Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

I woke up today with this song randomly playing in my head. Kids TV in the 90s was weird!

I LIKE THE BIG BUTTS, AND i CAN NOT LIE!

There's definitely a pattern here. I recently saw a situation in the Abuse forum, where somebody was being followed, and the follower would stay close to her. They weren't intruding on private parcels like this, but I think following at chat distance is a lot more creepy. I'm thinking this has to be a tracker system. The poster from the abuse thread was probably dealing with a bot that wanted to track her chat, or listen to her attachments speak to each other on various channels. Aside from that... I have no idea how an avatar gets past ban lines like that. I know how prims do, but not avatars. That's strange. If it was me, I would hit the bot with a media stream, grab their IP, and headers, and maybe start to investigate deeper from there. You probably don't want to get into that kind of thing, though. Even if you know how all that works, technically, ever since Red Zone, that kind of activity is cutting very close to a TOS violation, if you do it wrong. You could lose your account, if you don't know exactly what you are doing, and where the lines that you must not cross are. You should AR for harassment and let the Lindens handle it. Make sure to mention the ban line intrusion.

You're different, I'm different... we're all different, here...

After discovering Obscurist Vinyl the other day, I ended up down a rabbit hole where I started playing with a new music generation AI named Udio. Here is one I just made about SL, called Neon Alter Egos. The prompt was "SecondLife is full of weirdos." Then I ran a few generations, extended the output I liked, and decided I like this generation best. Dune, the Broadway Musical is my favorite Udio tune, so far. Generating audio is slower than generating images, because the image has immediate effect on you. This is what Baudrillard was talking about when he wrote about the violence of the image. The image does what it wants to us, immediately, with or without our permission. It might take a little while to check an image for errors, or nitpick details, but generally, you can pick out a bad image in an instant. With a song, you have to listen to the whole thing to judge it. I don't really know if a note is wrong until I hear the note that comes after it. So evaluating music just takes more time. Here is a YouTube video that goes into more detail about what Udio is, and what people are doing with it. Will I Am is involved. Then it goes into other AI news, but the first story is Udio.

That might be a way to hide what song is played, just enough to avoid getting DMCAed by a record label. The track name is legible to listeners, but bots scanning for everybody playing songs from the Universal Music catalogue, for example... those bots will miss it. A track name like that might even poison some SQL implementations on a bot like that, for all I know. I don't really know SQL very well, but I can see how those slashes and stuff might translate into something like drop table, maybe? That's probably a stretch.

It's on your PERMANENT RECORD! Your permanent record is larger than you think. A few months ago, I ran across an old BBS I used to dial into, in middle school, in the early 90s, before the WWW. They still had posts from when I was in middle school! I was a weird kid. So I checked newsgroups. My posts are still there, too! AOL Towns and Myspace are totally wiped, thank god... although I suspect the NSA logged all that stuff.

Flat gridders drive me crazy. The grid is clearly round, and the sun and moon rotate round it. Just look at how the sun, moon, and stars move. It's obvious that we live in a spherical grid, and the universe is geocentric. If the grid was flat, the sun and moon would behave differently, and if it was a heliocentric universe, the stars wouldn't be so static. One day we will find a more economical, western route, from Bellisseria, to Zindra.

I just discovered a guy who makes AI generated music, under the name Obscurest Vinyl. It's like he fed an algorithm lots of dirty blues, and ended up with songs like "I glued my balls to my butthole again." Then he asked it for an 80s pop song and it spat out "It's Time to take a ***** on the company dime." He has a subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscurestVinyl/ Here's one example of his work:

No, that was open sim. This was around the same time, but it was a different thing. I forget the acronym, but I remember it was a DHS contract to basically buy or license the actual SL server code from LL. Not the OS version, but the honest to goodness, LL written code. I was an academic in SL, at the time. This was shortly after they got rid of the academic discount, which destroyed the academic sector in SL (I don't think that's a controversial statement, at all). At the time, I was looking for other ways to maybe turn a profit, working with institutions in SL. I had friends who did military contract work, many of them simulating first responder type things, and I remember they told me most of them lost all their government work, after DHS licensed the server code from LL. I never was able to find government work, so I assumed what they told me was true. I can't find blog posts about it right now, but I remember it was reported on. Maybe it happened around 2009/2010? My memory is hazy.

