Second Life Blogs | Pixel Scoop | Virtual Worlds News

Ok, I like Emerald. Really I do. But primarily here is why:-

- View 1.2 layout. I hate the viewer 2 layout.

- Pretty extra windlight settings.

- Boobies bounce in Emerald.

- In built radar.

- Did I mention that boobies bounce in Emerald?

Anyway…I’m not gonna go on about the banning. There’s enough talk of that already in the SL blogosphere. What I want to know is…which of the other TPVs can meet the above criteria? Anyone happen to know or will I have to try them all?

I suppose I can give up the bouncing boobies since, my understanding is, that there’s no other viewer with that?

Advice greatly appreciated

I was exploring earlier on and having a look around at some of the newer creations by my favourite prefab creations. At one particular location I stumbled upon a voice chat on the local channel between a Second Life couple who were shopping for a new prefab. What I could gather from this conversation is that they live on a homestead that they share with at least one other couple – the male half of which is a dude with the surname Hax. Basically, Hax and his Missus moved in recently and got a better looking house and a jetty and a yacht. This couple were unamused. I quote:

“Babe if we don’t get a better house we have to move off that sim.”

I’m not joking. I did wonder whether or not she was joking, but I knew that he knew she wasn’t when I heard the cha-ching of a Linden Dollar purchase through his mic just moments later.

Wow. This is ‘Keeping up with the Joneses,’ on a pixel level. Which got me thinking about neighbourly disputes you get in SL that you’re unlikely to ever experience in RL.

Your Prims Are On My Land

We’ve heard of people kicking balls onto lawns… but what you don’t get in RL is people being able to strategically place the ball in such a way that it is sufficiently (and in the right place) on their own lawn but overlapping their neighbour’s lawn – thus making it impossible for the neighbour to move it.

Your Skybox is too Close to Mine

I was once asked to move my skybox. The guy who had moved in next door did actually put his at the same height as mine after mine was there but asked if I would move mine because it (and I quote) “It took me a real long time to get it up.” My response… “Alright, providing you never tell me about your troubles getting it up again, I will move my skybox.” But that’s definitely a complaint you would never hear in RL: “Excuse me, your floating box is next to mine and I am concerned that you will be able to see me having sex with my partner. Fancy moving it?”

You’re Camming in at me Changing

In RL, if someone did “cam” you in your own home, it would be an offence worth of rather more than a nasty IM, I’m sure….

Your Bird Noises are Annoying

When I worked in real estate in Second Life, this was a common complaint. It seems people are not always awareof how to restrict sound to their own parcel. So people would complain about their neighbour’s bird oises or waterfall noises being irritating quite a lot. If someone went to their neighbour in RL and said, “The sounds of the birds is driving me crazy,” they would get a weird look to say the least.

“Alrighty… so what would you like me to do about that? Get my birdsong dictionary out and ask them to hush?”

“Your Castle Looks Out of Place on the Beach”

If someone came to my door telling me my castle looks out of place on the beach, I would give myself a giant pat on the back for a) having obtained land on a beach and b) getting a castle built.

Woot.

Unfortunately, it isn’t likely to happen this side of the year 3000!

Hmm… have I missed any?? C’mon… let’s have your “neighbourly disputes you’d only get in Second Life.”

Woot! Just noticed this – which was pleasant to wake up to after a long weekend and on a “back to the office” day. Pixel Scoop Freebies is now in the Destination Guide.

The Lindens are on those submissions quickly! Awesome.

Hi guys!

I’ve just installed a new plugin (well, yesterday)! It’s called CommentLuv and for those who haven’t heard about it, here’s just a rundown of what it does.

When you leave a comment on this blog and you include your blog’s URL, while you’re filling out the comment field, it will fetch the name of your most recent post and it will post a link along with your comment to that post, as well as your standard blog link. The main advantage is that these links are do-follow and having the nameof a recent post could potentially generate referrals from this blog too.

