She found herself an interchangeable man
to fill her needs and her demands

If he is not there when she has desires
a few spare parts are all she requires

An arm here, a leg there;
she likes this kind of chest and this kind of hair

These animations and this kind of walk
and a southern drawl whenever he talks

"Now something is missing, what can it be
that I need to finish my fantasy…

Oh I need an operator to say…
the sweet things that I want to hear today!

That is the easiest part to find,
a totally replaceable male mind."

And what of the parts that she left behind,
do they still whirr when she logs in to find

Her interchangeable man for the day
or do they lie dormant and dwindle away?

copyright (c) 2009 – Kris Dibou – used by the gracious permission of the author.

For years now, I have enjoyed a virtual life in paradise.  I have been the poet, the pirate, the writer, the builder, graphic artist, programmer, cowboy, musician, editor, and game designer of sorts.  All this and more; yet, in the outside world (which we refer to as 'rl') I have not been successful at any of that.

I did not finish college and I am over-sensitive; the songs I write are good (most common comment 'you have a way with words') but not hit material.  I am a square peg pretending to fit in the round hole.

So what has this virtual pirate learned that could help him out?  Was my trip through the metaverse a long diversion, or were there lessons being learned?

The main asset I developed was a harder shell.  Being submerged in a world full of diverse personalities and griefers enabled me to survive an hour and a half 'butt-chewing' at the office that I could not have gotten through before.  I even stayed and worked for the rest of the day afterward, which is super-human for a lot of people. 

But what of the spirit of the virtual pirate?  The Captain Jack Sparrow/Captain Blood pirate?  The bold adventurer taking on the world with his own set of rules (guidelines really..).  Rescuing fair maidens, setting captives free, fighting injustice and breathing in his well-earned freedom on the open sea?  Can this power be harnessed and used to enhance your rl?  What would Captain Blood do?

Rare is the employer who will admit they are wrong and do things your way (and who is to say you are right anyway?).  Can you retain your self-respect while being in a situation where you know you are right but have to do it the bosses way?  Is your job worth your sanity and your health?  What does the pirate do when he is backed into the corner with his enemy approaching from all sides?  Does he lay down his sword, whimpering?

I would like to think he yells a curse and charges into death slashing and kicking.  Perhaps the Jack Sparrow type will pretend to give up while plotting a subtler escape. 

Let's take my current rl situation. My worst nightmare is to go into an annual review and get broadsided.  Until recently, it has never happened; however, as I mentioned earlier, they finally got me.

Today is the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.

I resisted my first impulse to curse and start swinging.  Instead, I agreed to the terms of surrender while plotting my escape, for indeed, no prison can hold Captain Jack!

I summed up all my liabilities to see if I could get a mortgage on the house to consolidate them, then calculated the household income without my current position.  Perhaps it is time to retire.  I will determine how much I need to get by on and take on work to break even.  Captain Jack knows that more treasure awaits; it is just a matter of time.

Fortunately, Captain Jack was a good example to follow, as later we learn that my job is secure and the whole situation was more a case of 'shit running downhill'.   Never the less, be ready to sail at a moments notice, mateys; keep your cutlasses sharp and your wits about you, for the Royal Navy is always just one step behind.

Now I'm not one to complain, but this is about as much as I can stand. 

Linden Lab does not cater to snails; there are no snail sims, there are no snail clothing stores, very few snail skin makers, and no snail sex ball makers.  There is one lousy snail animation that came with my avi, and that's it!  How can I entwine in slime with my righteous babe-snail?

And when is the last time you saw a snail apartment building in SL?  Shouldn't snails have a right to affordable housing just like everyone else?

Ok, I don't mean to be tacky, but this whole virtual world thing is one sticky wicket.  I'm making a line in the sand and I dare anyone to step over it.  Give me liberty or give me salt!

by Kris Dibou

The problem with total immersion is that you must come up for air or you will suffocate…

I suppose it is like a sailor being lured into the sea by a beautiful mermaid; he is so enamored with her that he does not realize he is drowning; that he has given up his home and family to follow her into the murky depths of oblivion.  Perhaps at the point of death he will see the mermaid for who she really is and somehow escape her clutches; perhaps not, but if no one escapes, who would start the legends?

