the plugin. This is a free upgrade to anyone who purchased it before, just IM me for an upgrade. If you haven't purchased it, go directly to the RestrainedLife plugin for the Amethyst collar page on SLExchange.

The new features include control over the map windows, the ability to restrict touching objects farther than 1.5m away, and support for the #RLV "shared objects" folder. This new "shared objects" folder allows the collar owner to force attachment of anything in it onto the sub - that also includes forcing clothing to be worn. The wiki has more details on the #RLV folder.

You can visit the in-world Leaping Dolphin Boutique store, or purchase my products at SLExchange or Onrez.

My plugin provides a more complete, and I'd like to think, intuitive, interface to the features available from the modified client. What follows is the help document, listing all of the features.

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Welcome to Leaping Dolphin Boutique's RestrainedLife Viewer plugin for the Amethyst collar. This plugin provides owners of a sub with an Amethyst collar access to the full range of functionality provided by the RestrainedLife Viewer. No other RestrainedLife plugin provides the comprehensive access to the functionality provided by the viewer, now the owner can take off clothing and attachments, lock outfits, force sitting on an object, prevent standing, lock channel communications, full teleport control, and more.

And all owners will be notified if the sub ever logs in without the RestrainedLife client - never again wonder if they've found a way to circumvent the restrictions.

Just install this plugin into their collar and know they are securely under your total control.

The RestrainedLife Viewer is a modified version of the SecondLife client software that provides a wide range of functionality for enhancing the bondage experience. It is available for download and the developer, Marine, has a blog covering the RestrainedLife viewer enhancements.

New in v1.2!
Version 1.2 adds support for the new commands in the 1.11 version of the RestrainedLife viewer. Now, the map windows may be controlled, the sub may be prevented from touching anything farther away than 1.5m, and the owner may attach or detach anything in the #RLV shared folder. (See 'Shared Folders' below for more details.)

This is a free upgrade to anyone who purchased the v1.0 plugin, if you previously purchased v1.0, please IM Tiessa Montgolfier for an upgrade.

Features

RestrainedLife Client Detection

This plugin will determine if the collar wearer logs in with the RestrainedLife viewer or not. If the collar wearer logs in with another client, all of their owners will be notified via IM.

Commands

These commands are activated in the same manner as all other commands, with a prefix of "." or whatever it has been changed to.

A few quick notes about the commands and their arguments. All commands are available to an unowned sub or to the primary and secondary owners unless otherwise specified. Avatar names and object names must be exact matches. Lists of locations are comma separated lists of the names with no spaces around the commas. Lists of channels are command separated lists of the channels with no spaces around the commas.

General Commands
.lock : Prevent the sub from removing the collar.
.unlock : Allow the sub to remove the collar.
.clear : Clear all restrictions.
.status : Print a summary of all active restrictions.

Stand/Sit Commands
.nostand : Prevent the sub from using the "Stand Up" button.
.maystand : Allow the sub to use the "Stand Up" button.
.sit <object name> : Forces sub to sit on the named nearby object (this can be sometimes flakey in the RestrainedLife viewer.)
.clear-sit : Clears the sit target (does not make them stand).

Teleport Commands
.notp : Prevent the sub from teleporting.
.maytp : Allow the sub to teleport.

Object/Inventory Commands
.noedit : Prevent the sub from editing objects.
.mayedit : Allow the sub to edit objects.
.norez : Prevent the sub from creating or rezzing objects from inventory.
.mayrez : Allow the sub to rez create or objects from inventory.
.noinv : Prevent the sub from viewing their inventory window, closes it, if it is open.
.mayinv : Allow the sub to view their inventory window.
.nonote : Prevent the sub from viewing notecards.
.maynote : Allow the sub to view notecards.
.nofartouch : Prevent the sub from touching objects farther than 1.5m away.
.mayfartouch : All the sub to touch objects farther than 1.5m away.

#RLV Folder Commands (See 'Shared Folders' below for more details)
.listinv : List all of the folders in the sub's #RLV folder.
.attach-all : Attach all of the clothing and attachments in the specified folder in the sub's #RLV folder.
.detach-all : Detach all of the clothing and attachments in the specified folder in the sub's #RLV folder.

Map Commands
.nomap : Prevent opening of the world map window, closes it if it is open.
.maymap : All the opening of the world map window.
.nominimap : Prevent opening of the mini map window, closes it if it is open.
.mayminimap : All the opening of the mini map window.