I’ve long loved CommentLuv. The team behind it really had a great idea with this. I will be adding the Twitter plugin by the same people soon too, that enables commenters to leave their Twitter ID as well. Yes,I’m embracing social media!

As ever, the same comment policy applies. I don’t hold for moderation first as I do believe in freedom of speech. However, I reserve the right to go back in later on and remove anything that is spammy. People keep calling themselves vicodin and posting comments here. If your Mother gave you a name like “vicodin,” you want to get off your computer and go get help )

Ah the joy of spammers.

It’s been one of those days… thanks to certain psychos. But I took a nice trip to the cinema with my girlfriend to watch Scott Pilgrim (insanely bizarre but really rather good) and then I came back here and she and I sat on my couch. She’s aware of all the drama going on. She never used SL until the last couple of weeks or so. She’s created an avie so she could have a look around and understand why I love it so much. When we were sitting in here tonight she said,

“Even after all this crap, you still love Second Life?”

“Yeh, I do.”

“Why?”

So we grabbed the laptop, logged in and I showed her the reason I love it. Creativity.

We visited some beautiful places. I showed her my favourite ones and also a place I found out about when I was reading Honour McMillan’s Blog today, some stunning floating isles.

Five reasons I will always love Second Life:-

1 – Unrivalled potential to collaborate with other creatives/singers/artists/builders from the other side of the world.

2 – Some amazing people. For every complete nut case in world, if you spend the time, you will find someone incredible.

3 – Spoken word. There are loads of great spoken word events in Second Life and these offer an opportunity for those who might not otherwise have the confidence or ability, to perform their work.

4 – Where else can you literally walk through someone’s imagination? Really?

5 – Creative expression. This is a user created world limited only by imagination. For me, the fact that the only limit is imagination (as opposed to creative being limited by budget, or feasibility or even materials etc) means that SL sums up creativity.

I still love Second Life. And I love sharing it with my girlfriend too

Most of you may know by now that Skylar Smythe has completely lost the plot today and started posting libel on her blog.

I am going to make 5 points and then I am so done with this:-

1. She is trying to lose some Lindens their jobs having claimed that I am buying chat logs from them. Now in the first instance, I’ve never purchased a chat log from anyone and in the second instance I don’t know which Linden it is she has a grudge against, but she is basically going to try and get someone in trouble and potentially attempt to make them lose their jobs because of bitterness? That’s pretty sick.

2. I DID write articles and distribute them to a number of channels under the author name “Josue Habana.” I do a lot of article marketing around this blog for keywords like “Second Life Blog,” and “Second Life Freebies.” I did some articles with the anchor text for the post I wrote a few days on her drama, with her name as the anchor text. The aim was to have that post rank for her name. She attempted to defame my name, I set my point straight in that post and I wanted people to see it. I don’t deny that.

3. She has emailed me three times today, the most recent one I screenshotted (go to http://twitpic.com/2jhqu1/full for the full size image):-

DISCLAIMER: I have not blurred her email out as her email is already in the public domain and she uses it regularly in the public domain.

4. She claims I am trying to ruin her writing career. First of all I question, “What writing career?” And secondly it is me who has tried my hardest to help it take off. She bought a domain, I told her how to change her nameservers and I arranged hosting for her. I installed wordpress, customised a theme for her, began some optimisation around, “Copywriter Toronto,” and the other words she was going for and added content. I then sent her login information for the wordpress and advised her on how she should proceed. This was a month ago, maybe a bit more. Even after she kicked off and started all this bullshit, I have left the site hosted and left her complete access. I haven’t touched it. Why? Because contrary to the lies she tells, I do want her to build a career – and not one that is limited to virtual worlds. Her site still exists on hosting arranged by me today. I have never taken a penny off her for that nor would I. I cannot paste the URL here because it contains her real life name and I won’t be guilty of disclosure. But even she would have no choice other than to admit that the site is there, it is all my work and that I have not even removed it since she started trying to bring my reliationship with my real life girlfriend into question. I’m not even going to remove that website now because I have no desire to threaten the only real opportunity she might have to make something of her desired writing career.

