OK. I'm back. Sort of...

... so get over with it. Not sure how long this'll last, but I plan on sharing some stuff and this seemed the best place for it. Though nobody will read it anyways, but oh well.

I was never gone in the first place. Just that I felt everything has been said, and there was no need for the blog anymore.  I still log in almost daily into SL, and do more or less what I always did. Enjoy friendships. Love. Do stuff.

A few remarkable things happened. In no particular order.

Gina has returned last year. For good, it seems (knock on wood). You know the kind of person you don't talk to for years, and then meet them again and pick the conversation up right where you left it off? Gina is such a person.

London has gone missing, and then returned - sort of - many years later. There is closure, which is more than I had hoped for.

Ivanova is missing since 9 months by now. I hope she is well. I miss her.

I moved my SL home two or three times since the last post worth of that name here on the blog. The latest version is on a lovely sim I share with Ivanova, Gina, Zippora, Llyria and others. It's a bit like a hippie commune, come to think of it.

Llyria is the most important person in my Second Life (and partly beyond) for almost 5 years now.

I am fully mesh by now - the Logo head was the last piece, complementing the Belleza body.

My two previous businesses - GREENEconcept with Ivanova and Babel Translations - are officially or factually dead. Babel has experienced a rather unexpected revival in an equally unexpected direction, which is mostly the reason for reviving the blog (no worries, it won't become a marketing platform).

That's about it, in a nutshell. If anyone reads this at all, I'd appreciate a small comment.

Bye for now.

The model railroad that is SL

Maybe December and the time around Christmas is when the children of all ages dream of model railroads. In a rather insightful post a few weeks ago, my dear and close friend Zippora compared being in SL to playing with trains:

"But wait... did I just mention "Second Life" and "model railroad" in one line of thought? Suddenly something became clear to me: SL is simply the contemporary equivalent of building model railroads! [...] We don't want to make our hands dirty any more and hide safely behind our computer instead. But the crafting virus is inevitable and we start building our little dream world there: on our screen. Instead of gypsum and glue we use prims and to make things move the electric circuits are replaced by scripts. Basically it is all the same."

Zippora is on to something here. What is definitely one of the major success factors of SL is the ability to - literally - build your own world, and collaborate in buildings. There has been social media interaction before (chatrooms, IRC), there have been 3D worlds before (Myst or any other 3D game), there has been the ability to create before (Photoshop, Blender), there have been online games/worlds before. Only SL brought it all together, brought it all in one place, provides a world that the inhabitants build themselves, and where everybody can see and share what the others did.

I know a few people working on model railroads, and usually it is a lonely task. Those railroads are not for playing - they are for being watched in awe. Often the builders are organized in clubs, but the worlds they build are their own. The world we build in SL is open to everybody. The social interaction, based around - and even inside - our own creations, makes this fascination. The comparatively crude building tools level the playing field. Everybody can build, everybody can contribute, the starting threshold is small. If you feel your creativity flow, you rez a prim and simply start. That is the magic of SL!

And that is the reason I see newer virtual worlds like Blue Mars critically. Yes, Blue Mars looks fancier, way fancier. Yes, Blue Mars is faster. But Blue Mars is not a world built by the residents. Blue Mars is a world built by an elite, and our role is to admire (and eventually pay) for it.

SL might seem crude. SL might seem full of horrible (and sometimes perceived as inappropriate) content. But it is us who build it! And if I want to go and redefine "ugly" by building an abomination of a statue, I can.

And that is freedom.

Musings on my 3rd rezday

I don't know what exactly made me sign up on that 9th of October back in 2006. I knew of Second Life before, in fact followed coverage of it loosely on BoingBoing.net - I even downloaded the client a few times but never took the final step to register. Back then a credit card was mandatory even for free accounts, and while I had a CC (not typical in my spot of the world) I was reluctant to use it.

But on that day, I made all these steps, registered my account, gave my credit card details, chose my name and logged in, stumbled my way over orientation island, talked to the parrot, made my first clumsy moves with camera control to see the back of that test-panel, lifted a stone and practised my object moving skill and finally climbed to the temple, leaped into the air, and flew into my new life.

My first months in SL were not the best. In retrospect I consider them lost time. I met the wrong people, hung out in the wrong places, and spent an incredibly silly amount of time with camping. When I look at "people my age" (read: signed up in fall 2006) many have more or less directly shaped this world for themselves. I was on the brink of leaving when I found my first real friends, people who made me stay, who are intelligent, creative and who give soul to this place. I am blessed with the ongoing friendship of some of them. Cake Kidd, Caterin Semyorka (though she is barely on anymore), lorinz Gloucester.

My Second Life got some structure when I founded Babel Translations in summer 2007. Babel posed a great and exciting challenge, Babel provided wonderful successes, Babel provided financial independence. And in the process of building Babel, new friends came. Tina Lynch and Gina Glimmer, who became a friend, a soul mate, finally in January 2008 my partner - and a while later my lover.

Real drama and artificial drama found me in 2008. My beloved Gina was forced to leave SL. A friend turned enemy over false claims - I got blackmailed and threatened in the process. But also good things happened. I found one of my closest friends and now my SL-sister Trinity Dechou, who helped me through the loss of Gina, and with who I forged a strong band of friendship. I found a new love, and while it ultimately did not last, I enjoyed the time with her very much. I renewed the friendship with London Spengler. I met one of the most amazing talents in SL - Ivanova Shostakovich - and founded GREENE concept with her. I came across Rika Watanabe's blog and when I met her in-world for the first time it "clicked" and we formed a strong friendship as well and find exceptional fun in working on projects with each other. And two other close friendships formed in 2008 - with the wonderful Quaintly Tuqiri and with the equally wonderful Zippora Zabelin.

