Madelaine McMasters

Hippie Bowman wrote: I have been unable to post in the morning for 2 days now. It may be a few more days more until they get everything hooked up at work! I have not forgotten all of you good people! Just a short delay! Love you all! Peace! Hiya, Hippie! Do good work! Hugs!

Perrie Juran wrote: Dillon Levenque wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: In another post, I wondered out loud to Czari whether we'd be the only generation to experience something like SL. There was nothing like it before, and there might be nothing like it after. There was certainly nothing like it before that I ever experienced. I think given the current trends there may well never be anything like it again. On the other hand, trends do change. That's what makes them so trendy, right? In any case, I am quite glad to have experienced Second Life when I did. It has been and continues to be one of the most enjoyable 'spare time' pursuits I've ever found. It is a very interesting point. I know people who run SL on a tablet but they are mainly old users who are on the road. It's definitely not as immersive. If Moore's Law gets applied to mobile devices, coupled with devices like Occulus Rift, SL could continue to grow unabated. I will say though that I find the idea of walking into my local coffee shop and seeing a bunch of people sitting there wearing goggles kind of creepy. I don't think Moore's Law will help SL. The immersive nature of SL is, I think, completely at odds with the shift to mobile. Once you get out of your home cocoon, you no longer have the ability to concentrate as you must to appreciate SL. Even ignoring mobile, console game manufacturers have noticed that people no longer dive deep into their games. As a result, 80% of the effort spent developing intricate games goes unseen. In the last article I read about this, about two years ago, attempts to make the games more engaging, so that people would stay with them for larger blocks of time, had failed completely. The draw to mobile is sucking all the oxygen out of many rooms. The better Moore's Law makes the mobile experience, the less attractive SL becomes. This is why I believe augmented reality will limit the growth of virtual reality. For most of my life, I've been tethered to my office chair to interact with the rest of the online world. That's no longer true and I'm having great fun bringing my technology out into the wild with me. I've been exchanging "Map My Ride" bicycle route summaries with the neighbor kid, who hasn't yet realized that I am indeed nefarious enough to retrace his bike route through our neighborhood in my car at 21mph, matching his average speed and making me seem like a diminutive Lady Lance Armstrong.

I'm now too allergic to have a house pet, but when I was young, we had a huge tomcat with a killer killer instinct. I learned to tuck in the tail of my bedding, as when he was indoors at night, he loved to attack my toes. Many mornings I'd step out onto the patio to find another part of some creature he'd killed. One morning the leg I found looked entirely too fancy to have been from a wild animal, so I quickly disposed of it before Mom or Dad could find it. Later that day, news of the demise of a neighbor's nasty Pekinese arrived. I said nothing.

Sony and Nintendo have watched their handheld gaming systems get trounced by smartphones, gaming consoles are losing out as well. PC sales are in decline and are predicted to be overtaken by tablets soon. Augmented reality has replaced virtual reality as the buzzword of the day. The medical community is suggesting that sitting on your derriere is as dangerous as smoking. Console game manufacturers have noted that players are no longer diving deep into the game's layers. There's too much competition from shallower games containing some social aspect. LL is aware of this, hence Rod's shifting focus to lightweight games, playable on mobile devices. In another post, I wondered out loud to Czari whether we'd be the only generation to experience something like SL. There was nothing like it before, and there might be nothing like it after.

Jo Yardley wrote: I think this is a good moment to show off some mesh stuff made with an inworld mesh builder If you can build with prims, you can make mesh. You're gonna make me eat my words, aren't ya, Jo? If the learning curve for mesh really can be flattened, LL needs to get the word out.

Jo Yardley wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Mesh is the least accessible form of content creation yet devised by LL. So much for enabling creativity. Is it? I found it pretty easy to learn how to make mesh and it has opened up a whole new way of building and being creative for me. It is. When SL started, all the building tools you needed were in-world. While those tools still exist, they are crude compared to external creation tools for sculpties and mesh. These external tools have learning curves comparable to, or steeper than, SL itself. This may be a boon to creative professionals, but it's a barrier to those with limited time and no prior creation skills. Mesh will certainly attract some people, but I wonder if it will create a creator caste system that makes SL less attractive to the unskilled, or make SL more like other virtual worlds, where the content is created by a small population of creators. This may all be unavoidable. SL isn't going to attract casual users. Those people have gone off to mobile in droves. If this is the case, admitting it wouldn't be a bad thing. Know your audience.