5. She has disclosed RL info about me on her blog today in the midst of all her libel and lies and frankly, I’m livid. I have a young son and she knows my stance on giving out real life information as a result of that. I only give out personal information when I trust people. I’ve never disclosed anything about Skylar that is not already public domain.

I did add a Youtube with another email today though with the smaller vid screens it isn’t clear. I’ll get HD versions of them all and upload to the Youtube channel. Why? Because she is completely delusional and even if one person believed her I would be disappointed.

But this is the last bit of blog space that will be wasted on her. Her actions are the actions of someone who is desperately bitter and pathetic. She’s been like this since I announced I was moving in with my RL girlfriend and it’s getting insane now.

I have a son, a sister, nephew, girlfriend, friends, two businesses and two crazy dogs. My life is full, busy and I love it. I also love being in SL when I can. But there’s always one psycho to ruin it, right? Her behaviour is the type of thing you read about in dodgy tabloid press about Second Life.

I won’t be reading her blogs anymore and would request that nobody gets in touch with me telling me what she’s saying. Frankly, after this and my machinimas to be uploaded, I have no more to say on the matter.The girl is an utter, two-faced compulsive liar. She’s lied about me, about her friends, even about my son’s dead Mother! Enough’s enough. So I’m washing my hands of Skylar-gate.

Sorry about yet another blog post wasted on her, guys.

I did a post a while back on the keywords that refer traffic to my blog from search engine, Google. It’s been a good six months since then and I’ve worked a little bit on the blog here and there to get it ranking better for “Second Life Blog” related terms.

So I went back and analysed the keywords referring traffic to see whether this blog still looks, from its keyword profile, like a dodgy pixel pornography blog! Here’s the top 20! I should probably mention that I’m an absolute Google geek and I LOVE analytics. I know I totally lost cool points then….

Second Life Blog

Woot…. this is now my highest referring keyword. It’s head and shoulders above everything else. As much as I am pleased to see that, I could at least have made a more amusing post out of still getting most of my traffic from “jiggling boobies.” The traffic from this search term lands smack bang on my home page.

Second Life Freebies

This is interesting…. people typing this ‘Second Life freebies,’ and ending up on Pixel Scoop are either landing on a “tag” page, where it displays all posts I’ve tagged with that. It displays freebies I’ve created as well as someof the quirkier freebies I’ve reviewed before. Alternatively, they land on a page about one particular freebie I created. But that’s 2 of the top keywords now being directly SL related. I’m not sure whether I’m pleased or disappointed

Second Life For Kids Under 13

Ok, this is Second Life related too and comes back to a post I did about virtual worlds for kids, when I was hunting down a suitable one for my young son.. Interesting that people search this specific phrase. Personally, my point was not wanting something like Second Life, insofar as I would never let him loose in SL, but wanting a virtual world where kids are completely safe and can also build or express a level of creativity. That post still remains one of my highest visited and most commented on.

Jiggling Boobs

Woot! There it is. I still get my 4th highest amount of search engine traffic from “jiggling boobs.” I am going to hazard a guess that the general people searching that phrase in Google are desperately disappointed when they land on my post about the Second Life Emerald viewer’s feature. Methinks that’s probably not what they were looking for!

Friend Request Message

A random one to search for indeed but it refers traffic to a post on my blog about how sad the “Would you be my friend?” default friend request message makes people look!

Virtual Worlds for Kids

Again this is to the post mentioned previously about virtual worlds I had researched for my son.

Dolcett

A dodgy one to rank for, to say the least. Again, I imagine people who are searching this term are desperately disappointed to land on my post about Dolcett in a virtual world!

Second Life Dashboard

Again, this refers people to a “tag” page on my blog. But there is only one post with that tag and it’s entitled: “The Second Life Homepage is officialy shit. Like totally shit.” Hmm….