The Mermaid

As I sailed over the seas that my forefathers sailed before
I came upon a sea so calm by a green and grassy shore
The water, warm, the sea so blue, I dove and swam about
And rested on a beach bleached white and dined on ocean trout

As the sun set down on the glassy line twixt today and tonight
I watched my sloop drift to and fro in the waning light
And I as well lay on that line between the light and dark
Not sure if I was in a dream or simply deep in thought

I thought I saw a twinkle in the water near my feet
As if a star had tumbled down to taste the water, sweet
And the ocean's daughter from the song called me to her home
Was I there in the depths with her, or was I all alone?

We swam about the current's route without a care or bother
It only briefly occurred to me that I was breathing water
Perhaps it was my nature that forced my dream to stop
My dreamy thoughts that made me shake; I scrambled to the top

Dreams or thoughts, the point was moot for I was out there drowning
If not for the plank afloat nearby there would be no day a'dawning
And I looked back into the water deep and there, below the surface
The creature, fair, was changing form revealing its true purpose

It will not dine, no not today, on wandering seamen lost
For the sea is free flowing 'though the mermaid tries to raise the cost
I will swim in the sea again, but I will never feel the same
Was it my unquenchable thirst, or the mermaid that's to blame.

    ~Kris Dibou

by Kaffe McMahon

(Originally published in the Swashbuccateer on Jan. 3, 2009)

Project Exodus (no it is not Charlton Heston does Second Life)- this project has been purportedly on the drawing boards of Linden Labs for over 6 months, prior to the new Land Pricing Policy. The plan was to enhance the experience of the SL residents and to offer new areas of exploration as well as things to do. One of these new activities being sailing and to update first entry into Second Life for new subscribers.

Concurrent  with this  project LL had been building up their main land and offering substantially reduced rates compared to private estates. Mainland Full Sim Tier $195 USA compared to Estate Full Sim of $295 per month as well as costs to terraform, build and have the land delivered.   The new rate plans were rolled out during the 4th Quarter of 2008 by Linden Lab. In effect this  killed off open sims as used , and allowed step conversions to Homestead or Open Sims to Full Sims no charge. These new rates for private estates were the coup de grae for many private estate holders. Sarah Nerd, long time land broker, got out of the land business.  Estates have been pulling out as fast as you can hit delete. The deluge is not over yet. January tiers starting to come due and the exit rate is expected by many observers to climb.

It leaves the question just who did LL want to exodus?  The rate uproar had barely settled to a low mumble when news started leaking to the SL population at large about Project Exodus.  A new body of water, Blakes Ocean,  is being built, by LL,  6 x 6 sims  with 36 sims for sailing. Linden Labs has stated that Open Sims were intended for light use, water and sailing. It would seem that the free new ocean would therefore be comprised of Open Sims.  This is not the case. It will not be robust enough for anticipated use and they are using homestead sims [ I would not be surprised if really full prim is used as there may be grid to burn with the drop out rate] Here is a link showing the new land masses and water. http://blog.nci-sl.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/sansara-heterocera122908.png

This was first wide spread mention of the new ocean, http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/12/19/hoist-the-mainsail-and-head-for-the-high-seas/. Found the main blog for SL  on December 19th.

The new region via the new ocean will connect to the Sailing Sims. In essence offers passage from estates to mainland. They still will pay for their land as they have and make decisions on allocation of water versus land on their sim. In addition to no charge to move all of their sims they have new water to sail. It would be a good guess this land will become more valuable.

A 1024 parcel near this near area was rumored to be at over 500K Lindens.  It is difficult to find this exact area since it is not launched yet and has not been heard of by many. A trip over to the Starboard Yacht Club finds a map on the floor that shows the new and old land.  Here are a couple of photos (this one and the one at the beginning of the article) and the slurl if you want to see the map I photographed:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hollywood/82/118/31/

The Sailing Sims is a "loose confederation" of water based estates and sims that have interconnected waterways. Consisting of about 120-130 sims. A map of their current lay out can be found here and they have a number of blogs and intersim races and events.

