Worrying News

The McMillan household was today reached by some worrying news. Read all about it at Vaneeesa Blaylock´s blog.

Friends should inform friends before undertaking dangerous art forms. Apmel is after all a recipient of The Bock McMillan Art Foundations (a part of the BMcM Corporation) lifetime achievement award, see this post.

Happy Holidays 2011

I thought I had better get this in before you all start leaving for where ever you are going for the holidays!

This year I made two picks and could not decide which I preferred, so I sent out both but only one per person. Here you can see the one you did not get. Now isn't that a good present?

Have a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa all of you and hopefully a great new amazing, fantastic, dazzling New Year also. Come back to SecondLife with a fresh new and relaxed view on us and our world!

I am going to spend Christmas Eve at my parents home together with my older sister and her husband but without any of the grandchildren or great grandchildren. I am looking forward to a nice, noise free and relaxed evening with lots of good food and drink followed by a nice walk home to sober up - if I don´t decide on a cab and can get one.

Hugs and kisses all around! And remember, be careful out there, first live is known to be dangerous.

Keira Linden, Where Are You?

Photography by CodeBastard Redgrave

I have a select few Lindens that I have always thought of as "my Lindens", the Linden Lab employees I would turn to if I ever ended up in serious troubles of some sort again in SecondLife.

The two on the top of the list were Belinda Linden and Keira Linden, both of them because of their helpful attitude when dealing with me at the time my Ars passed away. I was half-crazy and sometimes incoherent in my upset and worried state at the time, but they always remained calm, kind, considerate and supportive when helping me through my problems.

Belinda Linden was lost in the big purge that "the CEO who shall not be named, but who´s first name was M" brought about in June 2010 (30 % of the staff at Linden Lab was cut). As I was sending out my Holiday Greetings yesterday I wasn't able to find Keira in search, which set of all my alarms.

When I did a search on Google I came across her SecondLife profile which flatly said: "Former member of the Linden Support Team. Please visit https://support.secondlife.com for support assistance." This totally sucks!

If anyone who reads this knows Belinda Linden or Keira Linden and if any of them are still around in SecondLife (by some other name) or first life, would you please inform them that I would be ever so happy if they contacted me via e-mail lundamats@gmail.com.

Make sure they realize that I am not going to harass them in anyway, but that I just always want to maintain some kind of connection to people who have been good to me. Oh tell them also, even if they do not remember me I will always remember them!

Assange to be heard by UK Supreme Court

Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

guardian.co.uk informed us on Friday that the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has granted Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, permission to appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces sex crimes allegations.

The issue that the Supreme Court will decide on is "whether a prosecutor is a judicial authority".

Wouldn't it be amusing if the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, after having the opportunity to question Julian Assange (when he has finally been sent over) decides that she doesn't have enough to substantiate a prosecution on the charges made.

The hearing has been scheduled for two days beginning on February 1st, 2012,

Second Pride Meeting

I just couldn't resist posting this picture of the beautiful venue for today's board and membership meeting.

Jago´s & Eddi´s Third Anniversary Party

After the long seminar with Jessica Lyon it was great to know I had a party waiting to celebrate my friends Jago Constantine and Eddi Haskell on their third anniversary as partners in SecondLife. DJ Insyx supplied the music as a real pro.

It was a fun party with both old timers like myself. Eddi, Jago and Jordyn Carnell and a some almost noobs and all the ages in between. Oh and dogs, dogs, dogs everywhere - even a lesbian bitch dog named Betsy that kept hitting on missK all evening.

Enough talk, here are the tell-all pictures. For even more pictures visit Eddi Haskell´s Second Life Photos from Our Third Anniversary Party Today

The happy couple, Jago and Eddi

We were all relieved that mtd wore a sock on it

Yours truly and sexy missK making some moves

Avacar, Esme and Cambieul grooving

Straight Talk With Jessica Lyon

I visited the Q&A seminar with the Phoenix/Firestorm team, yesterday. It was the three most informative hours I have ever spent in SecondLife. I must say it was an eyeopener for me, mostly though what was said by the very clever program manager and spokesperson for that group of talented developers, Ms. Jessica Lyon.

Jessica has a style and manner of talking that is both knowledgeable and creates faith and comfort in those of us that are listening to her, even when we hear her talk about some techie mysteries.

To sum up the almost three hours of continuous talk is not easy, but let me give it a try.

• Linden Lab is a company that is in it for the business and to create profit for the shareholders.
• Linden Lab has committed a great deal of time, resources and money to developing mesh.
• Mesh must succeed to create a profit for the shareholders of Linden Lab. Mesh is still in it´s starting phase, things will get better.
• The third party development teams must support that goal also.
• If Linden Lab doesn't start creating profits for it´s shareholders soon, we will lose our world. SecondLife will be no more.
• Viewers that do not support mesh are in effect outdated! They will have a minimum of support and updates and will be scrapped soon. (The Lab has previously said that the viewer 1´s would be dropped by the end of this year, but they may last a little bit longer.)
• It is high time for those on Viewer 1, Viewer 2 and Phoenix of all versions to make the transition and move along to Viewer 3 or Firestorm.
• The new viewers are as easy to learn how to use as the original viewers if you give them a fair chance. Studies show that those who have used them for three days very rarely go back.
• The brilliant FUI that was introduced by Linden Lab in Viewer 3 will be introduced in Firestorm in the future also.

I hope I got it all right, but I believe that pretty much sums up the three hours with Jessica, and I could not agree more with her.

I retract my earlier opposition against mesh being introduced into SecondLife, even if I will never buy clothes that I need to adapt my shape to use (other than shoes). I also retract my opposition against Linden Labs introduction of the inworld game "Linden Realms" and focusing it´s marketing on Vampires. 

If anything brings new users to our world, we should welcome them for whatever reason they come here, hopefully they will in time see what we have been fascinated by and remain for that reason.

Anything that is good for Linden Lab in the end is good for me by keeping my world online.

Please note: For a new viewer to work as well as possible it is always important to make a fresh install. Do so by following the easy instructions here  Install a Fresh Viewer