Josue Habana

I feel violated.

Second Life Emerald Viewer

Again, this refers people to my post about the Emerald viewer having jiggling boobies. That post was fun to write. Never did I think I would ever justifiably be able to write a tutorial-ish post about turning jiggling boobies on in a virtual world.

Bouncing Boobs

Again, back to that same post!

Emerald Viewer News

This is another one referring traffic to the post on jiggling boobies in Emerald. Although people searching for that term in the wake of “Emerald-Gate,” probably aren’t all that interesting in the jiggling boobs, right?

Second Life Alts

This leads to another tag page, where posts I have tagged with “Second Life Alts,” are displayed. There’s only one post there and it was a post I wrotein July 2009 called “Pixel Scoop Undercover – Alt Abuse.” It was a docu-parody about the poor lives of alts. Check it out, if you so wish. This was a lot of fun to write.

Second Life Freebies Blog

This takes people to the tag page previously mentioned. I might do a bit more work on the freebies side of it, in light of having opened my little freebie store in world, actually.

Bouncing Boobies

These boob ones keep cropping up. The immature side of me love this.

Pixel Scoop

And the “brand” search is 16th! So much more traffic to be had from boobies – no surprises there

Second Life Emerald

Yup, the same post we’ve mentioned a few times again!

Saggies

I wonder just how disappointed the people who type this in are when they land on my page about Second Life saggies, a random freebie that my inner juvenile loves. Particularly given that the image on here was lost when I changed blog servers over a year ago. Note to self… must go update all lost image posts.

Second Life Drama

There’s a few posts this has related to… though most of the traffic from this term lands on a parody ost about profiles.

Second Life iPad

This goes back to a post I wrote on the fact that the iPad is just an oversized iPhone… without any phone functionality.

And that’s the top 20! I want to see everyone else’s too… come on. I showed you mine!! )

I love analytics because of the completely random searches you have no idea you will be coming up for until you actually go check. I love the randomness of a lot of it. Ubercool indeed.

If you do post your own top referring keywords, drop a comment on here so I (and anyone else interested) can go look!

This post has been removed.

Well obviously not removed cos it’s still here. But this post isn’t what it was anymore.

I was really affected by a comment (which is still below) which pointed out how bitter word battles just end up making the blogs trashy – although  the commenter put it bit more nicely than that lol! And as much I maintain my stance on everything I have said, this is now a post that ranks in search engines (as of 31st August) within the top 5 for searches around the name of the individual it was about. I have changed this title and content and those rankings should soon disappear. I can’t deny that I carried out work to make it rank. Immediately after posting and in my anger about the things she was saying about my RL r/ship, I schedules an article with a backlink to this post under the appropriate anchor text, to distribute to a number of article sites. I don’t deny it. I deliberately made it rank. And now, with a much calmer outlook, I am deliberately making it ‘unrank’.

Granted, it’s not a massively searched keyword according to Google’s data. Not at all. But the point is that the few people who do search that are looking for information about that individual and while I maintain everything that was posted here was the truth, I have no right to force my drama down the throats of people just looking for a bio or some info about someone.

What one of the commenters below pointed out is that this blog isn’t supposed to be about drama. And I absolutely concur with that point. Posting drama really does make people who come here for lighthearted fun (which is what the blog is supposed to be about) feel uncomfortable. So I made the decision to remove the stuff that was in this post, change its meta title and change, in turn, the sour mood that’s been hanging over Pixel Scoop.

I have no interest in even a civilized friendship or acquaintance-ship (is that even a word?) with that individual but, as the commenter below said (something that really struck a chord with me) there’s dignity in silence. In my ideal world what I would get from her is silence and she the same from me.

She can continue to lie about me if she likes and that’s all fine. The only people who matter are wise enough to know that it’s a tabloid version of events!! But I feel an entire sense of a weight shifting by removing this and being done with drama and hideousness.