 
The timing of this seemed very peculiar, perhaps just a coincidence. LL  builds up their grid, financing expansion on new land sales. They somehow did not factor in that people would push the technology envelope to the limit and use the Open Sims full tilt. Yet, this same organization was able to plan a six month launch to move 120 sims, and build an ocean.  This seems to be incredulous that we are to believe that they had no inkling of Open Sims usage and had to discontinue this product. It seems paramount to a greedy grid grab.

I  lost an Open Sim and now we are our  finding our estate at a cross roads, like many others, I was upset. I had joined SOS to help mobilize efforts to save our water. SOS members were urged to contact  the Attorney General of California. To me and many others it seemed like Nautilus and other Main Land had been conveniently built up and funded by the 100's of Open Sims that were launched. The rewriting of rules of use freed up quite a bit of grid space. Many mobilization events happened, including events  at the Sailing Sims over in Hollywood. The Sailing Sector has not been that vocal in the SOS group as of late.  The efforts of the SOS group appear to be ineffective or shrouded in secrecy. They have been contacted for a comment. . .

Marktwain White, of the Sailing Sims was contacted  to comment on the Blake's Ocean and who will be allowed to use this water. Mark said:

"I still feel strongly about the OS pricing policy that LL has adopted. I feel that a 67% increase is wrong and have told the LL that on more than one occasion in my discussions with them. I have proposed alternate suggestions on the OS lite product and alternate pricing. Unfortunately they didn't bite."

He offered some excellent information and here are  his comments about the 'sweetheart deal':

"The most common comment about the Blake Sea Project runs like this: LL is playing favorites in selecting the USS for special treatment.
The problem with this statement is that it has a faulty premise. The premise above is based on assuming LL or Jack is your father and you all and the USS are his children. "

"The proper premise is that LL is a business that looks for the best tools and partners to accomplish a given task. If LL looks at three service providers and after doing due diligence picks the Blue Company over the Green Company or the Red company they are making a decision on how to best get a job done. A journalist for the business pages of the local paper would not say that LL was showing favoritism, he would say, LL picked the Blue Company as the best partner to work with them on project X."

"Do you think LL has spent the hours and dollars they have in creating the Blake Sea only to do a favor to USS? On the contrary, LL has finally figured out that they are not good community builders, they need partners to do that. They have learned along with all the Corporations the have build ghost towns in SL that it takes a community to bring life to the pixels. They get it now."

The above quotations from Marktwain were from correspondence we had via note cards. It is appreciated that he offered an update on the Exodus Project.

My email to the Attorney General of California generated a thanks for the information form letter. I do not know what the tipping point is to move LL to action.

Another idea is to see what can we do as another sailing community to move LL to work with us. Can we move forward as a "community of common interest" to meet our own needs. It is time a parley of the Brethren meet to work together.

by Kris Dibou, part-time bot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopyBot – external links section includes open source copybot

So you've visited some of the big stores in SL, and noticed the models who look exactly like avatars, but never say anything; in fact, they may even have a tag over their heads saying 'Bot'.  How do they do that?

I am no expert, but through my research I have found that bot programs and similar programs such as SecondInventory, seem to be based on the same program. 

What is a bot?

The first thing you need to realize is that a bot is just an avatar.  Usually it is an alt and 'bot' status is not necessarily permanent.  Hypothetically, you could log into SL on your regular account, turn off the inactivity switch and walk away.  Suddenly, you are a bot. 

Easiest Course of Action

Of course, you will want to have a bot while you are doing other things with your main character.  You can log two or more avs in on your computer if you have the power and memory to handle it all.  Simply go to your SL icon, right click and go to properties, and go into the target line.  At the end of the target line add a space, two dashes and the word multiple.  I will look like this- " –multiple".  Now you can open more than one instance of SL on your computer.  The downside is massive use of your resources.  This brings us to the bot programs.

