Second Pride Website Online Again

I am glad to report that the Second Pride website is online again. You must re-register to log in.

However, apart from that happy news, I am also sad to report that it seems that a spammer has already gotten in - and perhaps more of them. There are at this time 126 registered members, including myself, whether or not the other 125 are legitimate or not I really cannot say.

An avatar named WilzavrFeed (the one that shows online on the picture above) has already spammed the election section with 51 posts totally without relevance to the board election.

I tried to find any legitimate posts concerning the election but am sorry to say I gave up. Hopefully the board will find a way of dealing with these issues in a speedy and efficient way.

Pet Peeve: Tummy Talkers

I absolutely detest it when people spam public chat with their emoting tummy talkers. It's highly annoying to be exposed to someones belly yackety-yaking continuously.

I am not in the least interested in being exposed to a trivial conversation going on between the pregnant mother and the loud infant. Please, leave me out of your role play. If I should wish to take part in it I'll let you know. Don't call me, I'll call you if I ever get crazy enough.

I am considering getting this very special tummy talker to use the next time I am subjected to one of these infuriating things. I found it at Marketplace TBF Talking Pregnant Belly for only L$10.

Judging by the reviews,  it should succeed in getting the point across to even the most simpleminded expecting avatar.

P.S. Even more suitable for me would be if someone should make a "butt talker" or a "penis talker" that filled the public chat with a lot of inane conversation.

"Bock's Butt: I hope this meeting is not going to last much longer, I really need to s**t"  or "Bock's Penis: Why do you always insist on crossing your legs like this? You know perfectly well that it crushes the nuts and is uncomfortable for the shlong also!"

Update On Commenting

I have previously told you that anonymous commenting would no longer be allowed on this blog, see Bock In SecondLife: On Anonymous Commenting.

The reason for that decision was mainly my refusal to use the word verification process on my own blog as it at the time gave me huge problems on other blogs that had activated that option, see Bock In SecondLife: On Word Verification.

As I have since noticed that Blogger has stopped using the blurry pictures of street numbers and also seem to have made other helpful changes in their word verification process, I reconsidered my decision and changed the commenting options so that anonymous commenting was again allowed but now with word verification activated.

My friend and co.blogger Christo Spyker reminded me the other day that I had neglected to inform you about the policy changes I had implemented.

You may hereby consider yourself informed that Bock in SecondLife now

1. allows anonymous comments again, and that
2. word verification is activated.

Protection Against Gesturbation

In SecondLife we have something called "gestures", which are pre-programmed messages often combining sounds with words or other signs in local chat.

Gestures can be quite amusing if they are not used too often and are reasonably short and sweet. 

As an example of this kind of gesture I will one I received as a birthday gift from my dear friends Vampi Twine-DeSantis-McMillan- McMillan (honorary) and her husband sirhc DeSantis-McMillan.

Having activated the gesture beforehand all I have to do to play it is write the trigger in local chat. The trigger to this particular gesture is "/bock". So when I (or anyone who happens to have the gesture) write that trigger in local chat and press enter everyone in the room will hear sirhc saying with his sexiest voice; "Bock is in the building" at the same time as they see the same line appear once in local chat.

Another example is the popular gesture "Yeahaaaawwwwwwwwwww!" where you will hear a someone shouting yeahaw. A third example is "Mmmmmmm Bock, is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?". The last one was a present to me from my buddy Regi Yifu so you hear his sexy and very dark voice speaking the words.

The best thing about the three examples I have given here are that they are one-liners and last at the most about five seconds, so the interruption in chat is minimal, both with sound and text.

Evil people in SecondLife have spent a lot of time making gestures that last extremely long and fill the screen with jibberish for up to - or sometimes even more - than 100 lines. If such gestures come into the hands of unscrupulous avatars - especially if there is more than one in the room - the result is pure havoc with spam filling your screen. The most notorious gesturbation-lovers in my experience are generally Italians, Germans and Americans (not necessarily in that order). As always you should be careful when reading generalisations because they do not mean that every individual of the mentioned nationalities gesturbates.

