Sep
07
2008
0

Something Fishy

Ok, please do pardon the appalling pun in the title. My imagination is currently on vacation and is expected back next week.

Anyway, I was perusing SLX, as you do when those “network problems” recur and you can do nothing else other than poke pins into virtual Linden VooDoo dolls, and I came across arguably the most random freebie (or L$1-bie but whatever) I think I’ve seen for a long time.

The ‘Neko-Kid-Fish’ is simply a one prim flexi fish that you wear, well, in your avatar’s mouth. Why, you ask? Well… frankly because that’s what the picture on the listing shows. It markets itself at neko kids as something to carry around in your inventory in case you get hungry. Is there something about the appetite of pixel neko children that I’m not aware of?

Fish!
Now, I’m not a neko, I’m not a child, my avatar doesn’t get hungry and even if it did, I don’t eat fish. But I still felt inclined to take one of these. One question I have to ask… the description says it’s “always delicious fresh fish in your inventory.” But my inventory has no refridgeration system. I’m therefore wondering whether it might go off. I do hope not. Virtual food poisoning has very little appeal.

Anyone want a bite? TOUGH! Get your own here. I don’t share.

Written by Josue Habana in: Random Pictures |
Sep
05
2008
2

Second Life™ without teleportation

Urgh. As I write this, my avatar is stuck on a sandbox sim with no other avatars unable to teleport as a result of the problems Second Life™ is having with teleporting (again). Of all the places on which I could be stuck, I choose a blank region attached to NOTHING. I therefore cannot even fly anywhere. And of course, the status page is its usual ‘informative’ self. Allow me to copy and paste their reports on the matter so far (it boosts my word count, you see).

“[UPDATE 2:54 pm Pacific] Unfortunately this issue is taking longer than expected to resolve. However, teleport success is improving, and we’re hoping to resolve this as soon as possible.

[UPDATE PENDING 1:54 pm Pacific] We’re about fifteen minutes way from having updated information.

[UPDATE 12:52 pm Pacific] We are still working on these issues, and we appreciate your patience.

[UPDATE 11:42 am Pacific] Logins are preforming normally. Network issues are still impacting teleport attempts and causing avatar clouding and difficulties crossing region borders. Two inventory servers are resynchronizing. Please avoid in world transactions with valuable (no-copy) assets until we give an ALL CLEAR. We’re escalating our network difficulties to our provider, and we’ll keep you posted.

[UPDATE 10:57 am Pacific] We are still working to bring the broken VPN back. If you experience loading issues after login, like your avatar appearing as the white cloud, please try to login to a different region.

Due to a problem with our network, Residents migth experience a slightly decreased teleport success rate at the moment, and logins will also be affected. We are aware of this and our Ops team is already working to fix it.”

All that was taken from http://status.secondlifegrid.net the home of bad news.

So, four hours so far and still no joy. Interesting, isn’t it, how they leave about an hour between every post. This is especially interesting between 1.54 and 2.54, after telling us at 1.54 they were ‘about fifteen minutes’ from having information. You know, that word ‘about’ gets people out of a lot of bother. Basically, what the 1.54 post should have said is this:-

[STILL MESSED UP 1.54PM PACIFIC] My boss made me come and write something cos it’s been an hour since we wrote anything on the matter and people are saying nasty things in the forums about us. It hurts, you know, all the name calling. Anyway, I don’t have any information. He said tell you all we’ll know something in the next four months or so. From then it should only take another year to rectify. You know, teleporting isn’t all that important anyway. Just LOOK at how pretty the sky and water is now!!

Anyway, that’s my opinion. I will get back to harrassing people I hardly ever speak to in IM just for something to do. (For the record, yes I have relogged many times and I even set my login location to home…and it still brought me back to this sandbox in the middle of nowhere with no civilisation). If it continues like this, I might have to go play real life.

Written by Josue Habana in: Random Thoughts and Musings |
Sep
03
2008
2

Second Life Resident Survey™ - Ha!

More and more frequently it seems these days, I am being asked one of those random questions at the login screen. I came across a screenshot the other day of someone’s login screen informing them that, due to a high level of people logged in, they wouldn’t be able to login. And behind it…a nice little question. “Is your Second Life experience getting better or worse?” What poor timing.

It’s happened to me a few times too and I’ve gotten to the stage of just checking the ‘worse’ button and adding my reasoning as ‘duuuuh’. The other questions asked seem completely random, the likes of ‘would you change your avatar’s name if you could?’ and ‘Are you and avatar the same gender?’

Now let’s be honest, the only time people are at the login screen is when they’re first logging in on a day or because they’ve crashed and burned and have to relog. In the first case, mostprobably want to just get in and get their work done, see friends etc. And on the second instance, well catching people in a somewhat bad mood with a service is always going to play a part in the results!