So I apologise to the people who read Pixel Scoop purely for light hearted entertainment, for the heavy and sour note that plagued the blog over the last few days. I also apologise to the friends who had to put up with my bitching like a teenage girl the past couple of days and I apologise to my beautiful girlfriend for having to show her every bit of correspondence/blog post etc between the said individual and myself (just to justify my actions). She didn’t particularly care to see the stuff and like she said, “Childish and really lacks perspective.”

We’re all change and moving into much more fun territory

I’m drawing inspiration from the quotes of friends, family and famous:

Gf: “In the grand scheme of things, what does this all matter? It doesn’t affect me and you, it doesn’t affect your son and it doesn’t make an iota of difference to anyone who cares about you. Let it go.”
Sister: “Grudges only ever end in tears.”
Best friend: “Fight fire with fire and you’re gonna end up accused of arson, mate. Don’t fight fire at all… run as quick as you f***ing can out the door and get away from it.”
Dr. Seuss: “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
William H. Walton: “To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.”
Jill Niedzwiecki: The High Road can be a lonely place, but the smooth ride and the beautiful view are much more satisfying.”

Can you really be in love with someone without ever meeting them?

That’s a question that myself and some friends were debating earlier on after one of my buddies declared his love for someone he met online and hasn’t met in person yet.

There were all sorts of opinions on it, of course. But it ties in quite nicely to Second Life and virtual world dating in general I suppose.

I have had 2 longer term “relationships” in Second Life as many of you know. And in both cases I cared deeply for the woman involved. In one case I thought I was in love.

Perhaps that’s they key: “thought.”

I’ve been talking to a couple I know who met in SL, then met in RL a whole 2 years later! They just got engaged in RL. When they had their SL wedding they talked about how in love they were. But now when you ask them, they say they were mistaken and that they weren’t really in love until some time after they had met.

So here’s a question for the psychologists or even just an issue for debate. Can you be in love with someone you meet in a virtual world without ever meeting them in person?

My answer: NO.

I believe:-

- You can care for someone deeply.
- You can develop a platonic love
- You can’t fall “in love” with that person though.

I think people fall in love with characters or with a fantasy or even with a hope.

That, for me, isn’t real love.

Maybe that’s how some married people are successfully able to separate SL and RL relationships (not that I believe that is acceptable – absolutely not).

When you are involved in something so intense, in an environment where you can date on the stars, or dance in the sky, visit space or picnic in castles every single day, it’s easy to get carried away. And it does feel real. It doesn’t stop when you turn the computer off, for example. But until you meet someone and experience “real world” dating and a “real” relationship (yes, including the physical) I don’t think you can really be in love with the person behind the avatar.

It took me a long time to learn that, largely because until you distance yourself from certain feelings or situations or move on to something “real life,” it’s impossible to find a comparison or to assess it objectively.

I believe people can meet in virtual worlds and go on to have successful RL marriages. I just honestly don’t believe “being in love” can happen without meeting someone in person first.

But anyhoooo, that is my opinion.

Yours?

16 year olds in Second Life? And without breaking the rules.

What the f**k?

There are already enough minors on the main grid without making it acceptable for 16 year olds to be on the grid and within the ToS.

Now let me add, I honestly believe that these younger SL-ers have a great potential creative value to add to the platform. I’ve maintained for a long time that teen players should have a way to sell their items to the main grid, potentially through XStreet. But it’s not a safe environment for people of this age.

And bullshit with the whole “well they won’t have access to adult regions,” business, You only have to look around the PG regions to see that not all adult material is restricted to Zindra. There’s just no logic in opening the door to this hazard.

SL is full of some amazing creatives and some great artistic and educational opportunity. But as much as we love our virtual world, we all know it’s also home to some more sinister characters.

Would I want my 16 year old in SL? No frikkin’ way. No more than I would want them in a nightclub or bar in real life.