I have no idea what Wired is thinking about how the Internet exposes us all as freaks.  I mean, just this morning I was looking at a pair of jeans with Eianna in Second Life that had both an open and closed option - I’ll let you figure that one out.  I for one have completely given up on being fully exposed for what I am, a virtual avatar in Second Life and putzing around in Cyberspace.  Hmmm, that seems to work out pretty good.

When you start to think about it, it’s a clever idea.  No, I didn’t come up with the idea.  In fact, I also have some real life “avatars” I hide behind from the marketers and other annoying people.  I have one avatar that is so old I think it could get a driver’s license soon.

It’s pretty obvious to me, that unless you essentially want to run around in cyberspace for all of eternity, you’re foolish to have anything but a modicum of your real identity publicly visible.  Someone told me, “Oh, I don’t care, I have nothing to hide.”  Well, once the information is out in the Internet, it is almost impossible to get it off.  Google might eventually forget it, but other sites never forget. 

In the mean time, Veyron is having a pretty good time being a wild and crazy woman.  “Where’s my pitchfork?”

-Veyron

Blogged with Flock

Tags: reallife, avatar, second life, cyberspace

I can’t say I didn’t expect this, but Linden Labs has mostly ignored demands for more groups.  The best they put out was some double talk about technical issues on the back end impacting performance.  Duh, like if I drive to work every day in my car, I will wear out my car eventually….

So the Jira for the feature request is unassigned.  Closing in on 1000 residents have voted for it.  And yet, not a single Linden has said boo in Jira.  Supposedly Jira is how residents are able to communicate technical issues and desires to Linden Labs.  Clearly, this is not working.  Why doesn’t Linden Labs make a blog statement on the issue?  Take 10 minutes out of their busy day and uh - communicate?

Here’s an idea.  State the facts, and have LL close the issue.  Show some cojones and pull the trigger.  Leaving it out there and letting the customers prattle on about it is just cowardly on their part.

Here’s an even better idea, how about offering more groups to the paying residents?  The ones who are now a tiny minority.  That small minority would put a tiny load on the system and Linden Labs would make more money.  Hmm, the more money would pay for more developers and hardware to do more things.  Nahhh…  That’s too easy.  Back to the head in the sand.

-Veyron

Blogged with Flock

My computing needs used to be small at home.  I use to think my lil’ ole Athlon with a Nvidia 5700LE video card was more than what I needed.  After all, I mostly used my computer for web browsing, tinkering here and there and God forbid, some work.

The Second Life came a long.  Well, the Athlon and the old Nvidia card got the heave hoe pretty quick.  Dual core Athlon 64, Nvidia 7900GS, whoohoo!  Yeah, I know.  No longer top of the line, but hey - I’m frugal, and at the time it was cost effective.

So now I find myself on the road, and having to use once again, inferior hardware for playing Second Life.  Gasp, even more inferior than before.  My laptop has a puny ATI 9000IGP video chip which is basically pathetic.  Of course this is starting to cause some laptop obsessions and a strong case of shopping-itist.  I think I’m going to get a new laptop in the next month or so - well - I HAVE to get one or I will just slit my wrists.

I’ve zero’ed in on one particular beauty, an ASUS C90.  Uh huh.  This beast has a few charming bits to it.  It uses a desktop CPU socket so you can actually upgrade the CPU.  Even put in a Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU.  It’s even got a mode to overclock the CPU.  Also the video card is replaceable.  In other words, you can upgrade the video.  It’s some standard called MXM NVidia came up with.  Right now they have an Nvidia 8600GT but there’s rumors of the latest hotness, a 8800GTX - which is what I’d really like… mmmmm…..  lol

Now, I’d prefer a bigger screen, because we all know that wider is better.  But I’d rather not lug around any more weight.  So, I think the C90 is the way to go.  I’m trying to keep my budget to about $1500.  Actually, I’d like to spend about $500, but that’s not going to cut it.

I know there much harder-core nerds out there than I.  Think it’s the right choice?

-Veyron

Blogged with Flock

One new things I’ve been playing with is Flock.  It’s the FireFox web browser but with a lot of extra bits in it.  Normally I’m not into extra shiny bits like these, but it seems that Veyron has accumulated a lot of social demands.  It has a blog editor built into it, it can log into other social web sites, like Facebook and Twitter.  It uses del.icio.us for bookmarking, and it will hookup with Flickr and Photobucket.  It basically does a lot of interesting things.  That at it seems that most of the Firefox extensions work with it.