I do, however, have a suggestion for some questions Linden Labs might want to consider including on their resident surveys, however, if they intend to continue doing them this way,

1. Are you relogging because you crashed?
2. How pissed off are you right now?
3. How many cars do you reckon Phil has? Is it A) 10, B) 50 or C) 100
4. Would you rather have pretty reflections from the water of a functioning game?
5. Would you rather be stuck in game unable to pay for items or stuck in there unable to teleport? **This is a trick question.You’re actually stuck in there with BOTH.

Anyway, ramblings done. Yawn. Goodbye.

Written by Josue Habana in: Random Thoughts and Musings |
Sep
02
2008
1

When Hannibal Met Second Life™

A friend IMed me today to ask me (and I quote), “Do you happen to know what that thing is called, where people cook each other and eat each other?” Now that in itself was a very bizarre message to get, and most definitely a completely different way of greeting someone (personally, I think I prefer, ‘hello’). But, I answered with “cannibalism,” thinking nothing more of it. So imagine my surprise when she sent another IM saying she meant the specific in game version of this and that there’s a specialist name for it. I couldn’t decide whether I thought she was hallucinating or not. It seems not, as a while after that she informed me that the name she was looking for had been ‘Dolcett’. I was intrigued. So off I went to do my Dolcett research.

Dolcett, it appears, is taken from the name of a cartoonist famed for his images (all cartoon-style) of women generally being spit-roasted alive or asphyxiated (and often enjoying it too). And, like everything that’s talked about (or even done) by some in real life, it has made its way into Second Life.

Dolcett has been around in game for a long time, it seems. Though it doesn’t appear to be particularly well known. Gee, I wonder why. I decided I’d go have a look at what all this pixel cannibalism is about! SLX was my first stop, where a search under “Dolcett” (in uncensored) brought up 5 fairly expensive avatar cooking appliances, one in particular boasting that it could accept “meat of any gender,” and was “menu-driven,” (because of couse it would just be wrong if it wasn’t menu-driven, right?).

Then the in game stuff. Well, “Dolcett,” as a search term brings up a lot of places. I did some teleporting and, interestingly enough, despite the fact that I came across no bots or campers, the traffic at these places isn’t bad! In one particular place I was handed a set of rules upon my arrival. These stipulated that avatars such as furries, nekos, angels, demons, fairies, elves, shemales (amongst others) were not allowed in. On the other hand mermaids, aliens, clones, dolls, robots and avatars with prim-exaggerated genitals were actively encouraged. So, let me get this right? Nekos, furries and elves are weird. But aliens, mermaids and eating people are perfectly acceptable, everyday occurences? I wonder what drugs these people are taking. The notecard also informed me of a number of tags I might opt to have in the group, which included ‘butcher’ (for men only) and ’spit muffin’ (for women who actually want to be cooked and consumed by men). The rules are very strict in that only women may be ‘processed’. Obviously cooking up and eating men is out of the question. Of course! Because eating men would be…. erm, unacceptable? Anyway, there are a number of roles you can play, which include ’snuff bandit’. These are the people who are contracted to kidnap, rape and present a woman to a client who wants to cook her and eat her. The weirdness goes on!

I dragged Jenee over to check this out with me. The following photography all comes courtesy of her!
Jenee the Centre Piece
The picture above shows Jenee being served with fresh fruit. Sheesh, what in God’s name is with these people?! Meat AND fruit? Together? Come on, folks! Get your act together! And I hope they’ll be using separate chopping boards for their fruit and meat!

Jenee Impaled
Of course, it would be silly to even attempt to cook your women before impaling them? Sheesh, can you imagine all that jerking around? You’d never get a thorough cook!

Sunday Lunch, anyone?
Barbecue, anyone?

Butcher!
I would like to take this opportunity to assure all readers that I did not already own a meat cleaver. I have not spent a year in Second Life collecting butchering tools. This was a freebie handed to me to enable me to partake in the, erm, processing!

And there we have it. Dolcett. If you ask me, they onlycall it that to disguise what it is, which is sexual cannibal play. I’ve seen some pretty bizarre things in my time in game, but I think this comes top of the heap. As Jenee did point out, it’s probably better that these fantasies are exercised in a pixel environment as opposed to in real life but I still find it all a bit weird. What I find the most crazy is that people get turned on by this? Seriously, what on Earth could be remotely sexual about pretending to chop someone’s avatar up to serve on a ‘girl burger’ stand? What arousal could you possibly get from virtual cannibalism? If you’re as intrigued as I am by the freaky things people get up to in game, then I would recommend teleporting around to some of these places. I would certainly advise, however, that it probably isn’t an ideal first date ;-) Keep an eye on your women while you’re there too, otherwise you may just find that your roast chicken dinner doesn’t taste quite like you expected.

By the way, barbecue at my place next week. You’re all invited. Jenee won’t be there, though. She’s, erm, going away. For a very long time. Muah ha ha!

Written by Josue Habana in: Random Thoughts and Musings |

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