In the infamous Heise Forums there is a humorous post about the advantages (and disadvantages) of 1st Life! The author praises the perfect framerate, that dates feel much more realistic and so on. A very funny read, it is available here, in German only. For a rough translation in English just try this.
I wish you a Happy New Year and that your wishes for 2007 do come true!
Personally, my own start in 2007 was very sad. A very good friend and neighbor of mine, 86 years old, died at 0:30 am in hospital today. He was there for a little bit more than one week, he went into hospital before christmas and the last time I saw him was at Thursday. He was sleeping and not well, so I just took a look into his room and went away quietly.
He would have had his 60th marriage anniversary in about one more month. If you take a look at this, most emotions and stuff in SL seem so hollow compared to that.
A funny joke found in the profile of Top Tank:
How many Linden Lab employees does it take to change a light bulb?
[scroll down]
Answer: Please, everyone, be patient, we’re doing the best we can, it’s not fun for us either, check the blog for updates, and in the mean time, here’s our Torley with „10 Super Fun Things To Do in the Dark!“
Sadly there’s much truth in it.
Many people think that a game like Second Life is better than real life. They are wrong and right at the same time.
They are right, because you just can go away if someone bothers you.
But they are also wrong, because people are people and ever the same. And in SL many people are on a even more rude behaviour than in RL because of the (false) anonymity an avatar gives you. Many are trying to do things in SL, which they would never do in RL. This is part of the charms of the game and of course not bad, but there always some people who cross the line, then. And this is bad.
Well, since SL was down over half the day (or even more…) and there was no possibility to login, what’s the addicts second best choice? Right: reading some posts in the blogosphere about Second Life and thinking about it.
So I here now present in no particular order my todays choice of articles about SL and stuff:
Linden Lab will be sold to Google, who will ALSO be unable to get search to work properly.
And of course the obligatory link of the day about the downtime of SL: „Second Life vorübergehend geschlossen“, courtesy of Heise Newsticker (German). Second Life is called a „internet playground“ in the article – well, this for sure fits!
About the experiences of the Second Life avatar named Bartholomew Gallacher.
All views and opinions are strictly on my own, I am not affiliated in any way with companies I may mention until noted otherwise.
And here’s a picture of my avatar:
Well, another downtime of the server, again. What should have been only a small downtime turns out to be a major downtime – again. They are updating the central storage hardware – oh well. Since more and more business keeps getting into SL and is made in SL it is for sure time that LL thinks about some efforts to achieve a better availibility, since these downtimes lately simply said tend to piss off many residents.
Greetings, traveler! I am your humble host on this side, please let me introduce myself, my name is Bartholomew Gallacher.
I am a male avatar in the game called Second Life and exploring this player made universe day by day. I was born on the 25th of September in 2006, although I really began to play in the middle of November. Since then I’ve been online more or less from day to day, explored many different locations, found some favorite spots for myself and made some wonderful friends through my journeys. They know who they are, a big thanks for your wonderful friendship!
Why this blog? Because I want to say something about this game in the WWW and it is always nice to have some feedback, more or less. I don’t know who is going to read this blog, perhaps many, perhaps only some, but that doesn’t matter to me really. This blog is going to be my main diary about my journeys, adventures and experiences in SL.
Since I, the player behind the avatar, live in Europe (GMT+1), but the majority of the SL player originates from North America, it is not always easy to get to know some people from the other continents or keep in touch. Well, at least I try and somehow I managed to be able to keep in touch with some, though. To keep things simple, I’ve enabled PST (which in fact is also SLT) for all blog entries and comments. Just bear in your mind, when you see very strange times for your taste, that 8 hours are quite a difference!
What I am surely not going to do in this blog is to post anything about my real life. I am a firm believer that SL is not RL and RL should not be mixed quickly or at all with SL – in most cases it only brings trouble to you. I may reveal parts about my real life to some people I trust, but surely not on a blog, since I believe that this is very important to keep my privacy intact. This also means no RL pics of me in the game or this blog. Sorry.
I’ve been a well known wizard in a big MUD for about five years and have enough knowledge and experience to judge on this and act accordingly. Believe me, it is very important to keep your privacy intact and not to treat this lightly. Just remember, SL is not only a game, for many it also means a very hard business, and if you want to hire in a real life company somewhere your game play could backfire on yourself! This also means, that I dislike many so called Web 2.0 sites, since many people tend to disclose too much about their real life there, too. For further reading about the pitfalls of disclosing too much about your RL I recommend the article „Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever.“
I am also in the lucky position to have my own root server somewhere else, but using it would also reveal too much about my real life persona, so it is now wordpress.com for me, which is a very good free hoster of blogs!
Having said this, what do I do mostly in SL? I hang out with my friends, play a part time greeter for Intimate Moments, like to dance in Phat Cat’s or explore new locations. I still don’t own land or have a place of my own, since I simply have no need for this at the moment. Period.
I am also a firm believer in good conversation, manners and intelligence in SL. There is no fun for me in running around naked everywhere or use speech such as „lol“, „rofl“, „wanna fuck“, „i like u“ and so on. You have the words, you have a keyboard, so better type it in accordingly. It may be a little more work, but it is worth it! Believe me. And if you are not a fast typer, well, better take some typing lessons. It is also much better to talk English in populated places, since it is the lingua franca in SL and rude if other people cannot understand your native tongue.
So, welcome, and I hope you are going to have fun in reading about my experiences!
Bartholomew Gallacher