Rod Humble said: "Second Life is ahead of its generation, but very traditional in the fact that it enables creativity and I believe that that is the most powerful form of interactivity and entertainment." I'm not sure what's traditional about enabling creativity. Didn't Philip Rosedale claim that this enabling of creativity was what sets SL apart? "I think with mesh there is a dramatic transformation between older creations and ones that you can make with current generation tools and upload within Second Life. And if you just look side by side with the same creator of what they could make two years ago and what they can make today with mesh, it is absolutely stunning. And I am so pleased to see the results." Mesh is the least accessible form of content creation yet devised by LL. So much for enabling creativity. I agree with Perrie that Rod is trying so hard to sound upbeat that he sounds out of touch.

Jo Yardley wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: For instance, he mentions new sign ups (400,000 a month !?!?!?!) but forgets that he told us that we can't retain them. I think he doesn't forget that, he mentioned before in another interview that this is an issue and he also talks about it in the "new users" part on my blog. You'd think Rod would be trying to mininize new signups until retention improved. Concurrency continues to fall. That's 400,000 people a month who'll are less likely to return than those hearing of SL for the first time.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Ah-HA! I knew there were others out there. I spent a little time on a local BBS run by a friend of mine but after finding IRC I stayed with the occasional foray into AOL, Prodigy, and Yahoo chat rooms. I was surprised when I moved from those early systems into the wild and wooly Internet in '93. My local BBS was a hug fest because we all knew each other from computer club gatherings. I was the Belle of the Ball as one of the few women to attend, and at the tender age of 14. It's amazing how quickly you collect fathers as a young lady in the computer world. I still see a few of the silver foxes around ;-) My first encounter with asshats was on UseNet's sci.astro.amateur, where people trotted out all manner of conspiracy theories and alternative laws of physics involving large dollops of faith (Lucinda has nothing on those folks). I was married and in my 20s by then, so a bit better prepared to handle grief (and maybe deliver it?). But I also had stimulating conversations on many subjects and recall being complimented by science writer Timothy Ferris as being "lucid and poetic". I thought that an oxymoron at the time, proving that "lucid" was probably an exaggeration.

Marigold Devin wrote: Did you know you can make string telephones work around corners? I was so proud of figuring out how when I was little!

Czari Zenovka wrote: Marigold Devin wrote: And this is my first and only forums that I post to too (to too?! :matte-motes-agape::matte-motes-big-grin-wink: ) And Carole, you're right, such nasty stuff, really seriously nasty stuff, on the old forums. Even during this past year or so since you've been absent, the mods come in and remove it before it gets so bad. You got a private message from the alt of an 'enemy'? Ohhh how jolly marvellous. You genuinely rattled someone's cage - silly bugg3rs! I must be the only person who has been on forums since the mid-80's - back in the PC DOS days. I began on RP forums linked to IRC then the Everquest forums when I began playing; over the years I have posted on forums about cat-owners sharing tips, forums dedicated to certain illnesses, etc., etc. Come on - I know some of you MUD/MUSH/MOO afficionados are still out there. I think I started text chatting with my Dad in the early 80s, which was so very cool considering he was only 30 feet away. Then came dial-up BBS (the local computer club fellas helped me build a 300bps modem!), my college campus network, The Well and 15 minutes on Apple's eWorld. I got on the Internet in '93 via ISDN and honed my questionable argumentation skills on UseNet's science forums, IRC, Java chat rooms, Yahoo's finance boards, professional forums and finally here. I've neither gamed nor RP'ed, so MUD/MUSH/MOO escaped me and as a Mac user, DOS/Windows was reserved for my professional work. It's hard to remember a time I wasn't staring at a glowy screen (first green, then amber, then white and now full color!) for at least an hour a day.

VRprofessor wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I vote for not. An elderly RL professor (your profile says 25 years in academia, you fossil! ;-) ... Hey! I resemble that remark! Although I do have a couple of years before full fossilization sets in ;-) Madelaine McMasters wrote: ...who becomes an SL regular can't be all bad! Oh, it is even worse than that---I was requiring students to get SL accounts as part of a class project. I even make them try a bit of gender swapping along the way. (I suppose that I should mention that my students "made me" take them into SL.) I've been told the students found the half-semester unit a bit on the short side so I have been strongly encouraged to develop something appropriate for a full semester! The proposal is due sometime this coming fall--if approved I'll have student in world again fall of 2014. Let's hope there's still a world to be in-world in. (Oooh, take that you preposition junkies).

Jennifer Boyle wrote: <snip> For the last year or two, things have been improving, and the number of concurrent users has been gradually increasing. Tateru Nino's charts show continued decline, and that's been my anecdotal observation as well. Note in particular the historical concurrency, which covers 5+ years, and the annual concurrency which covers the last 12 months. Both are in decline.

Will you two quiet down? I'm trying to get my beauty rest...

