"Ich Bin Ein Prim Teamer"

The title of this post of course alludes to a famous speech given by the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Berlin, West Germany, on June 26, 1963,

On February 21, 2012, a new Swedish virtual worlds blog appeared. The blog, called Prim Team, was not really discovered by anyone before blogger Blanche Argus posted about it on her blog Blanche´s Arena on  February 28.

Little or nothing was known of the blogger/bloggers as they chose to remain anonymous, other than that they claim to be a group of people with technical interests "who together have more than 25 years of experience in virtual worlds". All might have run smoothly for them if they had not chosen to unearth and regurgitate the old Scandinavian civil war in SecondLife by four posts focusing on the old witch hunt theme again.

With those four posts Pandora´s box was opened and the scab was ripped off the old wounds which have seemed to be healing since summer. Their rehashing of history made it very interesting to know who was really behind the "insightful" blog.

For me knowing who wrote something is of interest in determining how much faith to put in what they write. Admittedly most of us in the SecondLife blogosphere go by our avatar names, all except my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson who is out there with his first life information also. But even if it is "only" avatar names that in itself is important information, because we know them as well or little as we know people in first life by their identities.

Three people came forward and declared emphatically they had nothing to do with the blog. These three were Blanche Argus, Gittrika Mint and Walentine.

In comments on the Prim Team blog and/or on other Swedish SecondLife blogs it has also become apparent that neither the mudslinger or her"cousins" are part of that particular team. The team behind the blog have also chosen to clearly state in a post that my buddy NEO Timeless is not part of the team.

I am rather sensitive to the use of language and after reading the blog for more than a week I ventured a qualified guess, by the language used in and the topics chosen for some of the posts, that one of the persons in the Prim Team is in fact Sven Idyll, latest known in the virtual world blogosphere for his blog Svens(k) Idyll (recently shut down).

Strangely this time the Prim Team chose to respond that "maybe he is or maybe he isn´t". Based on the fact that they have previously stated outright if someone wasn't a member of the team this answer - in my mind - is a confirmation though non-denial that Sven Idyll in fact is a member of the group.

In my response to this I decided to declare myself as part of that team. I still await their answer to that claim, which should be interesting however it turns out.

Oh and I should add that I have a growing suspicion about another member of the team. She is a highly intelligent woman, who has always been kind to me but is vehement in her dislike and disapproval of the so called "witch"

They should have discussed their policy on the anonymity issue better.

Little Boxes

A discussion about tier pricing on Sven´s (Swedish) Idyll - "Solacegate" made me think of this little gem. Sometimes SecondLife and Suburbia are strikingly similar.

Little Boxes

by Malvina Reynolds (1962)

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

There Is Hope For Mesh

On the first day of the wonderful year 2012 we are reached by the news that there has been a breakthrough in handling Mesh.

Karl Stiefvater is both cute and clever

It seems that Qarl Fizz (formerly Qarl Linden while he was still employed at Linden Lab, a.k.a. Karl Stiefvater in first Life) has made a breakthrough with code that actually makes Mesh adapt to your shape instead of the other way around.

Read more about it and watch the video and the code that Qarl has created on his blog qLabs Blog, or read more about it

in English in Ciaran Laval´s blog entry Mesh Clothing Parametric Deformer Goes Alpha or

in Swedish in the Svens(k) Idyll blog post Lösning på ett Mesh-problem?

This is great news for us all. What an extraordinarily wonderful way to start this year, I love all these brilliant techies that improve my life!

Last Names Are Coming Back

My blogger friend Sven Idyll over at Svens(k) Idyll just published the news that Rodvik Linden (in first life a.k.a. Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab makers of SecondLife) dropped a bomb today announcing that last names will be back in SecondLife hopefully by the end of January 2012. (source).

This news comes after an extremely long and powerful campaign by users that last names should be re-introduced.

Rodvik says, "Hopefully we will roll out what we are thinking early January latest. Identity is very important so as we touch it we need to make sure we are adding something great."


(P.S. It seems that Daniel Voyager also has the story, but I saw it first at Svens blogg.)