Outfit/Attachment Commands
.listattach : Print a list of the parts of the body the sub has objects attached to.
.listoutfit : Print a list of clothing parts the sub is wearing.
.lockoutfit : Prevent the sub from adding or removing any clothing.
.unlockoutfit : Allow the sub to add and remove clothing.
.naked : Remove all clothing and attachments from the sub, except locked ones.
.takeoff all : Remove all clothing from the sub.
.takeoff <locations> : Remove the clothing from the specific locations.
.detach all : Remove all attachments from the sub, except locked ones.
.detach <locations> : Remove all attachments from the specific locations.

outfit locations: gloves,jacket,pants,shirt,shoes,skirt,socks,underpants,undershirt,skin

attachment locations: chest,skull,left shoulder,right shoulder,left hand,right hand,left foot,right foot,spine,pelvis,mouth,chin,left ear,right ear,left eyeball,right eyeball,nose,r upper arm,r forearm,l upper arm,l forearm,right hip,r upper leg,r lower leg,left hip,l upper leg,l lower leg,stomach,left pec,right pec,center 2,top right,top,top left,center,bottom left,bottom,bottom right

Chat/IM Mute Commands
These features allow the owner to control whether the sub can chat or IM and whether they can receive chat or IM.
.mute : Prevent all chat and IM except for IMs to owner.
.unmute : Enables chat and IMs.

.deafen : Prevent all chat and IMs from reaching the sub, except the owners'.
.undeafen : Unblock chat and IMs from reaching the sub.

.lockchannels : Prevent sending chat on any non-public channel (e.g. /6 hello)
.lockchannels <channels> : If channels are currently not blocked, block them.
.unlockchannels : Allow sending chat on non-public channels.
.unlockchannels <channels> : If non-public chat is blocked, unblock it for the specified channels.

"Advanced" Commands

The following set of functions are for more precise control of the various features of the RestrainedLife viewier.

Advanced Teleport Commands
.notp owners : If the sub is already prevented from teleporting, block teleport offers from owners.
.notp <avatar name> : If the avatar is an exception to teleport blocking, block them.
.notp-lm : Prevent the sub from teleporting to landmarks.
.notp-loc : Prevent the sub from teleporting to map locations.
.notp-sit : Prevent the sub from teleporting via sitting.
.notp-lure : Prevent the sub from teleporting via offers.
.notp-lure owners : If the sub cannot teleport, prevent the subs owners from teleporting them.
.notp-lure <avatar name> : If the avatar is permitted to teleport the sub, block them.
.maytp owners : If the owners are currently blocked from offer teleports, unblock them.
.maytp <avatar name> : Allows the sub to receive teleport offers from the avatar.
.maytp-lm : Allow the sub to teleport to landmarks.
.maytp-loc : Allow the sub to teleport to map locations.
.maytp-sit : Allow the sub to teleport via sitting.
.maytp-lure : Allow the sub to teleport via offers.
.maytp-lure owners : If teleports from owners are blocked, unblock them.
.maytp-lure <avatar name> : If teleports from the avatar are blocked, unblock them.

Advanced Clothing/Attachment Commands
.nowear all : Prevent adding clothing to any clothing location.
.nowear <locations> : Prevent adding clothing to the specific locations.
.maywear all : Allow adding clothing to any clothing location.
.maywear <locations> : Allow adding clothing to the specific locations.
.noremove all : Prevent removing clothing any clothing.
.noremove <locations> : Prevent removing clothing from specific locations.
.mayremove all : Allow removing all clothing.
.mayremove <locations> : Allow removing clothing from specific locations.

Advanced Chat/IM Commands
.mute owners : If IMs are already muted, mutes IMs to owners.
.mute <avatar name> : If the avatar is already unmuted, mute them.
.mute-chat : Prevent all chat.
.mute-im : Prevent all IMs, except to owners.
.mute-im owners : If IMs are already muted, mutes IMs to owners.
.mute-im <avatar name> : If the avatar is already unmuted, mute them.
.unmute owners : If IMs to owners are already muted, unmute them.
.unmute <avatar name> : If the avatar is already muted, unmute them.
.unmute-chat : Enable all chat.
.unmute-im : Enable all IMs.
.unmute-im owners : If IMs to owners are already muted, unmute them.
.unmute-im <avatar name> : If the avatar is already muted, unmute them.

