Oct
24
2008
0

Pixel Scoop Issue 2!

Issue 2 is now available in world! Just as dry, just as blunt and just as offensive as the first one. But that’s all good.

Let’s see… what do you get in this one? Interview with Craig Altman of Bits N Bobs, you get to meet Percy Prick the pixel dick and of course we bring you the breaking (fictional) news.

Pixel Scoop Issue 2

Pixel Scoop Issue 2

And, just because I am nice like that, I have even included a downloadable PDF version for those of you who simply cannot be bothered to go hunting for kiosks, don’t like those magazine HUD doo-dahs or just have a very special bond with PDFs. You mean that’s just me?

Anyway, click here for the downloadable version or pick up in the in world version from a kiosk… one of which is located here!

Written by Josue Habana in: Features | Tags: , ,
Oct
14
2008
1

Wildlife on Pixel Scoop: The Griefer

Following 14 months of comprehensive scientific research into the little understood species of the Second Life™ Griefer, I am able to share with you a summary of my findings.

The Griefer, (Latin name, ‘Arrogantus Assholeus’) is, surprisingly, NOT born a Griefer. The Griefer actually starts out just an irrelevant and pathetic little individual with the maturity of a dishcloth and personality to match, before a combination of metamorphosis and some freebie multiplying Mario cubes cause a development over around three days into the species we know as the Griefer. Allow me to explain this further with a mathematical diagram illustrating the basic equation we feel best summarises this advanced metamorphosis.

Griefer Maths

As you can see, the combination of freely made griefer made tools and gangster bling serve only as a catalyst in the transformation of the average ‘noob’ into an Arrogantus Assholeus.

Following this incredible discovery about the evolution of the species, we delved further into the research of its habits.

Hunting and Feeding

The Greifer is a predator, or sorts, with scavenger like tendencies on occasion. It picks on innocent prey, usually lurking around sandboxes. It teleports from location to location and remains in one place only for long enough to rezz its stupid scripted prim. Once it has struck, it does not hang around for consequences, choosing instead to cowardly disappear with a bizarre sense of satisfaction at what most would consider pathetic. This creature, however, considers its rezzing a prim as a major success. This is because the Griefer is a pitiful creature with very little purpose in life.

Mating

Griefers find it difficult to attract mates of any reasonable calibre. They will often spend their lives alone, unless they meet someone misguided enough to find them charming. When the griefer does find someone this stupid, his mating ritual begins. He attaches more bling to every single attachment point on his avatar and starts firing bullets. At this point he will also occasionally type things such as ‘Sup, yo,’ or ‘Yo, bitch, ride dis.’ These less than eloquent mating calls are a way of sifting through potential mates. Only the ones who really are completely actually THAT stupid will stick around. And it really does take such a low calibre of mate to partner the Arrogantus Assholeus.

Habitat

The Griefer lives something of a nomadic life, not wishing to pay tier and only ever in game a matter of weeks before banned anyway, he floats from sandbox, to club, to store, to sandbox again. He will rest almost anywhere. His standards are low. Sort of like his morals.

Social Interaction

Being of a less intelligent genetic make up, the Griefer is limited in his social skills. Furthermore, so dislikeable is he that nobody from outside his own species ever chooses to interact with him. He is unable to communicate very well, restricted substantially by his own stupidity. He can occasionally be found shouting cuss words at nobody for apparently no reason. He’s special like that.

And there you have the findings of my study in the Arrogantus Assholeus.

Look out for findings into other common Second Life species.

Written by Josue Habana in: Features |
Jun
26
2008
6

Bagtastic!

Hangbags, rucksacks, shopping bags, bin bags….whatever. Why do people use them in Second Life™? In case these serial accessorisers haven’t noticed, we all have a big magic ‘bag’ of sorts, a sort of box that folds up neatly to be carried around on your client, not taking up too much space, weighing nothing (in physical terms at least) and that carries thousands upon thousands of items. Better than that… it’s FREE. Yes, I’m talking about your inventory. Why do people insist on carrying bags around? Save yourselves the effort of ‘right click, wear’ because, shock horror (sorry to ruin anyone’s disillusions here) your bag does not contain anything.

But while people insist on having them, I thought I should at least attempt to figure out exactly what these pointless bags say about their wearers!

Bag 1. The cutesy ladies handbag. Just to accessorise an outfit maybe? What difference does a pixel bag make to your outfit?
Pointless Bag
Ok, admittedly, this bag gives off a whole different statement when worn by a guy.