Previously the only option has been to block/mute the culprit(s) after you have gotten sick with them, in the Firestorm viewer there is however now an option that, if you activate it, automatically detects and protects you against the gesturbators. You activate it by going to your viewers Preferences and in the Firestorm tab go to the Protection tab and check the box that says "Enable Spam Protection" (see the red arrow in the image below). 

In the same place you are also able to choose the options when you wish the spam protection to be activated. There is also an option to immediately protect you from repeat-offenders.

I Received Email Also

Today I received an email from my family in Finland.

I did not see it at first because it had been swallowed by my spam-filter. I really should have trusted my well trained filter and let it stay there, but my curiosity got the better of me when i saw the name of the sender, alas.

Let me just say that two men in Finland can count themselves as very fortunate, because the only thing stopping me from posting the video contained in the e-mail is my consideration for the delicate olfactory senses of my highbrow readership.

Laying Down The Rules

I utterly detest spam, both in my e-mail and in SecondLife group chats. More than once I have left groups which I thought were just too disturbing due to the occurrence of spamming.

About two years ago I and three others were made moderators in the "Swedish People in SL" group by PetGirl Bergman, who once created that group.

With the title comes the responsibility to enforce the three simple rules in that group.
1. No questions about anyone's first life in the group chat.
2. No advertising of products in the group chat without prior consent from the owner or one of the moderators.
3. No spamming with notices of ongoing events. Anyone in the group is welcome to announce an event, but it is not allowed to announce the same event more than once every 30 minutes.

Not that difficult to understand for any grown up person of normal intelligence one would think, huh? Well yesterday evening three avatars were taking turns announcing the same event every 10-20 minutes to the point were it go extremely tedious and disrupting to the rest of the group.

To make matters worse one of those involved had been warned by me personally for spamming the group just a few evenings ago. On that occasion she blamed chat lag in the group. to which I answered that she had been in SecondLife for more than four and a half years and should be well aware of that chat lag sometimes occurs and how that should be handled. The natural thing to do in that situation is of course to wait until it eventually pops up in the group chat or til you get the message from the system that the message will not go through. What you should never do is to re-post the same message repeatedly if it does not turn up at once.

With the responsibility of being a group moderator come certain privileges. I can hand out warnings for breeches of the group rules and - if the the conditions of warnings are not adhered to - I can also disallow text chat from the culprit for a specified period of time or eject them from the group.

So I reminded the three avatars taking turns about the consequences of not abiding by the rules. I took special care to spell it out to the female avatar I had talked to a few evenings earlier. When the next announcement came about only 20 minutes later I shut her off from the group.

I then got an IM from her asking me questions like "Who made you God?", "Why did I shut her off because her message came 20 minutes after the previous message from one of the other two and 20 minutes was almost 30 minutes?" and "A few nights earlier there had been a lot of spamming in another group and no one had done anything about it so why was I being so strict?"


The questions were easily answered and she soon settled down and asked me for how long she would be shut off. I told her I was considering having her shut off until Sunday but that I would let her back in if she talked with the other two and gave me a promise that they would follow the rules. After discussing the matter with the other two she came back to me and told me they were all sorry and would follow the rules in future. I then allowed her back into the group chat and the altercation was finished with the sharing of Easter greetings and mutual hugs.

Otherwise yesterday was a slow and sad day.

During the semi-drama I was told that one of my best friends sister had passed away at an early age. Afterwards I also had a short conversation with a close friend who confessed to me from out of the blue that she was now in a hospice and was certain of her fast approaching death, she was however in no pain and was well taken care of. After we had hugged and I had told her repeatedly that I would always love her and remember her she logged off. Finally I was informed that a very sweet and gentle male avatar, with whom I had a good and friendly relationship without being friends, had just passed away after being seriously ill for a short time.

These proofs of the frailty of our human lives and our sometimes strange priorities about what is important made me so sad and tired that I had to log off. For the longest while I could not fall asleep.

Spam

Lately I have been receiving an abundance of spam email from Russia or Ukraine. Whenever I open my email I get three or four of these.

They all - more or less - look like this. (Snipped from my preview in Outlook)

The worst part is that most of them are supposedly coming from g-i-r-l-s who all covet my oh so hot body and wonderful personality.

I would really appreciate it if the spammers targeted me with more suitable mail.