Well, well, well, look who the cat dragged in! I've been watching the news for you, how disappointing you've not ended up in jail. My fireplace hasn't been the same since you visited. The resulting smoke damage required the sim to be taken out into the back yard, hosed down and aired in the sun. On behalf of all you insulted over the years, particularly my latex badger, I graciously accept your heartfelt and long overdue apology. Please express my sympathy to all those who experience you in RL. ;-)

VRprofessor wrote: Zenephobe wrote: If a person called VRProfessor responds, please ignore him, he is a hack. Maybe I am, maybe I am not. I vote for not. An elderly RL professor (your profile says 25 years in academia, you fossil! ;-) who becomes an SL regular can't be all bad!

Ceka Cianci wrote: right now i could never find all the huds i used to use..but it was one of my favoright things to do in sl.. the rockshop wanted me to start doing shows with them..but i just could never find the time..as much as i wanted to..but i always kept practicing and enjoying it.. there is nothing like goofing arounfd with instruments in sl..it's so much fun.. here are the huds i used to wear all the time when goofing around.. pretty much all my instruments are from OD design.. i would love to get back into it..but right now my computer ..well i just need a new one is all lol guitar & drum combo setup this was a little bit older setup withjust guitar.. Well that's just common sense on vacation.

valerie Inshan wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Happy Thursday! Peace! Stop yelling, I'm getting up! LOL! *shouts GOOD MORNING MADDY AND HIPPIE!!!* I'll get you for that!

Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Happy Thursday! Peace! Stop yelling, I'm getting up!

Yeah, I don't get Solar's "intrinsic" value argument. If you look at human history, there are examples of those for whom even human life has no intrinsic value. I'm quite happy that the vast majority of humans have conspired to create mechanisms to value and transfer goods and services efficiently. The barter system is just too damned cumbersome to get much done.

Perrie Juran wrote: are we doing road songs now? Yes we are!!!!

valerie Inshan wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: ... yawns a good morning to everybody and goes back to sleep... Dang, you look really cute when you sleep! *tickles this little tummy to wake you up* Morning hugs Maddy! Mmmm. I wish I'd taken photographs of our family dog when he was a pup. He was such a sound sleeper I could pose him anywhere. Our cat was a whole different story.

... yawns a good morning to everybody and goes back to sleep...

Perrie Juran wrote: oberon Zuta wrote: Freya Mokusei wrote: Wat. Do you have some kind of mental deficiency? No, a 'girl' is not a sex object. Print this information out and stick it to your forehead, or file under T for Totally Fuppin' Obvious. You're either a poor troll or a ridiculous example of humanity. Ok - it seems you are memeber of the Board of the mind control programm - so i ask you: If i think she is a sex subject - is this correct now? And if i remember what animations such a sex subject is able to use - is it allowed to think about that in a public area? No sex, no humanity, neither ridiculous ... <ooc> If all that you see when you look at a woman is a repository for your ejaculate don't be surprised if you get emasculated here. While I know that there are woman who describe themselves as ejaculate receptacles in SL (they use a different word that gets censored here), even they don't consider themselves 'objects.' And your use of the word 'subject' is not very flattering either. </ooc> Unless I misinterpreted (which I never, ever, ever do! ;-) Oberon was being satirical. The OP saw rubs(sp?), baths and toilets in a GENERAL rated sim and found them inappropriate. The implication here, absent explanation beyond "I did not use them", is that the OP envisions within these objects some kind of sexual capability. Oberon then extended the observation to what I think is a logical and absurd endpoint, though messing up the perspective a bit at first, then correcting it after Freya's comment. If the OP finds rugs, baths and toilets to be unsuitable for a general rated sim because of their capacity to host sexual activity, one could imagine that women, or men, could be found even less suitable. If I'm on a general sim and see a home containing bath and toilet, I think nothing of it. If I'm on a general sim and see a handsome fella or beautiful gal, my primordial wiring may light up like a Christmas tree. I certainly envision sexual capability within people far more than I do within tubs. Of course this is SL and we're accustomed to objects rather than avatars containing poses, so we view the world a bit differently, but I enjoyed Oberon's satire.

If I think I'm seeing a visual oddity caused by SL and not by personal taste, I might comment on it. If the foot color mismatch was slight I'd probably have said nothing, as I see mismatched feet just about everywhere, including on myself. But if it was "completely a different color", and if I was in a gregarious mood, I might have IM'ed saying, "You've a beautiful avatar, but I think my viewer may be mis-rendering you." followed by sending them a snapshot of the color mismatch. This delivers a heartfelt compliment (you did tell us the avatar was beautiful) and allows placement of blame on SL, which is usually at fault for something. To look good in SL requires both taste and some technical familiarity, or friends willing to help. If you get a pleasant response, indicating that the person wasn't aware of the mismatch, you could then offer some advice for better matching the color. You might just make a new friend, and who doesn't want beautiful friends? ;-)