.deafen owners : If already deaf, prevent even the owners' from reaching the sub.
.deafen <avatar name> : If chat and IM from an avatar are already unblocked, block it.
.deafen-chat : Prevent all chat from reaching the sub, except the owners'.
.deafen-chat owners : If already deafened, prevent even the owners' from reaching the sub.
.deafen-chat <avatar name> : If chat from an avatar is already unblocked, block it.
.deafen-im : Prevent all IMs from reaching the sub, except the owners'.
.deafen-im owners : If already deafened, prevent even the owners' from reaching the sub.
.deafen-im <avatar name> : If IMs from an avatar is already unblocked, block it.
.undeafen owners : If chat and IMs from the owners are blocked, unblock them.
.undeafen <avatar name> : If chat and IMs from an avatar are blocked, unblock them.
.undeafen-chat : Unblock chat from reaching the sub.
.undeafen-chat owners : If chat from the owners is blocked, unblock it.
.undeafen-chat <avatar name> : If chat from an avatar is blocked, unblock it.
.undeafen-im : Unblock IMs from reaching the sub.
.undeafen-im owners : If IMs from the owners are blocked, unblock them.
.undeafen-im <avatar name> : If IMs from an avatar is blocked, unblock them.

Is Your SecondLife Naked?

This is so pathetic - someone has a version of the SecondLife viewer that allows you to strip the other avatars around you and see them naked.

STRIP ANYONE AT THE CLICK OF A BUTTON!!!

There she is, body made for sin and the face of an angel. If only you could see more...
Or that hot group of ladies at the club what better way to really know which one is your
dream girl than to have them all naked before your eyes.

With NakedLife you can!!

As simple as an IM, but much more interesting!
Click anyone into PERFECT NAKEDNESS! Just Imagine it. And when you are sick of just imagining..
It’s very simple BUY the NakedLife registration pack and have the real eye candy at your fingertips!
WHENEVER and WHEREVER you want!!

Yes, you too with the click of a button could turn any avatar around you naked for the low, low price of L$3200. And please, stop!!! all!!! the!!! exclamation!!! points!!!

With L$3200, you can go to any strip joint in SL and get all the naked avatars you want.

Or, go to a skin store and stare at all the naked boobies you want - for free! You could even stand around and ogle the avatars that newly purchased skins or are trying on demos if you want to see moving naked avatars.

Hey, wait a minute - I could go to a *men's* skin store... hmmmm.

Tip from Alicia's blog.

Speaking Of Bad Grammar And My Love Life...

Speaking of bad grammar and my love life, for some reason, Power Source blog is running a poll, "Is Veyron and Tiessa a Item?" First, it should be "Are Tiessa and Veyron an Item?" I have to have top billing, my adoring fans expect no less. And second, the post is Power Source's 69th post, an amusing coincidence.

Now, if she'd only stop following me around and saying, "Wanna fcuk?" all the time...

And I thought she was angry at me for the last one...

The Bad Grammar Of SecondLife Love

They met each other in a cheap, generic mall stuffed full of shops selling the same recycled, four-year old freebies as everywhere else. The freebies were just as ugly as the day they were made, but now they were free, on sale for L$1, and wrapped in a blinking, rotating, particle spewing box labeled "Hot ClothesFor Women!!!!!!" by a newbie merchant, high on the dream of selling one to each of the six million avatars in SecondLife and through the clever ruse of calling it free while charging L$1, he would be rich and able to afford all the sexgen beds he wanted.

"Wanna fcuk?" BigStud34 Hunglo said, looking just like M Linden on his first day, but without pants and sporting a freebie prim cock. The 14-year old, pimply-faced boy behind the avatar's keyboard was already feverishly jerking off and desperately hoped his mom wouldn't walk in and ask him about his unfinished math homework.

"yes stud I horney 4u," 1SexySlut Muffin replied, walking like a duck and still wearing her Linden standard issue purple top and injection-molded hair. The 350 pound, grizzled truck-driver behind the avatar's keyboard put down his chili, cheese dog with everything, wiped his food encrusted hand on the ancient Harley Davidson shirt stretched to the limit that had been used as a napkin too many times in the past, licked his fingers clean as his other hand slid under his mountainous belly, and quickly probed through his hair-covered folds of fat for his cock and thought, "Damn, I am sexy."

They both quickly hopped on the nearest pink and blue pose balls helpfully labeled with "Take Bhind(F)" and "Make luv(M)"; the same freebie sex animations scattered everywhere across the landscape like pink and blue X-rated popcorn. Quickly their avatars moved in jerky, four-framed animations mimicking sex no more accurately than a Ken and Barbie doll pushed together by a giggling ten-year old boy snooping around in his sister's closet. BigStud34 humped 1SexySlut from behind, his ugly prim cock poking out of her back as she jerked beneath him with her face and hands buried beneath the ground.

