Election Day in the U.S.A.

America will vote. Trump will lose. Trump will leave.

...and the rest of the World will take a deep sigh of relief, with the singular exception of the autocrat Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Elections have consequences, so vote, vote, vote!

Isolation of World Broken

Welcome back. people! I know you must have felt terribly isolated from me when my Internet crashed, but rest assured you are safe now and back in touch with me again.

The Southern Enchantment antiterrorist force is on the job and is rounding up the usual suspects of Mexicans, Arabs, and Muslims as we speak.

Prince Wild Zepp McMillan, the torturer extraordinaire, has been called home from his vacation at a gay resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to oversee the interrogations, which are expected to be strenuous. In a brief interview, Prince Wild stated, "We shall get to the bottom of this conspiracy to deprive the World's access to his lairdship a.s.a.p."

"This Is My Fight Song"

There is too little fighting spirit in first life and SecondLife.

Get out there, fight for your rights and the rights of your brother and sisters all around the world.

If you feel complacent and comfortable, raise your head and look further than your nose. There are people still suffering in the world who are denied the rights you take for granted. Then think of the rights you have today, which may not be there tomorrow. Do you feel the winds changing and how it's getting colder again?

"I still got a lot of violence in me!"

Incommunicado

The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm, prince of Cascade Falls etc. etc. will be unreachable this afternoon and evening. The official reason given is an alleged summit meeting among the world leaders concerning ramifications on International security by the election of Mr. Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

The unofficial - and more truthful reason - is that the laird yesterday received the full DVD-collection of Game of Thrones, season 6, and will spend the Friday evening kicking back and frolicking in frisky murder and mayhem with the characters of that wondrous production.

Standard of Beauty Around The World

Clip Description
An international cast of gorgeous male models shows just how drastically the physical attributes of the "ideal man" vary across 12 different countries.

Make sure to read the full article, with more in-depth research and analysis, on BuzzFeed.

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Well, even if I am a happily married man, I think the whole bunch of the them are unnervingly beautiful! So even if there may be slight variations in the ideals, I don't think anyone anywhere would actually kick a single one of them out of their bed, except if they had an exceptionally bad smell...

I & My Identical Twin

Sometimes we need to be in two places at the same time, but as we know that isn't possible in our first life. However in SecondLife it is. On Friday evening I realized I had promised to be at two separate places at 12 PM (noon) on Saturday.

First I had promised Tomais that I would be at the Wastelands sim for a photo shoot with him, Lee McKay and Ryder Yowman for the "And equality under the law for all" picture. So I needed to have my body there. The second place I needed to be was the Second Pride board meeting taking place at the exact same time. So I needed to have my mind there.

The problem is impossible to solve in first life, but a no-brainer in SecondLife. I logged in the lairds Secretary of State, my oldest and wisest alt Wild Zepp-McMillan to take care of my presence at the Second Pride meeting, while my body rested safely at the Wasteland sim under the protection of my lover.

Wild hasn't been online much and far less outside of the home sim since he was created, so first thing he needed was new clothes. (He only had system clothing and any McMillan would rather be seen naked.) He was sent off to a trip to The Men's Department with an allowance of L$2 000. After only spending about L$500 he was good to go and a pride to see.

I can understand if you have difficulty telling us apart, but left to right it is
Bock McMillan and Wild Zepp-McMillan

The experiment was a complete success, I am happy to say, and I was able to perform my obligations in both places, thanks to Wild and being in constant communications with Tomais on Skype.

The photo shoot turned out wonderfully and I am extremely proud to have been a part of it.

"And equality under the law for all" Photography by Tomais Ashdene
with (left to right) me, Ryder. Lee and Tomais

You can see more of Tomais photography on his his Flickr photostream here or his Tumblr PhotoMonkey SL (NSFW). However, all four of us were ejected from Wastelands and sent back to our respective homes when we tried to pull off the naked version of the picture.

The Second Pride meeting went well too, for the minutes please visit SP Board Meeting Minutes 4-19-14 and for the transcript please visit Transcript of SP meeting on 4-19-14.

As could be expected, the present Marketing Director World Undercroft and Event Director Merrick Genesis, were relieved of their duties for failure to attend three consecutive meetings in a row without permission from the Chair.

The meeting was informed that the key responsibilities of the Marketing Director would be performed jointly by Karl Kalchek and Baz Ceawlin. As the position of Events Director is crucial for the upcoming Festival, even I could see that the position would have to be filled with someone who had the skills for the office. I was therefore not at all surprised when level headed Marge Beaumont made a motion that the position, in accordance with the bylaws, should be filled immediately by Kharissa Indigo (a.k.a. the Relentless Khar).

Although I myself love Khar and could see that she had the required skills I was worried by this nomination both for Khar's own sake and for the sake of Second Pride as she has been a target of "some contention" (to put it mildly) within the community, so I gave voice to my concerns at the meeting.

After being assured by several members of the board that they would not allow Khar to stand alone as a target and that they had discussed policies to handle such a situation I was satisfied. The board then appointed Khar to the position of Events Director.

