Not very observant...

Three days ago I finally noticed something that had probably been there since...well, possibly a week earlier.

And this something should have been obvious: a fair portion of the as-yet-unbuild Linden Road had been 'flooded', effectively joining my land on both sides of the road. The west side has my ocean access, and I had (when I first acquired it) made channels of that lovely Real Water come up around the buildings I have there. The east side has the waterfall-with-stream I made from prims; it ends up in a pond that is mostly prims, but that has the trickle of Real Water at the bottom, that I was able to get by lowering the land as far as it would go.

I'd lavished a certain amount of care on all this (and had gotten a compliment from another sim resident, which was very nice to receive).

So I'd kind of like to believe this scenario: when a Linden responded to my August 20 Abuse Report about the ad-farm-extorter (which is detailed in another entry of this blog), that person saw the water-on-both-sides-of-the-road set-up, noted that these installations were owned by one Resident, and so decided to put a sort of stamp of approval on the whole thing by extending the Real Water across the Road. (By lowering that bit of land, of course.)

Of course this might not be what happened. Or it might have happened, but not for the reason I'm imagining.

It might be some....I don't know, random act of kindness?

In any case, I was quite happy when I saw it. I mean, I know I can't count on it staying that way---when they finally get around to building the Linden Road in that sim, they certainly won't leave the road flooded that way.

But for now it looks cool---the people who designed the water in Second Life have a lot to be proud of, as it is gorgeous---and I really enjoy it. (Plus, surprises are fun!)

Promote?

By coincidence, the well-known Second Life blog New World Notes was soliciting people's news about their own blogs, about a month after I started this one.

So I went ahead and submitted the information.

But other than that, I haven't promoted this. I believe that there's a place to do it on the SL Forum, and maybe elsewhere on the official SL site.

I don't know---when I got into SL and realized I really wanted to commit to it, I thought I'd be getting a shop up and running as soon as I could---and that when that day arrived, would be the time to promote the blog, which would, in turn, promote the shop.

But I got distracted by other interests---the trading in land, the creation of graphics, the Forums themselves.....

I do still plan to open a shop----as the weeks go by I do end up creating more Objects that would be suitable for sale. I'm just not creating them quickly enough to fill a shop, since the time I have to devote to SL is limited, and I do have all these other interests.

Also, when I get around to promoting the blog, I'd like it to be a little more systematically filled with information useful to newbies (a major impetus for my doing the blogging, at all).

Well, time will keep on slipping past---so I'd better prioritize this.....

As Good As Their Word

The Linden Lab people, of course: They responded to complaints about falling land prices by saying they'd restrict the supply, and so they have.

It's interesting to watch auction parcels that were selling for around L$5/m---water ones---now going for twice that. (There are still a number of landlocked parcels-surrounded-by-floating-ads that are receiving no bids at all. That won't change unless that's ALL that's on offer, probably....)

It's interesting to watch. Especially for economics students, one would think: if professors aren't adding Second Life to their syllabi, they are missing a great teaching tool.

Skybox Spy

...I don't set out to be a Skybox Spy.

But as I've posted here, I'm very irritated with the all-too-frequent experience of calling up a sim's name on the Map, then using the Teleport button--and ending up trapped inside a shop.

And the shop isn't always in the center of the sim, either, which has raised my suspicions that the Fix is In in some way (either the shop owner has paid a fee to have their shop be the default teleport spot for the sim, or the shop owner is a friend of a Linden).

I could very well be wrong about that---but it happens so often that I can't help wondering.

I should say that the reason I might be typing a sim's name into the World Map and teleporting, is the very minor trading in land that I've been using to pay my tier. I'm not just spying around for the sake of it....

...But I end UP spying when I do what I've been doing, so as to avoid the Trapped Inside Shop factor: I double-click at random at some other place (other than the center) of the sim. If there's water in the sim, generally I choose that to double-click on.

And a surprising percentage of the time, I've been landing in skyboxes.

I don't look around, even if there's no one there. Am I too much of a Goody Two-Shoes for words? Very possibly. But the fact is, I don't feel comfortable looking around, so I don't.

But in spite of the good karma this disinclination to snoop should be buying me, frequently I have just as much trouble getting out of the skybox as I'd have getting out of a shop.

