Pixel Scoop

Ok, so it is something of a rhetorical question since I will renew my quarterly premium at the end of November (simply because I like the Live Chat support and the 512sqm mainland). But I did consider before deciding this time, which is unusual. I considered whether or not, given some of the questionable business decisions LL has made recently, whether this was a company I felt particularly confident enough in to throw money (however little) at?

But I’ll renew anyway and follow the Premium sheep who complain but pay anyway

However, if ever I do cancel, I may just email billing with this:-

My name is Josue and I’m a….. well…. I just… I…I can’t say it. Ok, deep breath. Let’s try this again. My name is Josue Habana and I’m a 7Seas-oholic. The truth is that I like to stand around pixel places, dipping my fictional rod into Linden waters and catching virtual fish. So special are these fish that they don’t even need water. They float around my head, surviving perfectly well breathing nothing but pixel air.

I first realised I had a problem when I looked into my inventory and realised that a good twenty percent of my 4000 strong inventory started with the prefix (7S). It was then that I realised just how consumed my life had become by fishing. Was it the competitive element? Was it the fact that I wanted to catch the best virtual fishies before Jenee? Was it the fact that I just liked to have a big (colour customisable) rod?

I don’t know.

But anyway, that’s enough of that! How frikkin awesome is 7Seas? For anyone who has not got a clue what I’m going on about you can find their website here. It’s an in game fishing game that seems to have taken off spectacularly well, with lots of people getting involved and many of them creating their own custom catches and holding their own tournaments.

For the best (in my opinion) custom catches, get your butts over to Screwball’s 7Seas Area! What could be cooler than fishing for Smurfs afterall?

Go on…. you know want to!

Well, I’m sure it isn’t uncommon for people to run off from their real life partners to be with someone they me in SL™. But for some reason this particular case made one of the top stories on Sky New today! You can read about it here.

What basically happened is that guy meets girl in chat room. 6 months later girls moves from London to Cornwall to be with him and marries him. Some time later she finds him getting down and dirty in Second Life with an escort and he tells her he no longer loves her. The end. Now what I found particularly interesting about this case is that the people involved have given their avatar names to Sky News. So of course I went off and profile whored them. I won’t give the names out here but siffice to say that by clicking on that link above you can find them out for yourselves! But in her profile under her real life tab she has, ” Do not dare to ask ^^” Ummm…. well if you’re not keen on sharing details about your real life, giving your story to Sky News, along with your avatar name and real life picture, probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do, was it?

Anyway, he’s engaged to someone else, she’s been with someone she met on WoW for quite some time…just in case you were wondering.

And now I feel like a gossiping old woman. Oh well. I just thought I’d share since it caught my attention this morning!

Ok, so I came across a zombie that is just completely cool. I have seen it on XstreetSL a few times but only bothered my ass to actually get it today!

And I’m glad I did! This is one of the best freebies I’ve seen in game. It’s zombie avatar complete with AO that animates you into a one armed weirdo and also makes you walk all zombie-like too. Have some pictures!

Funnily enough, this bears an uncanny resemblance to an ex of mine ;-)

Dressed to Impress!

I love this thing! The walk is so funny and it’s really well put together.

And ok, ok, evil comments about who it looks like aside… it actually looks like me the morning after a heavy night. I wonder if it smells as bad!!

This is created by Katana Woolley and sold on XstreetSL by Exosius Woolley and you can find it here!