We were then introduced to The Sponsor and Vendor packages for the Festival, and the registration form for those who had purchased those packages.

Next meeting will be Sunday, May 4 at 12 PM (noon) SLT.

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P.S. I would like to clarify that Merrick Genesis absence is due to first life health issues, not through any desire to neglect his duties.

Second Pride: Continued Trials and Tribulations (Edited)

This is probably old news for many of you, but as I have failed to report on it earlier I am doing so now.

Andy Long

Jagger Naughton

Last week we saw new changes on the Second Pride board as the board approved the resignations of Co-Chair Andy Long and IT Director Jagger Naughton. Both resignations cited "personal reasons" for this move.

Merrick Genesis

World Undercroft

At the same meeting two other board members, the Events Director Merrick Genesis and the Marketing Director World Undercroft, positions were discussed for "failure to attend meetings for three consecutive sessions without prior permission from the Chairman of the Board". Further discussion will take place at the next meeting when the board may also decide to release them from their positions.

Baz Ceawlin

The board also appointed Baz Ceawlin as new IT Director. As he has previously been a reliable board member we should be hopeful that he will stick with it until the next election.

After this "annus horibilis" with all the coming and going of members of the board, the Second Pride board now, apart from Baz, Merrick and World, consist of these reliable and stalwart people who will hopefully stay with us trough the fast approaching Second Pride festival period.

Petr Hastings Vanbeek, Chairman
a.k.a. "Big Daddy"

Marge Beaumont, Treasurer
a.k.a. "No Nonsense Marge"

Sutry Long, Security Director
a.k.a. "Sutry the Strong"

Karl Kalchek, Community Relations Director
a.k.a. "The Little Helper"

Jak Calcutt, Build Director
a.k.a. "The Best Little Hugger in SecondLife" & "Master Builder Extraordinaire"

P.S. I have corrected this post after receiving some feedback from members of the board.

World Is On Board

At the Second Pride public board meeting yesterday World Undercroft was appointed as the new Events Director. The vote was unanimous. All the seats of the board are now filled again, lets hope they stay that way.

The members who were at the meeting were also informed about some exciting upcoming events. The rest of you will have to wait, because I am telling you nothing - yet! (You could however - if you were really curious - head over to the Second Pride website and read the minutes from the meeting, Minutes from the SP Public meeting 1/26/14.)

Second Pride Meeting - Jan 26th, 2014, 10AM

There will be a Second Pride board meeting today at 10AM SLT. The main event seems to be to fill the position of Events Director.

The only candidate for that position being World Undercroft, I am not particularly shrewd if I believe he may get the job.

The rest will be a wonderful surprise, isn't it exciting? I hope to meet you all there!

I Signed Up With Philip

After reading about this on my bosom buddy Apmel Goosson's blog "My Avatar's Name is Apmel" I signed up to become an alpha tester on Philip Rosedale's new project High Fidelity.

The man, the myth, the legend Philip Rosedale (previously a.k.a. Philip Linden), as you all should know, is the original creator of SecondLife, who after leaving Linden Lab has now go on to create another wonderful new world.

Where my Philip goes, I follow! (This by no means implies that I will ever leave SecondLife before they pull the plug on it in San Francisco.)
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The Idea
We're building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users.

The Matter
Voxels. We're making a strategic bet that rich computer rendering is heading there. Imagine an experience with cubes of many different sizes, with the ability to scale them down to a seamless molecular fabric. Now imagine these building blocks manifesting complex physical properties.

Finally, imagine that world extending visibly to vanishing points like our world does today, enabling you to see your house, your neighborhood, distant mountains, and other planets in the sky. We believe computing power and network transmission speeds are evolving to make such a world possible, represented by a sparse voxel octree data structure.

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Read all about the new project here: High Fidelity
And when you visit that webpage, please, oh please, make sure to click the sound players under each of the team members, especially Philip!

My Computer Crashes, World Isolated

The title of this post is a travesty of a famous British newspaper headline that read, "Fog in Channel; Continent Isolated".

Well, around this time yesterday I started having strange things happening with my darn computer, which lead me to decide it was a good idea to do a system recovery. The much honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, and myself have since then been toiling tirelessly to break your isolation.

Do any of you realize how many updates your computer receives during a year, if you include all the different programs you have been using, or how many reboots it takes to get things back in order again? I am sorry to say I did not count, but my best estimate is that their have been about 550 000 or more updates and you need at least 25 500 reboots.

So now your isolation is broken and I am guessing you guys didn't even notice you were isolated. The world is cruel!

If anyone knows how I use the security copies I took of my bookmarks and what I must do to get them back in my browser I would be most grateful, neither the laird or I are technically savvy. To our relief I was however able to recover my treasured photo-collection.

And ohhhhhhh my mail and contacts are also lost, hopefully my little sister Millimina will again be able to help me with the mailing address to Ars sister Debbie, if I cannot find it in the System Recovery Files mess.