(Okay, it IS funny......)

Too Much Message-Boarding

I guess I should think about why I've wanted to be on the Forums a lot in the past few days, and deal with it. I mean, I was brought there by my search for information on various practical topics. (And I'm grateful for the help I've gotten.)

But yesterday I got into a thread about depictions of 'sexual age-play'---the OP was in favor. And several others (well, ostensibly they are several others---they could all be the same person, using alt accounts!) have chimed in to support this position.

Personally I think LL did the only right thing, in banning it. It was bad for business, as well as being ethically very, very icky (yes, even if everyone involved is an adult).

So the thread's point is actually moot. The OP is just scolding LL for having taken the action they did.

Anyway, the better path would probably have been to just read and not post, since getting into a position of disagreement with some posters was inevitable.

But, what the heck. I do hold the opinion that this practice is morally unattractive, and might as well say so. (Those who support the practice would hardly be shocked at learning that some people disagree with them!)

Another Danger of Being Away

I wasn't away all that long--about 2 1/2 days, this last time. But someone had bought one of my parcels (Great!) but had had trouble with an object left on it, and had IMed me, and didn't get a response for over 2 days (NOT Great).

I'm still somewhat mystified about that, as in the past, when people have bought parcels from me---even parcels in which I've clicked the Include Objects in Sale option---all the objects have come back to my Inventory. (I need to find out: what's the point of that option, if the objects just come back automatically anyway?)

Anyway, in this one particular case---one of the VERY few periods since I registered with Second Life that I've gone more than 24 hours without logging in---the person was plagued with a wave that they couldn't edit (to make Phantom) or remove. So they'd both IM'ed me and sent me a notecard, frustrated, no doubt, with my non-response.

I'm embarrassed about that, but, luckily, the person was nice about it when I explained (and of course, removed the offending wave).

This is another item for the list of Things I Want To Find Out About: why was this one particular object different from all other objects I've left on parcels up for sale?

As far as guaranteeing I'll never again be gone for as much as 2 1/2 days---no, I can't do that. So another thing I should find out is: is there a way to leave an "Away For A Few Days" message? Maybe on my profile, some way?

Gotta check on that.

Results!

I had several days more away from home--so no blogging, and no Second Life.

But on my return I was happy to see that the Group-owned 16m parcel's extortionist sign had been taken down.

I believe this all happened when I had only very limited time on the computer; the last I'd mentioned was that the parcel in back of my pond (which had been four 1024's originally, I think) had been cut up into 512s-minus-16m's. And these are not along a road (though a road was nearby).

I still think I shouldn't have sent that first Abuse Report, because the giant green neon sign wasn't up, yet, on the L$62/m parcel.

But when I next came inworld, there it was!

And the obvious nature of the extortion attempt was that the same group owns several of the 16m parcels made from the 4096m-or-so original parcel----but ONLY the one that directly backs on my build had the thirty-foot-plus-tall neon-green For Sale sign on it.

So apparently the Linden who looked at my second Abuse Report (with snapshot of the sign) agreed that the person was not, er, conducting legitmate business.

But, you know, there must be quite a number of people who spend their entire time in SL doing this: looking for not-too-expensive parcels next door to parcels with builds that would be impacted by Giant Neon Green Signs; buying and carving up those parcels; changing the per-meter price from L$5/m to L$60/m or L$80/m or such, and then sitting back and collecting the nuisance-payments.

After all, a lot of parcel owners probably DO just pay the five bucks (US) or so, just to have it over and done with.

And since the ad farmer paid only the equivalent of about a quarter-dollar (US) or so for that parcel, it could add up.

Really nasty. How do they justify it, in their own minds? I mean, if someone has a computer and high-speed Internet connection---and how could they be in Second Life otherwise?---then they're not Starving, or Needing to Feed Their Starving Children. So THAT can't be the justification.

I just can't imagine the mindset that would find this sort of thing to be fun. But clearly such minds ARE present in SL.

Anyway, the whole ad-farm phenomenon has been hashed out ad (!) nauseum wherever SL residents gather to post, but I did find it interesting both that the ad-farm-extortion attempts do continue to take place, and that Linden Lab is responding to reports about it. And I'm very grateful for the latter.