I recently discovered that the Internet Archive has 31 of the 35 Carry On series of films. If you aren't familiar with it: Carry On is a british spoof movie series, and it's also the largest British film series ever. Carry On has 34 films, between 1958 and 1978, and one more reboot attempt in 1992, making 35 films, total. For comparison, James Bond has 27 films. The MCU comes closer, with 33 films. My point is, it's a massive series. Most Americans seem to have never heard of it, but it's hilarious. Each film takes a topic and lampoons it. The first film does the military, then teachers, spy movies, horror movies, slice of life, and... it's just fun. It's easy to see how it helped inspire comedians like Monty Python. IMHO, the series takes 4 or 5 films to find it's voice. Until then, it's a bit dry, for my American sensibilities. Fun series to marathon, though!

They have done it many times, in many ways. First: You go to a sandbox where nobody else is, and do your thing by yourself. Second: You buy some land in SL, and make it private, and do your thing by yourself. Third: You run Open Sim on your local machine, or on some web hosting, and do your thing, by yourself. Fourth: You are in the military, and you work with whatever DHS department ended up with the SL server code, after Mark Kingdon licensed it to them. You can probably run it locally, but you're DHS, so you probably have servers to run it on if you want. This is probably a version that the military hacked up, so it may not be SL any more. It might be SL, though! I'm not cleared to know. You probably aren't, either. (Side note: This move by Kingdon killed off most military contracting in SL, shortly after he killed off the academic sector, and then he did more very bad things... but that's a long story for another time. Kingdon was horrible).

Really? I never really talked to people about it, I guess. I always assumed that people bend race as much as they bend gender. For a long time people thought my avatar was indian, because I was trying to look mid-40s, and picked a skin tone that went with my face wrinkles, which people thought was indian. I'm very white (2nd generation Irish American). I have worn a black avatar before. I can change race like changing jackets. I don't change it that much, but sometimes I do, when I'm in the mood. Nobody ever asked what my RL race is, so I assumed they don't care. I think the only time I ran into racism was years ago, when I made a black female alt, and spent a few months in virtual mecca, studying islam with muslim scholars from all over the world, just to see what it's like to study something like that from a different perspective. Aside from some inappropriate flirting, many people from muslim countries would say things like, "Why do you wear such a dark skin? You could be so pretty!" It wasn't people dropping n-bombs, but they threw some shade. I mean, I don't really know, because I'm white, IRL, but taking a bit of shade like that seems pretty mild, compared to what black people put up with in RL. I get that much shade just for being fat in RL. I think people are just *****ty to everybody, on a certain level. Anyway... I'm not trying to start a holy war here, but I will say that I'm still an atheist, after studying the quaran like that.

It is my understanding that you can't share IMs inside SL, because that would be against the SL TOS. The portion of the TOS in question has nothing to do with the DMCA. The SL TOS also does not govern what you do on the internet, outside of SL. That means you can publish chat logs on pastebin, or reddit, or discord, without violating TOS. Linking somebody to chat logs inside SL is a TOS violation, because that would be sharing logs in SL. LL has jurisdiction over what you do inside SL, but not what you do outside SL.

I made a change.org petition, to induct Pete Rose into the Sports Gambling Hall of Fame. https://www.change.org/p/induct-pete-rose-into-the-sports-gambling-hall-of-fame?source_location=psf_petitions

I think all the Lindens I know about IRL are white. I know quite a few female lindens, and I think somebody once told me that Torley was non-neurotypical. I can guess that LL probably has more GLBT+ representation than many companies (I'm bisexual, so my gaydar is not that sharp). I don't think I know any lindens who are black, asian, native American, hispanic, etc. As far as people who use SL? I have no idea, at all. I don't really even worry about it. Your avatar means a different thing than your RL race. Some black people use white avatars, some white people use black avatars, everybody uses furry avatars sometimes. Black humans have to deal with racism, red lining, and more police brutality. Black avatars? Not so much. We don't have a history of black avatars being enslaved by white colonizers (unless you count some raceplay kink places, but I don't count that, because it's just a story there). How you think your RL identity relates to your avatar is your business, though. I'm beyond apathetic about the RL identities of SL avatars.

I just discovered Rednex is still together, and still releasing new tunes! They're the one hit wonder who did Cotton Eye Joe. Here's the most recent song on their youtube channel. They have another new song coming out in 4 days, called Another Round.