Give it a try, you might like it.

-Veyron

Blogged with Flock

Well…  On the road!  Life made some big changes for me now.  I’m doing some serious traveling back and forth every week now.  When I get home on the weekend, I spend it mostly on things to get ready to head out again (bills, housework, laundry, etc).  I’ve also been having problems with sleep with the timezone shifts - I’m popping awake at 3:30am - and I’m not getting enough exercise anymore.  It’s time to start working out in the hotel.

I also don’t have my swanky old laptop from my last job, but my own personal crappy laptop, which really sucks for Second Life.  It gets about 1 frame per second - on a good day.  It is so painful to use, that I can hardly stand to play in Second Life.  It lacks a GPU so it’s a dog with Second Life.  Oddly, the regular client locks up the machine, but WindLight does not.  Yes, I will be replacing it in the next few weeks.  I’m having an internal argument over cheap versus powerful….

Other wierd things, I now have my own personal cell phone.  Before I always had my blackberry from work, but now I have my own thing.  It’s one of the Winderz Smarthphones.  Sort of amusing, it gives me something to play with on the airplane, and it keeps me from getting lost - which has happened several times now even with Google Maps and the GPS.

So, to use some technology for the smartphone, I started using FeedDemon for news reading from NewsGator.   It’s now free and they have a web version, windows version, mac version, and a pocket pc/smartphone version.  The cool part is they can sync up together.  So, I can read on my PC, and then, sync up and keep reading on my smartphone on the plane.

I’m getting more settled in now, I’m in my third week of this, and I hope to get at least more active on the web.  Second Life activities are going to be slow until I get this laptop replaced.

-Veyron

I’m not going to miss you….  Veyron agreed to the let the narrator make this infrequent post…  This blog post is a bit late and I’m a bit late in posting, but I have a good excuse.  I keep my Real Life and Second Life separate for a few good reasons.  One of the biggest reasons is I use it as a reality escape.  I think a lot of us do the same.  For me, I like to be on the grid and be pleasant, happy and an escape into another existence.  In reality, 2007 has been an Annis Horribilis for me.  It actually started going down hill around the the end of 2006, but really picked up a full head of steam in 2007.

It pretty much encompassed the full gamut of whatever could go wrong did go wrong.  Personal relationship problems, work political problems, family problems, financial problems, and health problems.  One driving the next driving the next in an interesting snowball of one right after the other in almost a perfect feedback loop.  It’s also been punctuated by an acute bout of “what have I done with my life and what am I going to do now?”  I will spare you the dramatic details, and in to some degree, it doesn’t matter - and I have no real interest in discussing it further.

A wise preacher once said, “If you want things to be different, you have to do something different.”  About four months ago I put those words in motion and as of today they have come to fruition.  I’m now working at a different place and a different state (in the United States).  I’m making a fresh start with a new operation that is a positive opportunity for me.  For various reasons I am not moving from where I live now, so I am going to be commuting each week to and from where I am now working and pretty much living out of a suitcase and in a hotel, five days a week.  I may decide to get a place to stay here, but I will be working here indefinitely - probably for next few years.

It’s a big change for my lifestyle, which had been much less - frantic.  I had three choices, keep on the slow sinking into the quagmire of where I was at, cut my losses and call it quits or take this opportunity.  I had seriously considered that I have had enough of the rat race and sort of “retire” from it.  How I was going to that - I have yet to figure out.

Normally, I wouldn’t talk about this at all, but the outcome is it will make a change to my Second Life, so I thought it was fair to make a post about it.  My weekends are now probably going to be more consumed with me being home, seeing my friends I missed from the week and taking care of things at home.  My weekdays might involve more Second Life, but that is yet to be seen.  My new job is going to involve a lot of responsibility.

From a technical side of things, I’m using my now ancient personal laptop on the road.  It lacks a 3D accelerator….  The regular Second Life client locks up after a while but the Windlight client seems to run, but at a glacial pace.  It’s also rather frustrating to use as it like playing Second Life in molasses, even with the graphics basically turned to bare minimums.  At some point in the next few months I’ll probably get a new laptop, but for now, Ill probably be a Second Life cripple… 

I’m looking forward to 2008 and I hope it to be an improvement over last year.  Now back to Veyron….

Okay, get me that new laptop - I need some parties to go to….

-Veyron

kiss, originally uploaded by Alex Burgess.

Wrath versus girl’s with soapy bubbles, water and a wash cloth…