This year - 2009 - started with a bang. Having been partnered for only a few weeks after having been together for almost 9 months, my partner broke up with me. While I was confused and also hurt at that time, it was the beginning of a new chapter in my SL. Being dragged to an event by my friend Nadine Nozaki to "get some brooding thoughts out of my mind" I discovered the Blacklist, a club which showed me the whole beauty of Second Life and the liberties to be whoever we want to be there. The Blacklist has become my favourite hangout where I can be found typically several times a week. I made friends there too, especially Lectra Forte, but also Hyang Zhao, Shye Kidd, Jo Soosung, Yoshimi Yoshikawa and many others.

In many aspects 2009 was the best year so far. I found love from unexpected and unusual sides, finally admitting the mutual feelings with London, but also - carefully and constantly surprised - finding out that I can love more than one person at once. While being with London - and actually encouraged by her - I finally allowed romantic feelings for another person who I unfortunately still can not name publicly. And finally there is Nissa Nightfire. I met Nissa the year before doing PR for my former partner when I contacted her as fashion blogger. We had occasional contact, but in 2009 the contact intensified, and we became friends. And the contact intensified more, and over the course of months, of slowly getting to know each other, we became lovers - something neither of us expected, but something that is thrilling each day anew.

By the time of posting this, there will be a party at the Blacklist to honor me. Nissa secretly planned the party, and from what I have seen during this day, she must have worked her lovely butt off with everything she arranged. As a thank you for organizing that, I spent quite some time and thought on an outfit I hope no one ever expected from me - King Peter I. of Beachwood.

I am blessed to have great friends! Blessed to have their affection, blessed to have their respect. Blessed that they opened their hearts and souls to me. Blessed to have two wonderful lovers. Blessed to have a great sister. There are so many of you not explicitely mentioned, but all of you make my life special, make my SL rich.

Thank you, thank you everybody I met over the past three years who I can call friend.

Thank you!

Gone fishing. Not. Ranting instead.

"Let's go fishing" was what Zippora said the other day, licking her Neko lips in anticipation of some tasty catch. "Sure", I replied, having done some fishing a year ago (Elusyve Jewell is to blame for that) and actually became quite hooked. For a week or so.

So I put on some, ahem, "typical" fishing gear (hats in SL suck) and teleported to the Straylight sim which has a rather nice fishing spot. I teleported Zippora in and rezzed my "(7S) Casual Fishing Rod". Zippora meanwhile paid the vendor to get her own rod.

I cast the rod, but the fish slipped away. I cast it again - no catch. I cast it for a third time, and then the rod told me it is outdated and I can't use it here and I should please update it. Right enough an update package got sent to me upon rezzing, so I sighed and rezzed the updated rod. Meanwhile Zippora waited for her delivery.

The updated rod (version 3.4) went through a rather chatty startup sequence, saying I need to contact the folks of 7Seas if I want my experience and bait parameters updated, but since I deliberately chose the casual rod and did never acquire experience or bait points, I ignored it. And tried to cast the rod. Without success. Meanwhile Zippora waited for her delivery.

A bit frustrated, I unrezzed the rod again, and rerezzed it. It went through the chatty startup sequence again, and this time I read more carefully. It claims I updated from a very old rod (uhm... hello?), and therefore I need to contact their service rep (and ONLY their service rep - never, ever the creator) to get my XP and bait settings updated. Well, I do not WANT my XP and bait settings updated, I want casual fishing! Clicking, casting, chat-commands - nothing worked. I checked the profile of the service rep, who was not online. Meanwhile Zippora waited for her delivery.

I finally read through the mass of notecards coming along with the update pack, and finally found a note saying I need to contact the service rep (and ONLY their service rep - never, ever the creator) and ask to be cleared as casual fisherman in their database, only then will my rod function. Of course the service rep was still not online. Meanwhile Zippora waited for her delivery.

Frustrated and disappointed we gave up and did a few stops of the Neko hunt instead (Peter: "OK, lets go hunting nekos instead." Zippora: "I don't like the way you say this."). We had quite some fun, and when it was time to say goodnight I remembered the rod she tried to buy and asked her if it has arrived in the meantime - which it did not.

Time spent in frustration: 30 minutes (multiplied by 2 persons)
Money spent: 100 L$ for a rod that never got delivered
Problems resolved: Zero - neither did the rod arrive, nor did the service rep get back to me so far

Well done, 7Seas!

Update: of course 3 minutes after I posted this rant, the service rep got back to me:

[2:49] 7Seas Sass: I just set up your account as starting. Since this is a free upgrade, please delete your older rod versions to avoid confusion. Your new ones (the 3.4 upgrade pack which it sounds like you have) should work now. They are copy-OK and interchangeable, so you can make backups, color variants, or whatever... they'll all know your XP and bait level. They also have a nice new auto-decline feature under the Configure menu.... Also, if you haven't been there in a while, you might want to check out http://7seasfishing.com ... lots of info there, lists of 1,500 new community-built fish you can catch, new forums too. :)