"you sxy I stick big dick in you," the boy typed with one hand as sweat poured down his peach fuzz covered cheeks that had never been touched by a razor.

"ooo do me fuck di8ck," the truck-driver poked out slowly with one finger as his other hand wiggled the tiny cock that he had happily found nestled between curly-haired walls of flesh pressed together by the fat of fried Oreos eaten long ago.

"cum in u b1tch," the youth raggedly entered on the sticky keys of his World Of Warcraft branded keyboard as he accidentally dribbled cum on his half-finished math homework, hoping he could tell the teacher the stain was dried mayonnaise.

"ooo i cum 2 ... i 4ck ooo ...," the large man entered as he squirted cum onto his steel-toed shit-kicking boots. He slumped back, his sweat-covered, hairy ass making sucking sounds on the cracked vinyl chair as he smiled showing his crooked teeth stained yellow from years of chewing tobacco. Lifting his dirty hat that said "John Deere" and scratching his bald head ringed by long, greasy hair, he thought, "Wow he's good at this, I haven't been this turned on since I saw the elf dance in World of Warcraft."

Spent and not even saying "bye" they both quickly logged out thinking, "I'm in love," and then realized that in their lust for each other they'd forgotten to "Friend" their new, perfect lover.

Anshe Chung Isn't The Only One Attacked By Flying Penises

Is SecondLife imitating RealLife or RealLife imitating SecondLife? Which world was the first to give flight to the penis?

Gary Kasparov, internationally known chess champion who is now a political activist, was giving a press conference when a dildo, equipped with helicopter blades, took flight.

Link to the original video on a page with no embedding code for the video.

7 Skills Every Man Should Master

Esquire has an article about the "75 Skills Every Man Should Master." They advise men to be able to "Give advice that matters in one sentence" and "Tell if someone is lying." I'm certain they can provide a sure-fire recipe for doing those things in one paragraph in a magazine.

Or how about "Score a baseball game?" Don't they have people that do that for a living? Aren't they the ones guys watch on TV all the time blathering on about scores? Disclaimer: I once knew how to score a baseball game, my father showed me how to do it in the program for the game. I couldn't remember how to do it the next day. Now, if I go to a baseball game, I just oooh and ahhh over the little squiggles the guy draws in the tiny boxes and think, "You can sit on your butt for nine innings and drink beer, next, little do you know it, I am taking you shopping and you can carry my bags for a few hours and work off some of those empty calories. Besides you are getting your daily blowjob later today, what do you have to complain about?"

There are definitely a few I really appreciate:
Not monopolize the conversation - I don't really care what happened in a baseball game that was played twenty years before you were born. I really don't.
Sew a button - I am not your wife or your mother, you go figure out how to sew your own button. Even if I were your wife, I'd still just give you the address to the tailor's and tell you that if you hurry up, they will still be open.
Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn't have to ask after it - If you have to ask, that wasn't an orgasm that was a sneeze.
Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped - And be able to tell me the probability of that occurring. Also, be able to tell me at least one practical use of quantum mechanics - hint: computers.
Feign interest - I'm going to cover quantum physics and the new summer fashions I saw in Cosmo in this conversation and I better not see a yawn. Remember the daily blowjob.
Make a bed - See above under not being wife or mother.
Iron a shirt - wife, mother, yadda.

This one is very wrong:
Hit a jump shot in pool. It's not something you use a lot, but when you hit a jump shot, it marks you as a player and briefly impresses women - That appreciative smile isn't from being impressed with your pool playing it was from checking out the ass on that cute guy who walked by and smiled at me while you were shooting pool and trying to impress me. Hint: He was paying attention to me, you were playing with your balls.

I think they missed a few crucial ones, so here are my seven additions to the list:

7) Pick up the dirty socks off the bedroom floor.
6) Put the cap back on the toothpaste tube.
5) Clean the sink after shaving.
4) Know how to use a mop.
3) Carry shopping bags for more than 20 minutes without whining.
2) Ask for directions before we are late for the event.
1) Cunnilingus

I'm Cartoon Hot and Dumb

I posted my image on FaceStat and evidently, I'm CartoonHot and a bit dim-witted.

attractive: hot stuff
ethnicity: Caucasian / White
weight: skinny
political affiliation: very liberal
relationship status: dating
intoxicated: sober
gender: female
trustworthy: not to be trusted
age: 17
intelligence: dull

Oh, and slutty too.