Bag 2. The guy bag. The ‘check me out’ bag. The ‘I don’t even need this but don’t I look good’ bag.

Cool Bag

In answer… no. it does not look good. It looks like you are carrying around a pointless, empty bag.

Bag 3. The ‘my boyfriend just left me his pixel credit card so I MUST shop and I MUST show the whole world that I am shopping’ bag.

Shopping Bag

HINT: the contents of this bag are already in inventory. The bag is EMPTY and thus, POINTLESS.

Bag 4. The ‘I will take any piece of crap I can find in the world and just hang it off my bag’ bag.
Different Bag
Save the world. Recycle. Hang your trash on your bag.

So there. 4 bags. All empty. All pointless. I did, however, during the, ahem, ‘research’ I carried out for this post, come across a bag that does serve real purpose in game.
A Bag with Purpose
The ‘I cannot face this pixel world today’ bag, also conveniently full perms to enable me to pass out to those whose faces I am getting, quite frankly, sick of seeing. Kudos to creator, Zim Andric for this amusing little idea!

Wow. Bag intepretation. I think I just discovered a whole new level to myself. The style mags are calling……

Written by Josue Habana in: Features, Random Thoughts and Musings, Reviews |
May
05
2008
1

Stating the Obvious

Well, I know I’m a little bit slow sometimes. But I’m not THAT slow. Linden Labs seem to think I am, perhaps even that we all are! When I was unable to login today (shock, horror, how completely surprised I am by this failure), I was greeted with a very informative message:

Login Failed

Now, I’d already figured that much out for myself. I wasn’t sure at first, you know. I was completely uncertain as to whether I’d logged in or not. But the real giveaway was in the fact that I wasn’t in game, that I was just staring at the login page of the viewer. That was what cemented it for me. Maybe Linden Labs have begun to feel like so much is wrong in game that being in world really is that easily mistaken for being at the login screen.

Well, since they’re embarking upon a state-the-obvious mission, I have a few suggestions of my own for their login failure messages to add to their collection.

STO1

STO2
STO3

Or they could be really controversial and actually give us some…wait for it… INFORMATION!

“Login has failed because we are too busy counting up all our money.”

“Login failed because we’re all taking a break.”

“Login failed because it did. But whatever happened it definitely absolutely was 100% not our fault. No way. It was our service provider, or the power company, or the griefers, or GOD! Yes, that’s it. Login failed owing to Divine Intervention.”

Wow, I wish these people would employ me to take care of their PR!

Written by Josue Habana in: Features |
May
03
2008
0

10 Things You’d Only Ever Hear in Second Life™

After a certain time in SL™ people become accustomed to hovering, flying, teleporting and, of course, crashing! And so the more bizarre things we tell one another in world no longer seem so out of the ordinary. I’ve compiled a list of ten things that make perfect sense to us Second-Lifers but would certainly turn heads if said in real life (especially to non-players!).

1. “Oh my shoes are up my ass again and my hair is at my crotch.” If you said this to someone in RL, chances are they would think you were some sort of twisted pervert with a dodgy idea of decent chat up lines!

2. “Ok, can you teleport me over there please?” Hmm, now I did think about trying this one on the local pizza delivery place when they informed me that it would be much cheaper to collect than to have my pizza delivered. But I figured that since this is neither the year 3050, nor do I want people to petition for my being sectioned, I should probably not try this line.

3. “Teleport in and fly up 500m.” So what drugs are you taking exactly?

4. “You look completely naked to me.” The sure fire way to have yourself arrested.

5. “Turn it to midnight.” Are you asking me to put my clock forward?

5. “Ok, give me a second while I make my boobs bigger.”Stuffing socks down there again, are ya?

6. “I’m going to go and buy some dances.” Well if you haven’t got the moves naturally….

7. “I might go buy a new penis. I want one with more functions.” Whatever will these medics think up next?

8. “I’m changing skin.” This conjures up gory visuals, horror movie guts and gore type of stuff!

9. “Here these eyes are copiable. Want a pair?” You’re trying to give me your eyes you sick weirdo!

10. “Come up to my skybox.” You want me to honestly come up to a building suspended in midair with nothing around it?! Do you think I have a death wish?