Sven Analyzes "the Threshold"

Swedish virtual worlds blogger Sven Idyll over at Svens(k) Idyll has been thinking over Philip Rosedale´s statement to the New York Times recently and come up with this interesting analysis (rough translation by me) in his post "It becomes impossible only when you know it is"

"Philip Rosedale made a statement recently about the threshold of Second Life being high, and to some extent it is true, but one thing is absolutely critical, the willingness to learn and explore. I have in the past month seen how quickly primary school pupils will take on such a thing as building in virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Sim. They do not think it is particularly difficult - if they have the interest they learn extremely fast. Learning how it works is not the hardest part for them but to learn to utilize the many options that are available is difficult. Children do not see so many obstacles, but they try - and often several times. Sometimes, the impossible happens.

Children have not acquired the limitations that we have as adults. We as adults mean something else with "impossible" than children do. Impossible for us older people is a pretty solid stop but for the young, it is a condition that exists until someone finds a way. A few adults manage to keep this desire to conquer the impossible and I would have liked to be one of those but I have put up too many stop signs and signs for both "one way traffic" and "forbidden passage" in my mind.

If you could make a wish for new feature or something else new in Second Life would it be something that has a counterpart in real world, or you could come up with something completely new - something that can only exist in the virtual world? Some children just spurt out such ideas. We are well accustomed to some of those things, being able to teleport, fly and change our avatar anyway we wish - or so we think.

We have a whole new world waiting for us where everything is possible, but we just copy things from real world into virtual reality. When will things start coming in the virtual worlds that we can copy over to the real world? Lack of imagination is in short supply in the virtual worlds!

We want to come to the virtual world because it is different but when we get there we immediately start converting it to a copy of the world we want to disconnect from.

In how many areas of your life are you free from rules and patterns and have a belief that there are no limitations? If you have that, can you describe that which has no borders and that cannot be captured by rules or exhibit patterns?

Second Life needs pure imagination to grow but to let go of the rational thoughts completely and let your imagination reign free is probably the hardest things to do."

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I must say I agree with Sven, if a total gaming idiot like myself - and a few other fools I know all to well - could learn to enjoy SecondLife and develop our skills inworld by ourselves and with the eager help of our friends I do not really see where the huge threshold problem is. There is nothing "impossible" with SecondLife!

Sven is also correct in my mind when he calls for even more imagination in virtual worlds.

Challenges should not be easy, but they must be fun and interesting and allow us to develop in our own pace. Only then will the curiosity and childlike creativity be awakened that makes life so fun sometimes.

Model: Millimina Salamander

I am still waiting in vain for my fashion statement "The Jesters Hat - only for the boldest among fashionistas" to be copied into first life.

Bock Wins Again - Almost...

The laird celebrates the added funds

Today Swedish blogger Sven Idyll announced the winner of the contest that he has been running on his blog Sven´s(k) Idyll the last week.

The contest was to pick out the common denominator for ten videos presented one at a time.

Video 1 Fool´s Gold med Thin Lizzy. (The singer in the band was Phil (Philip) Lynnot, so we get PHILIP)
Video 2 Walk of Life med Dire Starits. (The singers name is Mark Knopfler, so we get MARK)
Video 3 Thats´s all You Need – The Faces. (Rod Stewart was part of the group during this time and he is the singer in the song. Rod´s real name is Roderish, so we get RODERICK)
Video 4 Online Venting – Rosedale. (Easy, we keep ROSEDALE)
Video 5 Dave Gahan – Kingdom. (Another easy one, we keep KINGDOM)
Video 6 Norah Jones – Humble me. (We keep HUMBLE)
Video 7 Outkast – B.O.B. (We keep BOB)
Video 8 Ulf Lundel – Kom in, Kom in. (We get KOMIN)
Video 9 Riverside – Second Life syndrome.( We keep SECOND LIFE)
Video 10 Ledtråd CEO – White magic. (CEO is the lead here)

We now have Philip, Mark, Roderick, Rosedale, Kingdom, Humble, Bob, Komin, Second Life and CEO, what do they have in common? Mix around a bit and you have four of the CEO´s in a company. The company's product is Second life.

LINDEN LAB is the common denominator and the correct answer.

Sven tells us no one managed to get the correct answer but that Bock McMillan (that's me!) after only six clues had been presented guessed on "Second Life" and is therefore awarded a consolation prize - or as he so kindly calls it encouragement prize - of 250 Lindens.