Politician Speaks In Favor Of Nationalsozialismus

Normally, I try to stay away from politics, except in SL, but recently I posted about the lack of history education in this country. I'd like to tell you about another amusing incident in recent politics.

Imagine, if you will, a political candidate who is asked to speak at an event of a different political party than his own. The event commemorates the birthday of one of the most famous members of this other political party. This political candidate frequently speaks out against what he feels are the biggest moral atrocities in modern America, porn and prostitution, and he is asked to speak out on his favorite talking points. Whatever your opinion of his views, this probably sounds like a decent speaking gig, a place to spout his opinions to a different audience and possibly win some converts to his own political campaign from this other party.

Afterwards, the press asks him why he spoke in front of the other political party, he replies, "I'm keeping my promise. I'll speak to any group." When asked if he thought it would hurt his political career, he said he was willing to take that chance. Finally, when asked whether he sympathized with this other political party and their positions, he replied that he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

Curious, I wonder why he didn't research this other political party before he went to speak in front of them. I know its a bit of a small political party now, but at its peak, it was fairly famous.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, it's time for the rest of the story...

The political party he was asked to speak in front of was the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party (stop giggling those of you who already get the joke - it gets better :)

For those of you who don't know, the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party it is often known by the abbreviation of its name, Nazi.

When asked about this, the political candidate remarked that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

Let's see if this political candidate had enough information at hand to determine what was going on...

First, he was speaking at the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday.
Second, he was standing in front of a big picture of the mass murderer himself.
Third, he was flanked with Nazi flags displaying the swastika.
Fourth, the guys on either side of him we wearing armbands with swastikas.

Look for yourself, do you think you could figure it out?

I don't know about you, but it looks pretty obvious to me. I like how the news article helpfully points out to everyone reading that, "The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II." I'm glad they told me that, otherwise I wouldn't have known, I would have went on thinking the German's bombed Pearl Harbor.

Although, he did say in his speech, "...fight America's economic collapse and reinvigorate the white working class."

It sounds like he may telling a small lie when he said he doesn't know enough about them to know if he supports their views or not. But then, we all know Nazi sympathizers are very truthful people.

The original article has a few more bits, but I covered the bulk of them.

Do I Want A Road Near Me?

Linden Lab's Public Works Department is planning on building more roads. I'm of mixed feelings about this. One of the routes, Route #2, goes right next to three of my properties in Mournful and Hummingbird.

Is this a good thing? I've become used to the big, green empty sward with the weeds growing in the middle of it next to my palace. Will it make the land look better or worse? Probably worse since, now I'll have a road next to my gardens. I don't really care about any potential boost in the sale value of my land, since I don't plan on selling anytime soon. I always knew this day might come when they would build more roads, but having lived here for over a year, I've become used to how it is.

Granted, the road would have an awesome view of the protected ocean I reside next to. The view is one of the major reasons I own the land I do.

Eminent Psychologist Calls Lillie A Whore

It seems that a number of people have taken exception to Lillie's article about men and why they go to prostitutes. It's weird, all of this controversy over an article that basically boils down to "Show appreciation for what he does and don't use sex as a weapon."

I don't know how anyone can argue with that. I wonder if they've even read my assertion that blow jobs are useful relationship preservers? That'd really get them going.

They also seem to have problems with the word "training", probably because it's an ego issue, but we train children, we train people for their jobs, we train each other all the time. This is just raising the awareness that you could also be inadvertently training men to respond in ways we don't want.

Evidently, some psychologist got his nickers in a twist and posted a blog post about it calling Lillie a whore - on his professional blog. Yes, he definitely looks pretty professional after that.

Let's look at his argument's against Lillie's article. His argument against her has many holes, all of them common logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is an argument that commits various fundamental reasoning mistakes.

Perhaps his inability to form a coherent argument is why he is writing on a blog instead of doing meaningful psych research. That kid's is an example of an ad hominem attack or a genetic fallacy, the same sort of fallacy that Dr. Grohol uses when calling Lillie a whore. I called the argument into question, by disparaging the person giving the argument.

Using a disparaging term to call into question your opponent's judgment is a tried and true tactic of people with little behind their own argument. That dear readers was an example of a sweeping generalization, similar to his assertions that her observations must be flawed because of the nature of SecondLife.

If he had anything to his argument, he'd have better proof, that is a moralistic fallacy, stating how things should be and using that to convince people, like he does with his appeal about how men and women should be acting and appreciating each other, thereby she must be false, because as we know people always act out of selflessness and honesty.