Not Yet Abuse

Well, I do think now that I ought not to have filed that Abuse Report, just because someone had cut out 16m parcels and priced them at about L$62/square meter.

When I'd done price checks of Mainland parcels in the past, the highest-priced 16m parcels I'd seen had been around $50/m. But just last night, while flying around looking at parcels to be auctioned, I'd seen a 16m in another sim that was above $75/m. So maybe prices have gone up that much since I last checked.

However, if a glowing spinning neon ad-block goes into any of those spaces (or flashing lights or persistent sound-effects, or anything else calculated to annoy)----then it will be time to Report Abuse.

(And, I think, apologize for having jumped the gun, yesterday.)

How Quickly Addiction Takes Hold; Ad Farm

I had to be away from computers (except for a couple of minutes here and there) for two days, and naturally had no Second Life. I certainly wasn't thinking about it every moment, but I did miss it: it's become a relaxing part of my daily routine that I really enjoy.

On my return I had the little 'up' that comes from seeing another piece of property has sold---that was nice.

I'm still trying to find my way with the wisdom--or lack of same--of having gone up to full-sim tier level. It could all pay off (in the sense of financing my tier, even if not of making an actual profit). But clearly I have a lot to learn.

I did file my first Abuse Report---some property adjoining mine has been sold yet again, this time being carved up into some 16m parcels and some slightly larger others. The 16m parcels are set at about L$62/square meter. Clearly that would be Ad Farm Exploitation if big ol' revolving neon signs are put up...so I may have jumped the gun in reporting, since they weren't up when I made the report. (I guess I was just shocked.)

I did make clear that it's an exploitative price, but that no nuisance is yet in place (though it may be by the time I go back in---the person might just have subdivided the land and just not yet had time to put up any nuisance objects. Well, we shall see.)

Anyway, it's all interesting. The human drive to profit can take some rather unethical forms, without a doubt.

Answers from the Forum

I ventured into the Second Life Forum to ask about the persistent Group Invite I mentioned yesterday, and got some good information in return.

I know from experience that getting established on a message board can take a while, so I was grateful to the people who responded. There's always that tendency to 'wait and see' with a board noob. (For that reason, the odds are that for a while I'll be more likely to get responses to explicit requests for information, than to observations or general remarks. That's just human nature, in its Internet manifestation, anyway. ^_^ )

I'm continuing to be interested in the selling of land. Yesterday I sold a good amount. But it's an unpredictable biz.

(I would benefit from reading the SL Forum threads on the topic---I've read a fair number, but not recently.)

What is LL Getting for This??

In the past week or so, whenever my avatar touches the land (or air over) the Linden Road, I get a VERY persistent Group Invite. It keeps coming back, after I click Decline, time after time after time.

I'm just curious what people---those hoping to get residents to join their groups---pay for this service.

It's REALLY annoying. Even if the group were one I'd ordinarily WANT to join, I would decline, to stand up for the principle of NOT rewarding annoying ads.

!!!!!!

Rational or rationalization? (HINT TO MARKETING!)

So I've gradually been moving up in the tier I pay to Linden Lab. And this weekend I moved up to the full-sim price, $195.

I was first attracted by the prospect of being able to create things in a 3D environment. And that remains very compelling for me.

But to create some of the things I wanted-buildings and waterfalls-with-stream-and-pond, for instance---I needed more space than the 512m parcel I'd originally bought.

So I went up in tier (eliminating other monthly recreational expenses to finance the expansion).

Then I decided I might as will try to finance my expenses with the sale of land, as that's a faster return than I could expect by selling objects I'd made. Not that I've given up on making objects-I continue with that, as well as with the construction of my shop. Eventually, when I've purchased classified ads, started promoting this blog (which takes time and effort), created a website to promote the shop, etc.----then I might start to actually sell objects.

But in the meantime: land.

The title of this blog post is not facetious: I think that the story outlined in this post COULD be typical of thousands of prospective new Second Life residents, IF SL would deign to advertise so as to attract people who (like me) would find the whole SL experience compelling in a way that translates into the--you know--transfer of Lots of Money to LL. As has been the case for me.

More anon.

Treacherous Cylinders

Well, not in a 'consciousness' sense. But in a 'when you reverse them you can't go by the numbers' sense.

