Quote of the day
Bartholomew Gallacher”I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it…" (George Bernard Shaw)
Benjamin Duranske on Prokofy Neva and why he stopped reading his blog and communicating at all with him.
How not to do a first talk
We are all sometimes in a situation, where you want to get to now a new person on the block and try to get into a conversation with him or her. Some don’t have a big imagination and are using always more or less the same lines, which gets very boring and they’re not good, either. It’s just typical like the old line "ASL please" from IRC (Age, Sex, Language).
So, how should you not try to do a first talk? A typical talk could go like this:
- "Hi!" or "Hello!" – nothing against that.
- "Where are you from?" Well, is this Second Life or something else? At least I don’t want to share with all parts of my real life, so normally this is something you should ask later perhaps, when you know the avatar a little bit better. Rule of thumb is for me: if it’s not in the profile of the avatar, don’t ask.
- "How old are you?" Even more worse. We are in Second Life, not real life, I cannot stress that enough, and why should my or your RL age matter from the beginning to somebody else? This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
- "Are you really a male/female?" If you should really ask that one, you’ve lost it there completely. That’s the worst thing you could ask on a first chat ever.
- "Are you solo?" Well, this is ok to ask in Second Life, if someone hasn’t something like that in his/her profile. You still shouldn’t do it on first talk ever since this gives the other side just the impression you’re after a fast lay or bf/gf. It’s wrong to ask this about the real life in first talk ever. If you want to ask it, do it better after a few dates; the better way is just to read the profile of the avatar. Most avatars have a statement there somewhere if they are taken or not.
- "Wonna fuck/have some fun?" Unless you’re visiting a swinger club or sex club that’s also one of the dumbest things you could ask in normal places. Better just don’t do it.
- "You’re beautiful." Arg. Also a very worse pickup line. Face it: almost 99.9% of all the avatars in Second Life are beautiful. Why? Because it’s easy and because most like it to be that way! So telling someone already at the beginning that (s)he is beautiful is really ridiculous since normally all other avatars around are, too.
- "You’re a good dancer." Also arg. Have you ever, ever seen a bad dancer in Second Life? Have you? I for myself haven’t and it’s no wonder why: most dances are packed into poseballs and of course looking good. And since you’re seeing in 80% of the places always 80% the same pose balls, there are no bad dancers in Second Life. We’re always good dancers there.
- "I need 10 L$ to buy myself something." If you want money, don’t ask people for it you don’t know, get the money yourself. Either camp somewhere on a dancing pad, just buy it or do some work to get some money.
- Befriending someone on first conversation. Just don’t do it. This normally goes wrong. Many ppl tend to clear their friends list from time to time and why should I keep up with somebody I don’t really know? And if I try to befriend someone on first sight I don’t really know him.
So, since those are the things you shouldn’t do, what could you do in a first conversation? Be nice. Listen exactly to what the other avatar says. Read his profile. If there’s a topic you can talk about, too, you could start the conversation on that matter. Don’t behave like a lust ridden avatar that has "I JUST WANT A FAST FUCK" written all over his face. Try to write in good sentences. Observe, what the other avatar likes/dislikes.
Well, just the normal, typical rules how to start something, it’s not hard to act upon them.
What’s the next big thing?
Now with the integration of voice in the main client some weeks ago already I wonder what the next big thing is going to be in the development of Second Life.
I mean, using voice is not for all and it’s always bringing RL into the game and such, so whta is the next thing going to be when you take in account that LL is making most money with land sales and so on?
I guess those are things that are going to happen sooner or later or might happen:
- Integration of Windlight into the main viewer. It’s been in the internal builds for a really long time already, with Lindens always showing pictures of it.
- Integration of a newer Havok physics engine. People have been waiting for it since years, this is for sure going to happen sooner or later. If it happens, this is going to enable for example vehicles consisting of more than 31 prims.
- The migration of the LSL engine to Mono. This is going to make the running of scripts on the server much more faster than today.
- A better mesh for the avatars. The avatars as they are available today show their age compared to other game engines, so a better mesh for the avatar shape would be quite refreshing.
- Better interfaces for integration with 3rd party tools, perhaps a stable API, too.
- The possibility to backup stuff from the grid on your own server. There are some little ways to do it so far, but all are still quite hard to handle and not for the non experienced user.
- More and better localized versions of the client.
Just another idea: gender verification
Just another idea I got in my kitchen: when there’s going to be age verfication and with all the data needed to make it, why not also make voluntary gender verification in it, too?
Meaning: showing a sign in the avatar, if the player behind it is real female or not. I guess, some would really appreciate such a thing and on a voluntary base it should be possible to make it.
The Seventh Sun
I’ve found by chance a newspaper on a sim from which I haven’t heared anything before. It’s called the Seventh Sun and available as in world edition and on the homepage as well. Looks quite good to me.
Hell Fire Motorcycle Club
Motorbike clubs are not uncommon, but this one has a twist: it’s a biker club for bikers in Second Life – the Hellfire Motorcycle Club! It’s strictly virtual and just exists in SL at all.
Interesting profiles #5
I cant believe that someone would go so low as to Ban a person from their dream business. Dil and Charity built Phat Cats out of pure love and hard work. to ban these two loving people is beyond belief. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Dil and Charity you are very near and dear to me not only in SL but RL now too. I love you both and I will always be there for you.
Big drama in the making, it seems.
Voice is now mainstream
The until now beta tested voice feature of the First Look client has gone into the main client. Thus it is enabled everywhere and now mainstream.
The use of voice is always going to be optional, and estate owners can disable it, if wanted, but it’s now there and without any extra charge at all for the sim owners, as it seems.
While some couldn’t await the arrival of this feature into the main client any longer, others are still sceptical about it and/or don’t want to use it at all. Consider it working under Mac OS X and Windows, but not under Linux yet.
It’s simply not working under Linux because the proprietary binary that’s needed to connect to the servers of Vivox is still non existant, meaning what you’ve got under Linux there is an empty shell so far.
Here be GrieferWiki
Interesting what you can find under the hood if you’re following the
links of well known blogs. I have taken a look at the blog of the Patriotic Nigras and found a link to the GrieferWiki
To quote them:
Here be GrieferWiki, where griefers and trolls can amass valuable
information and scripts to aid other griefers and trolls. If you want
to add an article, put the desired article name in search, click go,
then click the edit button on the next page.
This makes the intention of the side pretty clear, hu? There are some scripts online to use for various attacks, if they work – who knows. But taking a closer look at this site, if it is growing in the future, could be a valuable source of information about how a griefer ticks and what he’s doing how.
Disclaimer: I don’t endorse or like griefers and their doings.
SL is a mess – again
Second Life is a mess today. Inventory is not loading or only loading slowly, teleports are mostly broken, money not loading, and the map is not loading, too.
They are over it for already more than 10 hours and it is still unusable. It’s a frigging mess. This is the worst case of SL problems since months. Oh, and I forgot, friends lists not loading either, instant messages not always working and so on and on… if you want to spend time in Second Life, better do it after those problems are solved. Right now it’s unusable. Period.