Finally, we get to the meat of his argument, a list of papers and research, purportedly backing up what he says. That is an appeal to popularity as well as an appeal to authority. By giving a series of articles that he knows no one is going to go read and refer to, he is giving a false sense of authority. I have no idea what those papers state or if they even exist. He could be making them up or they could already be discredited in the psychology community.

By throwing a bunch of various theories around, he's trying to muddy the waters a bit to show that all of those other ones are more credible, more likely, etc. Rather than addressing the question, he is saying that since those other arguments are possibly true, Lillie must be wrong. That's actually a rather interesting fallacy, sort of a, "We already have enough theories, we're all full up here and don't need any more. There's no room for your argument."

He ends up with more moralistic babbling about how things ought to be.

His entire argument is a false dilemma, though, he is saying, "You can either believe Lillie or you can believe me, and only one of us can be correct". Hold your horses, there are only two options? No "door number three"? No compromise? No synthesis of the two?

Finally, my own argument here is entirely a fallacist's fallacy, I'm stating that his conclusions must be wrong because his argument is wrong. In reality, all I'm really trying to point out is that we have no idea if his assertion is true because he provided no credible evidence to support it.

Try again.

I bet you didn't know I was a Master Debater ;)

The German's Bombed Pearl Harbor?

I don't normally comment on politics or things outside of SL much, but this photo is too wonderful to miss. It's from a free Tibet rally in San Francisco.

Good intentions, poor execution. At least they got the spelling right...

I can see this person leading the protest yelling, "We have to keep fighting for Tibet! Did America stop fighting when the German's bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell No! No Blood For Yak Butter!"

Reminds me of the protesting philosophers:

"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.

"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.

Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that."

"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.

"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."

"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.

"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"

"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"

"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

The Power Of The Blow Job

Lillie has a great post on "Men: The Missing Manual". She talks about how to keep a man from straying in a long term relationship. In essence, she gives suggestions on how to drive her out of business.

A quick summary would basically, go: "reward men for the things you want them to do, and not for the things you don't want." She makes a good argument for how we train men to stray in a relationship, rather than train them to stay. How sex and our moods train men to behave in certain ways and not always to our benefit.

Even though I'm not in a committed relationship right now, I do have a number of "friends with benefits" relationships going in RL. And I can offer my support for her thesis.

It's nice to have all of what I do naturally explained to me ;)

Generally, I reward the men around me when they please me. I flirt a lot with them and all men like attention. I flirt more conspicuously when they've done something extra, like flowers, presents, extra-nice dinners, etc. I make it obvious to them that they've pleased me and that I appreciate that. I touch them more, look at them more, laugh more, and basically give off all of the "signals" more. Consequently, I get *lots* of presents, flowers, and invitations to nice dinners :)

I don't live with anyone and I suspect that "the daily grind" causes some of this to wear off after a while.

However, we expect men to notice when we do something for them and reward us with appropriate attention. I suspect a lot of this is just lack of attention to what he is doing and a presumption that he *should* be doing things for us. I bet it rankles if he expects you to cook, clean, and pick-up for him without appropriate reward. The same is true for him, don't take anything for granted, he probably dislikes that feeling just as much.

If he has problems picking clothes up off the floor, one of Lillie's examples, try noticing it once when he does, stop to comment, "You know, I really appreciate it when you help out and keep the house looking clean, thank you, you're wonderful." Follow that with a passionate kiss and you've begun to train him to do the things you want since you showed physical appreciation.

Finally, never disregard the positive benefits a blow job. I know, some of you are "ewww", "ick", "gross", or "only on special occasions". Even when I am not in the mood for sex, the occasional blow job for "being so great" is a quick and easy way to keep his attention and show appreciation. It doesn't take long, can be done fairly impromptu, and satisfies his sexual urges, while giving him a big ego boost and a Pavlovian reward. It's amazing what taking a few minutes for a quick blow job can do for a relationship.

I bet if he's getting a couple of blow jobs a week, an investment of less than an hour of your time, the relationship will stay much happier. He won't go off to have cybersex with a trollop like our Lillie :) if he's just gotten a blow job for picking his clothes up off the floor. He'll be running around trying to clean the house more.

SecondLife Displayed On An Apple IIc

Yes, you heard me right, an Apple IIc. Joshua Linden spent some time over a weekend to get the SecondLife client displaying to an Apple IIc via his Windows Laptop streaming the data. He says he gets a little over one frame per second. That sounds about right for the client's performance.

The is one of the more wonderfully nerdy things I've seen in a while.