I've taken to heart the advice that when you build items containing several prims, and you want them to fit together nicely, you need to look at the Position numbers to make them sync, and the Size and Rotation numbers to make things symmetrical.

And that's worked pretty well, so far.

But in the process of making a Cyliner, hollowing it, and Path Cutting it to make a nice little scoop shape.....and then Hold-Shifting to copy it, and then turning the new one around so that they make a symmetrical facing pair---the numbers fall apart to some extent. Because the Center of the rotated piece doesn't match the Center of the original piece.

So in making a nice bench, with these facing Cylinder-parts as the sides/legs, I've had to rely on my eyesight. Which is fine. But, as is notorious, perspective doesn't work identically in Second Life as in First Life.

Oh well. It's frustrating....but also fun to futz around with it all....

The Attention Required of Vendors

I tried to buy a tree last night from an interesting-looking shop. At first there was no response at all; I walked around and looked at other items. When I came back and tried to buy another tree, I got one message from the new attempt that I didn't have enough Lindens (and believe me, I had plenty), and another message, evidently from the first attempt, that my purchase attempt had gone "stale".

So I left, and bought the trees from someone else's shop.

Now, it may sound as though I'm in a snit. Actually, I'm just busy. I didn't have the spare time to figure out who to IM and write and IM to that person and wait for an answer.

So there was really no emotion involved here. And that's what people who want to sell things need to understand: if your shop isn't set up correctly, or if something goes wrong and you don't check on it and fix it, you will lose sales.

Practically speaking, I probably won't go back to that shop again. And again, that's not because I'm in a snit....it's because my time inworld is short. So I'm much more likely to go back to places in which I've successfully transacted the business I came in to conduct.

All pretty basic Business 101 stuff. But what I'm curious about is, how much do problems such as the ones I describe depend on the vaguaries of Second Life? To what extent can these problems be attributed to factors over which shop owners have no control?

(My interest isn't just academic: I do hope to get a shop of my own up and running, as soon as I've created more items to sell. I'm making great strides in creating the shop itself....oooooo, it's great-looking! All false modesty aside..... ^_^)

Being a Ghostly Cloud

When I first decided to look into Second Life, my computer was close to 4 years old---and I hadn't bought it with a sterling graphics card in mind, as my main interests at the time were being able to make decent Word and Excel documents and Power Points, and to be able to enjoy my message boards. Any games I played were undemanding of graphics power.

So when I did look into SL and saw how compelling it could be for me, I took advantage of five years of acquired credit card Rewards points, and got a new computer. Because it was clear that if I tried to enjoy Second Life with my current computer, I'd spend most of my time with a frozen avatar.

And having a quite recent computer, I haven't had to deal with the performance problems with Second Life that I read about all the time in the Forums and various blogs.

Of course I've sympathized with the people experiencing these problems (especially having run into the problems myself). And I could see that the prevailing philosophy of the Lindens---to concentrate on serving those with brand-new computers---would bite me in the arse eventually, as I'm certainly not in a position to buy the latest computer every 6 months.

So I figured I'd have those 6 months of excellent performance, and then have to deal with the frustrations, later. And so it has gone for 3 months or so. No lag, no freezing. A few crashes here and there, but, it would seem, not due to my own hardware.

So, last night: the night of several thousand Ghostly Clouds.

For anyone who didn't try to log in last night, or who was unaffected: at log in there was a message about 'downloading your clothes'. Then you appeared as a white cloud---a single mass when standing, a series of cloudy globes when flying. And you couldn't teleport.

Well, correction: you COULD teleport to certain water sims. But not to all.

I had a pressing reason to want to teleport to one of my properties, as there was another property I wanted to bid on in the next morning's (today's) auction, and I wanted to lower the prices of the parcels. But I couldn't do it. I persisted for quite a while, though I was three continents away from the location. I found I could get from Continent 1 to Continent 2 by teleporting to a water sim. But then I couldn't manage to get to Continent 3, not by any water sim (and I tried all those I could see from the World Map). And everytime I tried to either fly or walk out of the sim I was in, I got snapped back.

So I finally gave up.

Now, I don't think this was a case of my computer being Just That Bit Too Old. I could be wrong, though----maybe it WAS a case of precisely that.

