Madelaine McMasters

Kylie, There's so much to love about autumn. Watching mosquitoes pack their suitcases, fiery leaves against foreboding skies, and the anticipation of my house once again becoming the cozy haven that will keep me safe from the winter to follow. I've come to enjoy summer more through the years, but autumn remains my favorite season. He's a remembrance of the summer we save away this time of year...

A place for everything and everything in its place? Sam Clemens was famous for his use of colorful language in private and even more famous for conveying pretty much the same ideas in public with a completely different vocabulary. I haven't yet had the pleasure of chatting with him, but would be suprised to find he's a trillion times cooler in person than on the page. ;-)

Hi Jolene, I'm afraid your tuner card won't do the things you want. That card receives broadcast/cable TV signals from an external source (your antenna, cable or the video output of a VCR/DVD player) and digitizes them for use by your computer. The video or web content you see in-world is sent digitally to your computer and then mapped onto surfaces in your SL world view. This requires that the video or web content be on a server somewhere out on the internet that's capable of being "read" by the SL viewer. In the case of video, this requires a server that can stream video content in a format understood by the viewer (such as Quicktime). The mapping of the video source onto surfaces in SL is done by your graphics card under control control of something called OpenGL, a library of nifty graphics routines your computer uses to render the entire SL experience. Your tuner card is unlikely to be recognized by OpenGL, and even if it were, the SL viewer would not make use of it. To get video from a DVD in your possession onto a surface in your SL world view, you'd have to translate it into a suitable format, then upload it to a streaming server. YouTube is one freely available service for doing this, though you cannot upload copyrighted content and there are probably limitations on storage capacity. It's also likely that your internet connection upload speed is dramatically slower than your download speed, so uploading anything but the lowest resolution video will tax your patience. It's also possible to run a program on your PC that turns it into a streaming web server, but that will run into the same bandwidth problem you'd have trying to upload a video to a streaming service like YouTube. It's also possible that you would have to route your stream through something that creates a persistent IP address that everybody can reach. I know this sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo. There's a good reason for that... it IS a lot of mumbo-jumbo! Unfortunately it's not mumbo-jumbo that gets you where you want to go.

Thank you, C. Where would I be without you?

Dillon, it's been nearly three months since that evening. Some of the detail has faded into the mist, but it is a keeper. It was a transcendent experience. I can fall into SL much like I fall into a good book or movie or a Barbie in her little pink Dream Boat, but with a difference. Books and movies are the frozen constructions of other minds. I might sail away on one, identifying with one character and viewing the others from an adopted perspective, but I cannot man the tiller. Barbie's boat goes where I alone command it, and nowhere else. In SL, we can all grab the tiller and sometimes, hand on hand, we go places none of us could have imagined alone, places (this is important) that are aware of us. We can and do make connections to each other and our own past experiences that lift us above the ordinary. I'll relate two of my lasting memories from that evening in June… By mid evening, we'd built quite a crowd, dancing out on the beach. Lillie rezzed some empty snow globes and moved them around in the sand to capture us like fireflies or precious collectibles. The moment I saw them encircle us, I felt Lillie's presence… and not in a small way. With just those pixel props and some movement, Lillie had conveyed an understanding of her friendship with us. An understanding we shared as we huddled closer in the globes. Later in the evening, Keli (our happy faerie), backed her Millennium Falcon out of the garage (without ripping off the rear view mirror, I might add) and extended our dance floor into the sky. Celestiall (our hard charging intellect), others, and I climbed onto the roof and did our best to maintain our poise as Keli tried to sweep us off our feet. Though some of us were able to dance through the entire aerial ballet, we were all truly swept away. As Keli deftly parked the Falcon beneath the palm fronds, I felt the ocean breeze on my arms. This is the power of pixels under the direction of people. That personalities so different as Keli, Celestiall and I could all come away from that experience with the feeling we'd shared something special is indeed special. I am well aware that our pixel people are not us. They are tools to tell our stories, like pen on paper or oil on canvas. Our artistry varies by degree, but we make a go of it nonetheless and sometimes the result is... Bliss.

I wish there were words of solace or wisdom I could offer. The silence from LL must be deafening. I don't think they are reading anything you write, much less everything you write. They're probably busy dealing with brush fires related to the teen grid merge. Let's hope Suella is right and these "administrative hold" things just take a little time to resolve. It's not the same here without your lively presence. A lot of people are rooting for you, including me... and Snugs. I've put you in the Hippiestock photo. I'm hoping I'll get to replace that image with something brand new soon. Hang in there.

Venus Petrov wrote: Please let Keli K know that I miss her humor and I am (still) concerned that LiveReport posts may be construed as a flip in the face of whomever is in charge of her 'hold'. I would assume someone at LL knows the definitions of parody and satire. I recall how several of us said, in retrospect, that we should have said something to Keli Iinden...I just do not want her hold to be drawn out longer than it needs to be. There, I have said it twice in this thread. That is enough for me. I'm afraid I'm getting this feeling too. I'd enjoy Keli's wonderful humor more if it weren't dancing close to what I now see as an edge.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Showing your support of what, impersonation of a Linden? Support of the person is not support of the action.

Dillon Levenque wrote: but I can still contribute. I hope ya do!!!

I made two posters, each with four changeable slogans. They're quick and dirty and they attach to "skull". If anyone else brings something too, that's great. I'll hand them out tomorrow.

I think Keli's got a future with "The Onion" after she gets out.

Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: Well, the terms of service everyone agrees that they read before entering say you shall not use a misleading name. I wonder if the name "Misleading Name" is taken.

Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: You didn't have hands free to swat them? I can neither confirm nor deny the status of my hands at that time. Oh, Scyllllllllaaaaaaa???

Wynochee LeShelle wrote: Linden Lab should be renamed as *Zoodlewurdle Lab*. This would help much to prevent such issues. Except for Lertny Zoodlewurdle, the nebbish fellow who repaints the tiny "40W" on the lightbulb in my refrigerator when it wears off.

Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: Scylla Rhiadra wrote: Argus Collingwood wrote: I have a Stripper Cake we can take to Jail on a visit. And Nat volunteers to jump out of it! Again? I had frosting behind my ears for days the last time. And you didn't put in any airholes! I took her that long to lick it off? And you're complaining?! Well, once the flies started appearing, she stopped licking. You didn't have hands free to swat them? I see you're gonna be no help in figuring out how to do it nefariously. Added: or maybe you are?

Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: Scylla Rhiadra wrote: Argus Collingwood wrote: I have a Stripper Cake we can take to Jail on a visit. And Nat volunteers to jump out of it! Again? I had frosting behind my ears for days the last time. And you didn't put in any airholes! I took her that long to lick it off? And you're complaining?!

All the tags say "Nefarious One"

Nathaniel Scorpio wrote: By the way, Doing It For Nefarious Reasons would be a great sex group name. Done. Feel free to join, bring Scylla too. Everybody's welcome. It seems like a logical progression from my first group, "We Can Do It!" Now, we can all bask in the glow of the group name and wonder what it is and how we'd do it.

Kwant Capalini wrote: Well the idiot Lindens only have themselves to blame for coming up with such a dumb idea as display names in the first place. The second they opened the door to the creation of last name, they certainly should have anticipated this, I agree. This just adds to my overall feeling that LL is running too lean as they try to keep the ship afloat.

Ack!!! This explains your absence. I hope this gets cleared up PDQ. Your presence here, and in-world, will be sorely missed. I suppose this is yet another example of the "Law of Unintended Consequences". Did you have to tempt the gods with this though? http://blogs.secondlife.com/message/565107#565107 Good luck, Keli.