After 4 decades of production hell, Neuromancer is going to be an Apple+ show. I really hope this will be better than what they did with Foundation. I keep checking IMDB every couple months, but so far, I haven't seen any details on who is attached to it. https://www.ign.com/articles/neuromancer-william-gibson-series-adaptation-apple-tv-plu

I think the fetish nurses should sue the Geneva conventions, for infringing on their IP!

There used to be an issue with friends not showing up like that, it was really bad this past summer and fall. That's been fixed for a while now, though. Since then, groups and friends not showing is always a connectivity issue. Relogging usually fixes it. If not, maybe tweak your bandwidth settings in your viewer prefs, or maybe reboot your wifi router.

I keep seeing people saying they are doing PBR stuff like this, but I know it's not rolled out yet. Are people all using PBR on the beta grid? PBR has to be active on the sim, as well as the viewer, right? Or can you PBR with just a beta viewer?

I believe there used to be a way to hide the nametag, as well as the whole avatar, but the green dot on the map would still show up. I used to have an attack HUD that had that feature on it. The attack HUD was open to the small community of users, so users of it used to figure out easter eggs and LSL tricks from it all the time. I think I figured out how the name tag was hidden once, but I've long since forgotten that bit of trivia. Might have been a bug that has since been patched. I never heard of anybody getting in trouble for simply being invisible. Maybe for doing other things while invisible... you shouldn't orbit people while invisible! But I think being invisible, in and of itself, is not a violation of TOS.

Probably a bot with a follow script. Might be a malfunctioning bot. I would block and de-render them, and forget they're there, unless I plan to do a lot of talking in main or something. Having de-rendered and blocked people around when you are talking in main can cause some confusion.

I've been playing with OBS to record video lately. It's really not that hard. Open Firestorm, then OBS, then pick Firestorm as an input. Set up an output by hitting the Settings button (bottom right corner of OBS) > Output tab on left side, and give it a recording path. Then hit apply, ok, and you are set to click record, and you're rolling! I'm pretty sure not recording the cursor is the default, but if not, it's simple to change, they didn't hide the cursor setting or anything. Just hit the cog in the sources list, then uncheck Capture Cursor. It's not a complicated program for the average SL user, IMHO, unless you are trying to livestream, but I am pretty sure SL is banned on all major livestreaming platforms, like Twitch. Might livestream to only fans or link your video to lovense, or something, IDK. It can be complicated if you do that stuff. Shooting simple video is simple, though. I can't shoot without setting up cam smoothing in my viewer. My shots are just too jerky and jumpy. I also use some cam smoothing just to navigate SL, ever since I started tinkering with it. Cam smoothing is in World > Photo and Video > Cameratools > Cam smoothing It defaults to 1.000. Try changing it to 2.000. Doesn't that just feel nicer? It does to me. That's what I use as my walking around cam smoothing setting. When I'm doing machinima, I play with it a lot, bumping it up to 5-10, sometimes 20. Bumping it up to 100 can give you a really cool crane shot or drone cam type effect, if you know what you're doing. Tip: I find it easier to cam out than cam in with smoothing at ridiculous numbers like 100. If I'm doing that, I like to set the smoothing, then cam close on the subject, and pull back from the subject, and back out the window until I get the whole building in the shot. Then, in post (using Premiere), I reverse the video for an establishing shot of the building, that flies in through the window, to land on the subject perfectly. Of course, you can't change cam smoothing on the fly easily, as far as I know, so you have to cut after that (unless you want to shoot your whole scene in reverse), so it's not a way to run a massive one shot that will impress film school professors, but it's a way to crane a good establishing shot into the subject smoothly. Takes some practice to hit that window and building, though. Cam smoothing doesn't work on pan, at all, which is annoying, at first... but you can turn that bug into a feature! Try this: Crank your cam smoothing up to 20 and cam around a bit. It's kind of hard to control, but not impossible, right? You are just drifting a lot. When you are drifting and want to stop, hold shift and pan just a teeny tiny bit. The drift instantly stops. It's like a brake on a car. You can stop the cam smoothed orbiting motion on a dime if you do it right, but it takes practice. If you are doing this with extreme cam smoothing at something like 100, sometimes the cam snaps to where it's going too fast, and you end up with a jump cut that you probably didn't intend to make. It's too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to smooth a pan, because that would be really nice to have. I've played with the camera lag setting and zoom speed and other things, but panning seems un-modifiable. Pan smoothing might make a good JIRA feature request, if JIRA still existed. I don't even know where to make feature requests now that it's gone. Someday I'll look it up.