It’s long been accepted that people wear floaty text above their heads for all sorts of things. There’s the mushy “Such-and-such-a-body’s Snuggle Muffin Loviddy Doviddy,” ones that make you want to firstly vomit and secondly hit the offender over the head with a large object. Then there’s the combat style ones… more recently the Bloodlines ones which are growing in popularity, you know the ones that tell you how many souls someone has gathered. Side note - never once did I see Dracula wear a frikkin sign over his head with a number declaring how many souls he’d taken! But lately I am seeing more and more people wandering around wearing nothing more than their name above their head in floaty text. Now, some of them do add little symbols at the end. But how is ‘Bob Smith’ any different to ‘~~~**^Bob Smith^**~~~’ apart from the fact that I find ~~~**^Bob Smith^**~~~ instantly far more annoying? There’s no need! And there’s plenty of people who just don’t even bother their arses to add the symbols and just wear their names! Someone really ought to inform them that we all get name tags free of charge and effort just for signing up to Second Life™. And you know what…even if people decide to switch name tags off for a while (as I do when I’m videoing) then the world won’t end just because they can’t see your name tag. The fact is if someone chooses to either not display or to not read your name tag, they don’t give a shit what your name is. Having it floating above your head with symbols or without is a complete waste of the tiny amount of resources my graphics card spends on showing me the damn thing!

In response, however, I made two irritating tags of my own:-

Don’t throw things at me…. it’s for display purposes only!

And honestly, if I saw someone in real life with a big sign above their head with their name written on it even once, let alone twice, I would hand them another one to wear saying, ‘Me, me, me, me, me…everyone pay attention to me.’

I was browsing the forums on SLX (sorry…XstreetSL) when I noticed a thread posted by ArchTx Edo linking to this image:-

I couldn’t help but share this as it made me laugh. A lot. Have a close look!!!!

If you want a full size version of this image for clarity, click here.

I’ll start with a disclaimer:- In no way do I condone the use of copybot. It’s evil and for evil people. Oh and another disclaimer:- My Grandmother was not really raped by one. She was murdered by one though. No she wasn’t. Ok, let’s try this again. Copybot in no way harmed my Grandmother. There we go.

Ok, so with the disclaimers out of the way what I want to rant about today is the complete paranoia surrounding copybot and the hysteria about it. For educational purposes, CopyBot requires the use of a different sort of client, so copybot is NOT a script, it isn’t an object, it isn’t a big sign that says, ‘I am going to steal all your content.’ It would look just like an ordinary avatar, because that’s what it is. An avatar logged in under a client that is able to basically steal prims and textures…. as yet not scripts.

Yet because the word has been banded around so much and the second someone sees something that looks remotely like something they might have once upon a time thought of making they scream ‘copybot’ there seems to be a real panic setting in. The first point I would like to make is that people do tend to create similar things in game. Just because you once made a wooden table does not mean that you created the entire concept of wooden tables. Because your prims look like chairs does not mean you invented the chair. Just because you built a skybox, does not mean you own the copyright to every single skybox ever made in the history of foreverness.

People see something and scream “omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg copybot did it! Copybot! Help me!” without even really thinking about it. I’m not saying everyone’s copybot claims are stupid and wrong, just that so many people are panic screamers. And it leads to all sorts of trolling and flaming. People hitting forums with messages about ‘copybotted’ content and destroying the reputation of other creators without even going through the correct channels to have their claim investigated. But what is most annoying (and it HAS happened) is when people see you pointing at things in their locations or looking at things and immediately accuse of trying to copy their stuff. If I go to buy something just from a prim on a wall, I like to know what I’m getting. Does the hoodie have a prim hood? That sort of thing. It is something that often a simple right click, edit and a look at the contents list can answer. Hence doing it that way. But so many store owners are so paranoid now that they jump on the cases of people doing this. It’s ludicrous. When I was walking through some place (that I will not name lol) with Jenee, all hell broke loose when I… shock horror….rezzed a prim. Incidentally the prim was something I had just bought from SLX and was unpacking. But the next thing I knew we had some random guy in front of us accusing us of trying to copybot his builds. He came over all high and mighty talking to use as if we had just walked into his home, spat in his face and pissed all over his brand new carpets. He then proceeded to tell us that he “knows” we are there to copy his content. Needless to say he got a mouthful from me and a certain assurance that I wouldn’t be back! LOL.

Anyway, for the hysterical copybot panic patrol out there, allow me to make the following clear:
CopyBot cannot:-
- Kidnap your children
- Rape your Grandmother (keep an eye on your Grandad though, it rapes Grandads).
- Hit you, beat you or inflict any physical pain on you
- Set off nuclear weapons
- Run for President.

