Monday, June 24, 2013

The Redecoration Project

When Ars and I moved in at Southern Charm, just before or after New Years Day 2007/2008 (I cannot remember at the moment), we were in a hurry to get settled in before my vacation ended and the clubs in SecondLife, with whom Ars worked both as a DJ and as a manager for The Sarco Sound Group, started getting busy again after the holidays.
We rented the house and 12,000 sqm (two parcels) because we had both fallen in love with the house sitting over the beautiful waterfall. The house was a part of the deal and the landowner expressly preferred that we kept it a it was. The house is a prefab from one of the biggest suppliers of such homes in SecondLife.

Ars and I did the interior decorating of the second floor and the kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor  ourselves. When we realized that we were running out of time and would not be ablé to get the living room area ready we discussed it and decided to get the readymade package of furniture for that room from the supplier. It was an interesting moment and a new experience for me when i suddenly found myself sitting in front of my computer controlling all the prearranged furniture with my cursor. I was told by Ars not to let go before we had it in the right place because if i did we would have to arrange every individual ugly item ourselves. Luckily I made it without problems (not counting a very high pulse rate) and I believe Ars was really proud of me, for the very first time.

This arrangement was meant to be a temporary measure that we would take care of at the first convenient moment ourselves. Alas that time never came. I detested the living room furniture from the start, and I believe Ars did so too.

When I the other day realized how much I hated it I finally decided to take action. I decided what to do and considered the possible options carefully. When I had thought everything through I contacted my buddy Butch Diavolo, who is an excellent interior decorator.

We discussed the matter and he agreed to help me. We also decided that the first thing he should do was see if he could find a better house that would fit on the top of hill over the water falls. A house that I could have full rights over, as the present one is still owned by the former landlady (who has since left SecondLife) which means I am not able to change anything about it..

If he could not find a good enough house we would settle for redecorating the living room and the adjacent reading room. Butch would, with his expertise and exquisite taste, tell me what to buy and in what quantity whereafter I would rez them in the house for him to move them around. If we needed to do anything about the house itself we would find some suitable workaround ( I have been thinking of Potemkin villages a lot lately). We will cross those bridges when we come to them.

It was with great joy I set about deleting all the shitty stuff in the living room and reading room. The rooms looked much better when the furniture was gone, even if they were empty.

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.

Philip Linden Is Dead,
Long Live Philip Rosedale (Updated)

My buddy NE0 Timeless has a wonderful knack of finding interesting stuff when he is scouring the Internet.

As you may remember, I reported a while back, that Philip no longer holds a official position at Linden Lab, either in management or on the board.

Today NE0 has published the trailer for an interview with Philip Rosedale (creator of SecondLife formerly best known as the avatar Philip Linden) Free Your Mind: Philip Rosedale Interview Trailer 2013-06-21 (Second Life).

In the interview for the upcoming Burning Man Philip Rosedale appears in his new avatar.

I must say that it is a wonderful and vast improvement, I am going to name this update Philip (Linden) Rosedale 3.0.

Update You can now see the full interview at Daniel Voyager's Blog: New Philip Rosedale Interview at Burn2

The Final Day of Second Pride 2013

I am sorry for posting this so late, but yesterday was a very long and happy day!

Here are some pictures and comments from four of the last six events. I could not make it to the final events due to extreme fatigue (I was falling asleep over my keyboard). Just for the record, I am NEVER going to dance again ever, or at least not for a month...

My final opinion on this years Second Pride will most likely be published sometime during the week. Now without further ado, please enjoy!

DJ Edwin Nakin, 10 AM-noon @ Camelot


DJ Edwin is a little fairy
Julius Antonius (Joe Lycomedes) in cowboy hat

DJ Regi with host Ty, noon-2 PM @ Courtyard Area


As yet unknown  beauty
Cupric grooving
Dodo in new underwear yet again!
He informs me that he has about 30 options in those pants
As yet unknown beauty
Jamie Creely

DJ LLedge 2-4 PM @ Blue Wave Area



Lee and his hubby Weylin

Cocktails Party 4-6 PM DJ Wes @ Main Stage



Weylin and some hot bull studs
Weylin shows his moves
Yours truly, doing my thing

Bonus Trailer for Pride - #10 The Boys in the Band (1970)



Written by Matt Crowley and directed by William Friedkin. Starring: Kenneth Nelson (Michael), Peter White (Alan), Leonard Frey (Harold), Cliff Gorman (Emory), Frederick Combs (Donald), Laurence Luckinbill (Hank), Keith Prentice (Larry), Robert La Tourneaux (Cowboy) and Reuben Greene (Bernard).

To celebrate this years Second Pride I have posted a couple of movie trailers depicting the lives of some rather ordinary gay men in their search for themselves, for acceptance, for happiness and for love.

I have deliberately avoided anything that was pre-Stonewall, activist or mainly concerned with HIV/AIDS, by so doing I do not meant to say that they are not highly relevant but they just did not fit into the concerpt I had in mind. Please note that not a single one of them kill themselves from shame and guilt over being who they are, although one is killed by bigots.

I am making an exception here, after Second Pride has come to an end, and want to share with you all a filmatisation of a pre-Stonewall play (Stonewall occurred while it was being performed.)

The Boys in the Band may feel outdated (it is after all 43 years since it was first released) but is still highly relevant in so many ways to the gay community  today. The characters in the movie may also seem too stereotypical, but they still exist among us to this day.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (The more things change, the more they stay the same)

Sunday, June 23, 2013

The Best Legs of the Day - SPF Day 9

Wolf MacKenzie

Congratulations, SecondLife!


Our wonderful immersive three dimensional virtual reality SecondLife is officially 10 years old today!

I would like to take this occasion to thank Philip Linden, in first life also known as Philip Rosedale, the founding father of our world, who first envisioned something far less complicated and more militant than the spectacular, wonderful and fabulous world we inhabit today.

Besides Philip there were other brilliant and fabulous geeks and nerds, those who first understood what he was rambling about and could assist him in creating the very first version of our world and then the later generations of amazing and lovable tech geeks and nerds at Linden Lab who kept on tweaking, adjusting and adding to the original version during the first marvelous ten years.

I love all of you adorable dorks, Philip Linden, Andrew Linden, Cory Linden, Frank Linden, James Linden, Doug Linden, Eric Linden, John Linden, Tessa Linden (who kept the first generation fueled with caffeine and dealt with matters so that the geeks and nerds wouldn't have to drop their work and do it) and all the other amazingly talented geeks and nerds and other wonderful people that followed, including Belinda Linden, Keira Linden and Theresa Linden. All of the amazing Lindens, with the single exception of that awful man M Linden, the s-o-b who downsized Linden Labs dramatically and so left us hanging with loads of untreated and unsolved issues for a long time.

You all and we made it through the first ten years, my darlings, now give us ten more wonderful years!