Don't Count Your Mono Chickens Before They've Hatched

I've been telling people not to count too much on the performance gains of mono over the current LSL engine. It will probably be better, but not much. Also, the 64k memory is to make up for the fact that some of the data types are 4 times as big as in the 16k memory model, thus, in the degenerate case, a current 16k script will use 64k. One nice thing though is that scripts only have to allocate memory in mono in 4k blocks, meaning that small scripts will take up less memory, because the current engine always allocates 16k for a script no matter how little it uses.

People who like to be argumentative with me and disagree point to the blazing performance of mono for math operations with demonstrations like this:


While indeed an impressive demonstration, I would like to point out that not many scripts do tons of internal math calculations as their primary function. Most of them update objects in various ways, for which mono is actually a bit slower than the current engine for object updates:


While very close to the current engine in performance, it is still slower. For the bulk of operations, mono will be about the same performance as the current engine, perhaps faster. For some operations it will be much faster. For memory consumption, it will most likely be a wash, since there are lots of tiny scripts, but any substantial script will use more memory, and more communications bandwidth.

To quote from some empirical trials done by claudio pacchiega:

What surprised me was that the simple sequence:
(this mono is going to heavily surprise me :(

list lst=[]; integer i;
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
if(i%10==0)llSay(0,(string)i+" "+(string)llGetTime());
lst+=(string)i;
}
appeared only 4-5 times faster in mono than in lsl2 (total iterations divided by total time),

I also did something like

str="18 characters"; list lst=[]; integer i;
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
if(i%10==0)llSay(0,(string)i+" "+(string)llGetTime());
lst+=[str+str];
}
appeared only 2 times faster in mono than in lsl2.

To which the reply from Argent Stonecutter was:

These shouldn't be surprising. In this kind of code copying data dominates, and LSL is already doing that part in native code.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks. Mono is going to be massively faster for raw arithmetic, which is well understood and heavily optimized in Mono and completely un-optimized in LSL. Conversely, LSL code that's mostly copying data and calling back to Havok or doing communications, that's not going to be much if any faster.

So, in short, while a 2-4 times improvement in script performance is a great achievement and I can't wait. Don't sit around and expect the 200 times performance some people have bandied about.

Proving Again I Can't Be Serious For Long

I have a great sexy name...

Get Your Sexy Name

That pretty much sums it up. Thanks BotGirl.

Evidently, I'm In An Activist Mood Today

There have been many reasons cited in the past for why voice is good or bad. This is one weighing in on the side of bad:

I witnessed a talk between some people in Waterhead - one of them as black in real life as his avatar in virtual reality. Some others were ganging up on him, trying to make him lose his cool, teasing him with questions like ‘Why is the hair of black people so dirty?’ or ‘Do you have a Jheri curl?’

I am not sure what they were trying to do, but part of it is probably because it is pointless to send abuse reports about things said in voice. There is no proof, there is no record, and so all of a sudden it is safe again to play such silly games. To say stuff to a black guy that you don’t dare say to him in public, face to face. Or typed out in text chat with your avatar’s name attached to it. And so I can only conclude that it is the cheapest form of cowardice - a comparison to gangs of men in white hoods is a gross exaggeration, but the basics are there. You pick a nigger and you go after him, hiding behind a mask or an avatar.

That is just so wrong. I don't think voice is bad because some people will abuse it like this, but the inability to force accountability for actions is definitely a problem. In the Abuse Report, you can provide text and pictures. Perhaps, if there was a running 10 minute audio buffer that you could click a button and it would be attached to the AR along with the names of those nearby would be useful for stopping this sort of nonsense.

I Will Not Have My Voice Stilled

A number of prominent blogs are "going on strike" against the new policies Linden Labs has made about use of their trademarked material. This is the post I made to the blogger's community. Edit: Woo Hoo! Someone else thinks the same as I do about not being silent.

I won't stop posting, depriving the world of me for three days would be a crime worse than anything Linden Labs has done.

But seriously, I plan to continue to post - the more we rabble rouse and actually post using terms, names, and icons that Linden Labs has stated they will not tolerate - the faster we will force them to take action. The faster they take action, the better - it will cause *something* to happen, which is better than a silent stalemate.

If both sides are silent, Linden and us, that isn't helpful. People don't notice voids, they notice activity. In real world strikes, the strikers picket and make noise. They stand around and force the world to take notice of the inequities of the situation. In the virtual world, silence is the *opposite* of what picketing and participating in a strike in the real world is like - it's like all of the workers went home and stayed in bed, it's more like a "sick out" than a strike. No one would notice because no attention was being drawn to the situation. The only ones hurt are those who actually go out and picket and have no support.