But this was a pretty widespread phenomenon. So the odds are that my computer's age was irrelevant.

It really does bring home the pertinence of the calls for the Lindens to pay more attention to Stability, though. It was an extremely frustrating night. I would think that many people who weren't yet invested in Second Life, would certainly have made the decision to never attempt to return.

Shopping, and Progress in Products

I need some of two kinds of plants I haven't been able to find in freebie boxes (and they're not in the Library part of my Inventory, of course). To finish off my semi-Ancient-Egyptian shop installation on the east side of the Linden road, I need some papyrus and some Italian (or Mediterranean) cypress trees.

The papyrus I got last night, at one of the Tin Teddy islands. Looks pretty good, and is copyable, so I can fill it in all along my little Nile.

The cypress, I'm still searching for. There are a lot more Search hits for 'cypress' of the Southeastern United States variety, then of the tall narrow Mediterranean variety. One with a good appearance and good price (again, at Tin Teddy) is darker than I prefer, and is un-modifiable. So I'll keep looking.

In my searches I happened on an Old Continent plant-and-tree shop that really brought home how much progress has been made in building, since Second Life began. At least, I'm assuming that this shop and its products were created some years back. Anyway, the trees and plants were all of the two-flat-prims-crossed variety, and the photo-textures that had been put on each of the two crossed prims were out-of-scale or out-of-focus or both. Foolishly, I think, the owner had put a Linden Library dogwood in the middle of all this. It really pointed up how bad the merchandise for sale looked, in comparison with the quality of work in plants-and-trees that's now the standard.

Onward and upward!

Particles and Feuds

Logging in, today, I was possessed by an imperative to put some particles in my waterfall.

I looked at all the stuff I'd picked up as freebies. There was a package from 'Andrew Linden' which looks very valuable, but the problem I ran into today is that I couldn't see how to make it loop. I thought about trying to mash up the Linden script with the script I'd cobble together for my fountain sounds (which is still not satisfactory, but it DOES loop).

But I ended up going with one of three other freebie scripts that were already set up to loop. One was giant red spheres floating off, one was medium yellow spheres going 'pop', and one was medium gray spheres floating off. I messed with the last one to turn the medium spheres into teensy particles, and the result wasn't too bad. It kinda works for the waterfall, but it doesn't work at all for my fountains. So I need to keep working on it. (As well as on the fountain sound loop.)

So after an hour or so of particle experiments, I decided to go look at some of the properties to be auctioned tomorrow and the next day. Some, I would suspect, won't sell even at L$3 per square meter (which seems to be the Linden minimum---and that's only for the US dollar auctions).

(I wonder if at some point, if the backlog of failed-auction parcels get too large, will they back off to L$2 per square meter?)

There was one large parcel I liked, but buying it would mean moving up that last tier notch. And that doesn't feel smart, at the moment.

Anyway, the whole process is fun for me. I like flying over Second Life sims in general---it's always interesting to see what choices people have made for their land. And I like watching for trends in sales.

One anomalous auction today has me wondering---was the unusually high price (over L$30 per square meter) the result of Neighbor-desperate-to-block-Neighbor? I've no way of knowing, but the land (though fairly nice) didn't, alone, justify that price.

Yippee!!! Sales of Land!!!

Two parcels sold while I was out of town...a great feeling. I'm cautiously optimistic that I might Make Tier this month. (The parcels I still have up for sale are nice genuine-land-and-genuine-Linden-water ones.)

When I saw my Linden account amount, I was trying to figure out what particular parcels had sold from the amount...I teleported to the first of the sims, and materialized inside someone's new house! Luckily it was just a house up for rent--a speculator had bought the parcel. Could have been embarrassing, though! (Needless to say, I changed my teleport-to Landmark to another place. I don't like relying on the Teleport to Sim option, as too often I end up inside a shop that I can't easily get out of....I still want to learn whether this is something people pay for [it's often NOT the geographic center of the sim]).

I noticed that one of the Auction parcels for tomorrow was up to over L$30 per square meter, already, this afternoon...who knows how high it may go. I'm going to go see what all the fuss is about when I log in tonight. (Surely it's not just a question of being a beach-with-ocean parcel....there must be some other compelling features for the price to go so high....)