Written by Josue Habana in: Features |
Apr
29
2008
2

Our Pixel Lives

Everyone, oh everyone, posts lyrics in blogs these days it seems. I am beginning to feel a little left out. So here. You might say I made some minor adjustments to a certain Gloria Gaynor classic (I Will Survive). Then again, you might say I just raped it. Either way, here you go:

 

Our Pixel Lives

When I first rezzed to life,
I was petrified,
Kept thinking I would never walk
No matter how I tried.

But then I spent so many hours
Clicking everything in sight,
Found teleporting,
And then I soon discovered flight.

Now look at me,
Flying so fast,
With my prim hair at my crotch
And my shoes up my ass.

I wish I’d worn a pair of shades,
Really need the help to see,
Cos there’s a blinged up gangster coming
And his bling is blinding me.

Go on now go. Hit teleport,
Just turn around now,
Cos I can’t stand your bling no more!
Weren’t you the one who tried to spam me in that group,
Before I found you and I added you to mute!
Oh here we go,
It’s so noisy!
There’s fifteen waterfalls and fires
And a dolphin-chimpanzee.
I’m so sick and tired of this,
I mean ‘I’m sick to death of DIS’
Our pixel lives,
Our pixel lives!

Written by Josue Habana in: Features |
Apr
28
2008
0

Policing Second Life™ - Pixel Protection!

Well, if ever I have encountered something to make me laugh, it’s pixel police. I was minding my own business today, mooching around a few stores, as you do, when someone started spamming the public chat channel. Yes, it’s annoying. The same shouting from the same avatar requesting that everyone within his 100m earshot does something along the lines of (how can I put this politely?) getting a bit jiggy with their own Mothers. Nice. Oh well, not the end of the world. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box and was simply just shouting from his own name. God bless ‘mute’. One moment to silence the little avatard and peace was mine again. No problem. Nobody died. No orphans starved. The world did not end. But it seems this shouting was hideous and heinous enough in its criminal nature to summon…wait for it…. a pixel cop! In he bounded in his virtual bullet proof vest (because obviously, without one, if someone shot him in game, he would surely die!) to make everything alright again.

“Breach of the peace, man.” he shouted. This was enough to make me unmute the spammer simply to enjoy watching the SL™ Superman himself attempt to save the day and protect our avatars from the highly dangerous public chat. It seems, however, that the spammer was very keen that someone should definitely have sex with a parent, as his requests persisted, filling up my screen. I didn’t mind. They were interrupted by the occasional “Stop that right now,” from Superman, whose patience was reaching its end. “Don’t make me shoot,” the cop continued. Now this, I had to see. And sure enough, he brandished his somewhat oversized machine gun (compensating for something maybe?) and started shooting. Unfortunately for him, his gun let him down (wonder how many times that’s happened to him) owing to a no script/no build in place on the parcel we were on! He soon teleported away. I remuted the spammer and normality ensued.

My question is this. Why? Why oh why do people find it so utterly necessary to make complete asses of themselves by bounding around with prim badges and freebie guns, hats that don’t fit them properly and “FBI” vests declaring to us mere virtual civilians that everything will be ok because they’re here to protect us? Ok, roleplay is one thing and in my looking through policing groups it seems there are some who specifically roleplay. Then there are others who seem to have some sort of delusional philosophy in place whereby they really do believe they’re saving the grid from… erm, well from bad stuff, I guess. One group claims, in its charter, that its purpose is to “protect sl and make our world a safer place.” Others offer a free uniform and training when you join. Oh goody. Because I’ve always wanted to spend my time being told how to look and act like a bit of a pillock by someone who has clearly already mastered the art. I think I will pass up on that one. Looking through profiles, some of the ‘police officers’ themselves offer virtual protection. Just IM them, apparently, and you become under their protection. Wow. As tempting as it is though, I think I can just about handle spamming of the public chat channel and the occasional avatar who, shock, horror, bumps into me! The bruises, I’ve discovered, go away pretty quickly. And failing that, a new copy of my skin should do it.

Perhaps these people think they’re the only ones with access to the “Abuse Report” function. Perhaps they believe that if they wear a virtual cop uniform, everyone will do exactly as they say. Maybe their uniforms are magic and that upon sight, all the griefing avies will disintegrate into nothing. Maybe they think that if Linden Labs™ sees all the good work they’re doing, running up and down the metaverse shouting at people and threatening to arrest them, they’ll get a job! Who knows! One thing I wonder though, how on Earth do these people think they can arrest someone. “Sir, you’re under arrest…. Oh damn. He teleported away.” Hmmm. Something to ponder.

Written by Josue Habana in: Features |

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