We should raise our voices in a cacophony of violations against their new terms, forcing them to speak up or risk losing their ability to enforce their new terms. Imagine if they started to send out Cease and Desist letters - and we ignored them. Then they would be forced to act on their own policies and suspend people.

Imagine the press that suspending well known and popular avatars would bring to this. It would bring more attention to this than being silent ever could. However, being silent incurs no risk.

If we don't force them to act and act decisively, they can be quiet about it and enforce it whenever they feel like it or hold it over our heads. This situation does not call for inaction, it calls for *more* action.

I plan to continue to stick my virtual neck out and continue to post. If the rest of you want to do what LL wants, which is to obey their new terms and not use "infringing" material, go ahead and don't post.

But then, I'm a rabble rouser who tends to be mouthy towards authorities.

Lesbiazo

Wow, a lot of people clicked on the page link to the Eudeamon post, I bet it's because its such an unusual word that people were curious what it was, perhaps I should title more of my posts with obscure Greek words and see how that drives traffic. Hmmm, I think I already did :)

To explain the word above, lesbiazo, if you guessed it had to do with the Isle of Lesbos, you are correct. However, unlike what you may think, the Ancient Greeks did not associate that Isle with female homoeroticism, but instead with using the lips to induce pleasure during sex, specifically, the act of fellatio. So, that word above, contrary to what you may have first thought, is in fact the Greek word for blowjob.

The Ancient Greeks also referred to blowjobs as "playing the flute", a tradition that I've still heard today. Who said the Greeks only gave us useless things like math, philosophy, medicine, drama, humor, natural science, and engineering - more importantly they gave us crucial slang for sex.

Eudeamon

Veyron gave me a story late Sunday night, Eudeamon, it's available for free from the author at that link. It's over 75,000 words long, but I read the entire thing in one sitting and stayed up far too late. The story is very well written and I highly recommend it to anyone. It made me laugh and cry, but most of all, it made me think. In other words, an excellent book.

In the story, a reporter investigates a new method of criminal punishment being used, Banishment. Exclusion from society is an old form of punishment, but this had a new twist, the criminal was placed in a special suit that prevented all forms of contact and interaction with others, an AI in the suit monitored the criminal and punished them if they violated the rules, then, the criminal was allowed to roam free wearing the suit. Isolated from society, but forced to be amongst it, the criminals, called a Bane while in the suit, were able to watch others enjoy their lives and yet be unable to participate. When their sentence was over, they were released. Nearly no criminal relapsed.

A very spooky kind of punishment. The reporter was trying to find out if it was inhuman. Were the makers of the suit subjecting the criminals to permanent mental and emotional harm? The program was only a few years old, so little was known of the long-term effects. She wanted to find out. The only problem, no one, not the makers, the city council, the police, not even the ex-Banes themselves would talk about it. She kept trying to interact with the Banes themselves, but they were unable to communicate with her and usually ran away since they were punished if they tried to interact.

Then, she discovered two things that drove the rest of the story of the book and made all the difference. First, some of the Banes who had been in the suits the longest, for more than a year, were beginning to commit petty crimes, lengthening their punishment and requiring them to stay in the suit longer. Second, in a park, in the middle of the night, one of the Banes communicated with her, writing a few words in the mud with a stick, replying to her questions about why it didn't want to be let out of the suit.

She cleared the silt and wrote slowly and carefully. You cannot understand. Only bane understand. Beauty beyond words. My perfect Eden. She stopped writing for a moment to hug herself again. Pleasure you’ll never know. Love you’ll never know. She underlined ‘love’ several times.

The story is good with action, excitement, humor, romance, and drama. A good plot, solid characterization, and numerous twists, turns, and surprises to keep you interested.

Now, if you've stuck with me this long, you're probably wondering what this has to do with Second Life. A few people have made their own Bane suits and one person has set up a Banishment program in Second Life, trying to replicate the book as well as possible. The suits in the story, made of a black latex like substance, along with the isolation appeal to certain types of subs and they have tried to duplicate the experience in Second Life. A few who have tried it, not knowing how it would affect them, have written about their Bane experiences.

As for me, while I'm curious, I'm more curious about how much of the experience of the book they have been able to replicate. I naturally isolate myself enough on my own and I don't want to make it more complete by doing the Banishment program for a week or more. Part of what I like about quiet and solitude is being able to watch the world, and I don't think SL has enough depth and detail to keep me from being bored.