Hope that’s all clear now.

Ok so the “We have listened to you,” post appeared on the Second Life™ blog yesterday, posted by the big M Linden himself. And what an announcement. At first glance it seems like a real genuine confession of, “Shit, we fucked up guys. Sorry about that.” And in a way it is.

To summarise, they will be automatically converting all Openspaces into ‘Homesteads’ as of January 5th 2009. Homesteads are basically what openspaces are now, but will have a 20 person limit and, in the longer term, some scripting limits too. Additionally, the January 2009 price raise won’t be quite so dramatic and will now make the monthly cost of a Homestead $95. However, this will raise, as planned, to $125 in July 2009. If you genuinely do use your openspace for openspace purposes, you can contact concierge to have it kept as an openspace, as opposed to being a Homestead. Openspaces from January will have a massive prim drop from 3750 down to 750, something that wasn’t on the blog post but instead on the Knowledge Base listing it linked to. Though their price will remain $75 with no plans for an increase. There will be no classifieds or events listings allowed on these though and an avatar limit of ten.

So basically, your options, if we put it out there as is are that you can have a 66% price increase or an 80% prim drop. Nice options. It’s a bit like, “Ok, so either we will poke you in the eyes with this shitty stick, or we won’t but you will have to pay us not to.” Well, sort of anyway. I guess. Maybe. Anyhow…

What is interesting to point out is that this ‘Letter to Residents’ that was on the blog yesterday is actually pretty much a confession, as far as I see it, that they screwed up. And it’s refreshing for someone to come out and admit that. Let me quote M Linden:-

“One thing I learned and others were reminded about in this process is that we have a very connected, passionate Resident base and we need to bring you into the dialog earlier, before putting forward these decisions. The input we received after Jack’s announcement was prolific and by-and-large very, very constructive. Second Life is at a size where 1:1 conversations are difficult and the forums are inadequate for full dialog. Office hours come up short, too. We have some thoughts on how to bring Residents into the dialog earlier which we will cover in a future blog post and Forum discussion.”

Now, while it’s great that he acknowledged that, what absolutely astounds me is the way he makes it sound like he has only just realised that actually discussing planned 66% price hikes with a customer base before just going ahead and doing it, is a good idea. And there was me thinking that would just have been common sense.

He ended on a note that, in my opinion, was designed to deflect a little attention away from this by reporting increased stability lately. Although that is good news, it’s kind of like saying to people, “Ok, so we’re going to beat the crap out of you all…. but the good news is it’s sunny outside.”

Anyhow, they made a decision, everyone ranted, they made a post basically saying they’re still going ahead with the decision but in a slightly different way and now slightly fewer people are ranting. And the story ends… until of course they announce that full prim sims are going to be $1 million a month and will only have 11 prims.

I truly believe that a miniature Neko Smurf is the way forward. I will let this video explain….

Neko Smurf miniature avatar created by Jenee Marten of Screwball Cartoon Avatars.

Voiced by Neko Smurf, of course!
Scripted by Josue Habana (because every Smeko needs an advisor).
Special thanks to Aeris Shenlin who coined the name ‘Smeko’ on an SLX discussion about the avatar!

I feel a little fat today,
I’ll move my belly slider,
It’s great how I stay slim
Despite six pizzas every Friday.

Look at the guy over there,
Dressed up like a Knight,
Hitting on my girlfriend
With his over zealous height.

No matter, not to worry,
All his chat up lines will fail,
When I adjust my height
To be 100 on that scale!

Oh run away now little man,
Quick, go on now! Flee!
Now I’ve got toned biceps too!
You’re nothing next to me.

And if you come back taller,
Trying to beat me at my best,
I’ll simply slide again
And get a super toned up chest!

And as if that’s not enough,
About which I can brag,
Into appearance one more time,
To increase my duffel bag!!