Another Approach

You need something to run these alts without using up all your resources.  This means, generally, no view screen for the bot.  There is a program a young lady wrote called AjaxSL which allows you to view SL through a web page and seems to have similar functionality of a bot program; however, she has taken the site down in protest of SL not fixing the TeenGrid ( she was 15 when she wrote the program); so scratch that one.  Then there is one called SLeek.  Apparently it is possible to modify this, although I haven't gotten that far, but you can login to SL without a screen and stand there, tp, talk, etc, without being able to see anything.

A.I.

If you want to give your bot artificial intelligence you can purchase bot access through Thoy's Bots for $2,000 an avatar, and he has made it possible to connect to pandorabots.com through it, so your avatar can talk on its own.  This doesn't work for MAC's tho…

Making Your Free Bot the Wikipedia Way

Step I:
    Follow this link to a wikipedia page

Step II:
    Go to the references section at the bottom of the page and click on Copybot 4.0

    This will download the program to your computer.

Step III:
    Open SLBots, the program that downloaded.  It will first give you a 'you are not registered' error, but open anyway.

Step IV:
    Login your Alt(s) and list your main avatar as their master.  Then login to SL with your main alt and type 'help' in the bots IM line to get the commands.

Happy botting!

Notice to those that have 'eyes':  There is much power hidden here – be cautious. Note also that software you download from the Internet may have all sorts of dangerous side effects – viruses, trojans, and other scarey stuff, and the Linden Lab TOS forbids copying other people's intellectual property.

By Kris Dibou

Gregg Barrymore of the Antiquity sims announced the passing of his good friend Kendra Bancroft. 

Said Gregg, "Last night I learned of the passing on Dec 11 of a dear friend
Kendra Bancroft.  I hereby decree her rezday June 16 to be Kendra Bancroft Day throughout Antiquity. This day shall henceforth be a day of celebration of Kendra Bancroft's contributions to the SL community and closed with a Ball in her honor.
For those of you who didn't know her you can go here to learn of her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddie_Blaustein

http://www.massively.com/2008/12/17/kendra-bancroft-madeleine-blaustein-passes-away/ "

Maddie, Kendra's operator, was the voice for many anime and video game characters, and has written comic books for Milestone comics.

It occurred to me today that SL is like a gourmet meal that you eat backwards.  Allow me to walk you through this meal beginning with the dessert. 

1st Course: Dessert

You’ve joined Secondlife and discovered a world of beautiful women and handsome men, where there is no disease to pick up from casual encounters, save for bruised feelings.  Some unknown beings have created beautiful sims for you to cruise around in and you begin to dream in avatars.

2nd Course: The Entree

After you have spent some time deep in pleasure, you arrive at the main course where you enjoy a more broad spectrum of flavors and truly participate in your dining experience.  You learn to build, perhaps to script, and perhaps learn how to dj or make animations; maybe even become good at Photoshop.  In this portion of the meal, you may, in fact, let your Rl body go and develop health problems.  After you’ve had your fill, you drop down to the salad and soup. 

3rd Course: Soup & Salad

You log on less frequently, create less and just keep running on the flavors your remember from earlier.  You begin to wonder why you even bother.  The Lindens appear to be letting you down and you have noticed how fast everything moves, while your online experience literally lags.

In the end, two things are certain- what you don’t eat will go to waste, and what you did eat turns to shit.

In the virtual life you’ve led
You’re neither living, nor are dead
You’ve met them all but met no one
Drifting under the pixel sun.

And as you tire of this place
The sun that doesn’t burn your face
The water that won’t make you wet
The death that never will be met

The wind that cannot touch our faces
Wand’ring through virtual places
What then is there in here for you?
Or should I ask you, perhaps, who?

So dark the con of jack
Daggers digging in my back
Under cloak of negotiation
Lies the lies, premeditation

Change the name keep the price
Pacify us into mice
Oh the destruction being wrought!
The lack of humanity in thought

As the societies passed before
Our death waits at Linden’s doors
For profit commits genocide
And the seas disappear on the tide.

And the dominoes fall one by one
Recession smothers everyone
Business closes here and there
Frantic exodus anywhere

Broken thoughts broken dreams
Broken trust it now seems
So dark the con of Jack