Second Pride Festival, Monday June 26

Poster by Kahvy Smith

Infinity Space@Southern Charm Today (Updated)

The Infinity Space from NicoleX on Vimeo.

This was a video shot at the opening party for Ultraviolet Alter's concert in Betty Tureaud's installation "Infinity Space" which is rezzed at 2,000 meters over my home-sim Southern Charm.

Tonight they have an encore concert before the installation is removed, I am sorry to say I don't remember what time the concert starts, but last time it was 2PM SLT.

SLurl to the installation

UPDATE 2/2/2014: Well, it seems there was no party although I am certain that I was told there would be one, as that was the reason I was given for extending their use of my sim. However the installation is still up there, so visit it while you are able to, because I am going to ask for it's removal today.

Challenging the Venerable Ms. Oh

As I was busy cleaning up a part of Southern Charm yesterday in preparation for Mirco Dinzeo moving in, my client the scary Ms. SaveMe Oh snuck up on me and almost made me soil myself.

For those who do not know Ms. Oh, or do not know off her, she is an extraordinary performance artist, machinima maker and general nuisance in SecondLife who has gained a reputation for getting banned and ejected all over the grid by meddlesome busybodies who do not appreciate her outspoken manners and her attempts at "invigorating" exhibitions, concerts and events that fail to meet her high standards by taking over with one of her own ad hoc performances. For some reason the two of us have, however, always gotten along famously and she has honored me by appointing me as her legal counsel.

At first we said nothing at all, as SaveMe first walked around me in circles pretending not to notice me and then tried to hide from me while I was busy keeping an eye on her activities. Finally I broke the silence and bid her welcome back to Southern Charm (She had been there the evening before for a concert by Ultraviolet Alter in a sim-covering and colorful installation by Betty Tureaud).

She was telling me about her trials and tribulations in the narrow minded art world of SecondLife and that she was now contemplating making one last dramatic manifestation by hanging herself in one of my - according to her - far too many trees.

I was moved by her story and after having begged her to find somewhere else for "the final performance" I sent her a hug-request, which she - after several questions, much hesitation and me calling her out as a coward - finally accepted.

During our encounter my Tomais had snuck in unnoticed and was sitting and watching us from the gazebo. When I saw my lovely husband I ran up to him and happily greeted him with a hug too.

Tomais and I had a busy day scheduled so we said our goodbyes to SaveMe and left her to her own devices at the skating area. She seemed quite happy and was entertaining herself with a light show.

(You can read SaveMe Oh's own account of our encounter on SaveMe Oh's Weblog: Hiding At My Lawyers (url).)

Catching Up with My Lives

After a good night sleeps my internal hard drives have started working again as they are supposed to do and I have started catching up with my lives.

So what has been going on while I was away in Uppsala for three days and zonked out for a fourth?

My parents, who live on the fifth floor in their building, have been trapped inside for four days because the elevator stopped working, apparently some safety fuse burned out. 

In modern day Sweden it has become customary for the service companies to keep as few essential parts as possible in stock, so they had to order it from the manufacturers in Germany or some similarly "distant" country, and not by express delivery or overnight shipping either. Instead my elderly parents and some of their similarly elder neighbors were held as prisoners in their homes.

My mother told me she had actually gone down to the mailbox, which in modern Swedish buildings are located on the ground floor close to the entrance, on the second day. Going down had been easy she said, but getting back up to the apartment again had taken her several hours in the stairs. I promptly scolded her for this adventurous trip, while at the same time understanding why she did it.

Luckily my parents - as always - had been well stocked with food and other essentials, except they ran out of milk, and could stay indoors.

However it seems to me that modern Swedish society seems to willingly making itself more and more vulnerable and unable to handle "unexpected" or other crisis situations. Our modern day society seems to live with the concept that everyone is young, healthy and fully functional, which should be apparent for everyone that we aren't as the population gets more and more elderly and modern technology exposes us to a larger dependency of spare parts. Nothing these days can be banged into place or fixed with a rubber band, you need an electronic card or something highly complicated.

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My dear friend and mentor in blogging, the amazing Eddi Haskell celebrated his seventh rezday on Wednesday January 22, 2014.

Belated congratulations to you my friend!

Eddi shares some of his accumulated wisdom on life in SecondLife in his celebratory Ask Eddi-post, Ask Eddi: What Advice Can You Give To Others After Being a Second Life Resident For 7 years?


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"Sailor in the wild..." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"911, called." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"Isle of Mousai" Photography by Tomais Ashdene

My husband Tom has been busy photographing and today posted this wonderful picture on his Tumblr. For more of Tomais photography please visit Flickr - Tomais Ashdene or Photomonkey SL (NSFW).

Note: I changed the photos because my hubby informed me that the two above were the ones he actually did while I was away, while the first picture I posted was done several months ago.

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My bosom buddy Apmel Goosson on his blog "My Avatar's Name is Apmel" in two posts informs his readers about the project that has been going on Tom's and my home-sim Southern Charm over the last week, which will come to it's conclusion with a concert by Ultraviolet Alter in an installation by Betty Tureaud today Friday January 24, 2014, 2PM SLT.

SLurl to the event

Apmel's posts can be read here: Oändligt långt från Southern Charm (in Swedish, but translation is available) and here Friday Tip: The Infinity Space over Southern Charm (in Swedish but translation is available)

Support Ticket #01587329 XX - Hopefully Last (Updated)

Om my, while I was being busy gathering all the information to answer the questions Whirly posed in the latest email relayed by Theresa Linden at Linden Lab I think I may have stumbled over the solution to my repeat-problems all by myself.

It has nothing to do with bandwidth, my computer, HTTP Textures or whatever but the default settings of the viewer in combination with the Bock-avatar. (As you may remember my alt Lady Cruella has no problems and never had.)

Since a few months I get these graphic settings by default.

Please notice particularly that "Quality and speed" is set to somewhere between "High" and "Ultra" .
Well, I never bothered to change that once it turned up that way, but when I went to the Miss. Wigstock 2013 contest on Sunday January 27, 2013, I was expecting loads of lag so I though I better pull down the "Quality and speed" to at least "High" and uncheck shadows. All that evening I did not repeat one single time!

After the the contest I did not access SecondLife until after I returned home again from a business trip and there was an email waiting for me from Theresa. Before starting the tests I reset all the settings to default.

It was at this time that Whirly had asked me to uncheck the HTTP Textures, as you may remember that was quite successful during my testing after the first three or four minutes. However, when I logged back in one of the following the repetitions came back even though I kept the HTTP Textures unchecked.

That made me very despondent, sad and weary, I thought I may have to trash my Bock avatar and everything that was tied in with it. I stayed away from SecondLife a couple of days to think about it. Anyway, while I was in first life I began to think about the contest and what a great time I had without any repeats and that made me remember that I had changed the settings.

So today I tried it, and lo and behold, glory, glory, hallelujah it worked! Actually it worked well when I pulled down Quality and speed to High or if I pulled it up to Ultra, the only time I got repeats was if I set it in between High and Ultra.

...the only problem now remaining is that I freeze up after almost every teleport and cannot move or speak and then crash. But that is actually a problem I can live with - I think...

I am sending these results to Theresa Linden now!

Update February 7, 2013.
The improvements still last.

I can recreate the chat repeats if I change the graphic setting to in between High and Ultra. And when i change back to High or Ultra it goes away.