Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Loads a L$


That's the most I've ever seen on my bar. Unfortunately it belonged to my corporate alt, not his-knibs :-)

Virtual office and build area coming on nicely. Bought a sweet plot with billions of prims spare like we need. Will post pics and stuff soon.

Actaully. Shit. How did that happen? I work in a virtual world...

...how fuckin' William Gibson is that? ;-)

Everybody In?

Go on, if ya got 5, nip over to Microsoft surface and look at the 'Possibilities' video (right hand side).

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Beeb Comes to SL

According to my copy of Braodcast, the BBC is gonna show its first ever full programme "in a virtual world" this Friday. The Money Programme is going to be lookin' at the businesses of Second Life and MMOs.

"Virtual World, Real Millions" is going to be simultaneously broadcast on BBC 2 and at the Rivers Run Red cinema in SL on Friday June 1 at 7pm GMT.

The show will be the usual look at the growth of virtual worlds and will include spiel from the likes of Philip (Lindon) Rosedale, etc. It also features interviews with the virtual marketing gurus Rivers Run Red, which has amassed a multi-million pound turnover by trading inside virtual worlds, and the team behind Reebok's virtual stores. Oh, and GamesIndustry.biz deputy editor Matt Martin and David Solari, vice president of Codemasters online gaming, will be offering their high-frame-biased views on SL (er, woot) but will be talking about the recently launched LOTR Online: Shadows of Angmar, and the programme will focus on issues such as gold farming and virtual crime.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Pirates of the Caledonian



Good night last night in aid of Relay for Life. Thanks ladies!

Just a few bits of video, thrown together, from last nights bash ;-)

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Meh



I'm not really that excited about the new Transformers Movie.

Transformers wasn't my generation and I have to agree with Pig, who just said in IM:

Oldspot says: meh, AFBB (Another Fucking Brainless Blockbuster)

Lactose says: Look at the fuckin robots though dude. Hmmm, shiny...

Oldspot says: Thats what they want you to say, and then queue up and pay you ten quid or whatever, watch it, and then go away disappointed thats its not as good as you thought it was going to be...

...OF COURSE IT ISNT, ITS A FUCKING BLOCKBUSTER, WHOSE SOLE EXISTENCE IS TO STEAL YOUR MONEY. NOT TO ENTERTAIN YOU, NOT TO STIMULATE YOU, JUST TO HAVE ENOUGH CRAP TO STRING TOGETHER INTO A VISCERAL TRAILER TO LURE YOU IN AND TAKE YOUR FUCKING MONEY.

S
orry. Too much coffee...
Sad, but true.

Still, a Summer block buster can be the thing if you know what your getting into. I can always drool at the toys and at Jennifer Connelly.

Foxy, being the right generation, has been bouncing around for months over this. All giddy and fanbird in a way my generation can never be due to our innate world-weary bitterness. I hope it's every thing she wants, cos she'll sulk like a fucker if it's not.

M
eh.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Taking Liberties Trailer



Hmmm, moaning accessible pop-culture documentary.

Sad, but I eat it up :-)

Friday, May 18, 2007

Us, and You & Yesterday

Had the opening do for You & Yesterday this afternoon.


That's Adele (all 60s), Naomi (50's), me (Victorian) and Sian (70's), Emma (Victorian), Claire (WW2) and Mandip (god knows) - L to R. Elaine was taking the photo. We dressed up and welcomed some famous local faces and generally posed for the press and extolled the virtues of local history.

You & Yesterday is a big new local history wiki that lets you record & share your memories of past events, people & places in Derbyshire (but rolling out nationally soon, pending trial) by uploading your photos, stories, comments and video. It's got a shed load of potential.

Geriatric1927 (local chap Peter Oakley) came along to wish us well, and even though we had other famous faces and the mayor (who's a marvellous character himself) he was a big draw with us. I sat down and had a chat with him for a bit, and what a nice chap. I'm not prone to the hyperbole of YouTube and the like, but he was a true gentleman.

I recorded a load of footage and I'll be editing it early next week. Will post something here :-)

Incoming!

Just give me a divorce, change my drip and my catheter, and brush the dead skin off me once a month...



...boo-yar!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Bruce Campbell does Richard Cheese



I'm dead, and in groovy mash-up heaven...

...FTC blogged the first one of these a while ago. Unfair commentary though. I like a bit of Old Spice, and I even use a dab of Brylcream. Mind you, I'm also starting to look startlingly like my granddad and seem to be developing a 'musk' akin to bachelors socks that needs such hard-core 'flavours' of toilet water in order to pacify the quality aroma of moist cyclist.

I
may soon, within their next 10 years, take to wearing a cravat, I have no shame, and it'll teach the lot of ya ;-)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Gun Bunnies Forever!

Finished this last night, for SLRFL and the ongoing war effort.



It's okay, but I was lacking a lot of cut-aways and stuff to make it tighter (which was a shame) and I need to get my head round the sound editing stuff in Premier Pro yet.

It'll do though, it's part of the learning curve. Around 9 hours in edit to get this though, so from now on there's no point doing this if it's not gonna be pucker. Post it note on monitor: "Get Cut Aways".


Thanks to Hotspur, Duchess Gabrielle, Lapin, Terry, Zealot, and the Tanglewood Tinies.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Maxim are on Heroine

I was sent a link by, well, someone who has been suitable berated, to the Maxim Top 15 Hottest Women in Comics. It's seriously weapons-grade dreadful. People actually read this shit?

Where is CatWomen? Where's Judge Hershey (okay that may be a bit specialist)? Where's Psylocke, Blink, Elecktra, Danger Girl, Tank Girl (hmm, maybe not exactly hot in the true sense of 'hot', but I bet she's a demon in the sac), Black Widow, Phoenix, even Tomb Raider herself, I mean seriously...

...this is poorly observed rubbish clearly researched primarily on Google and written to get the Maxim site digged up. Wonder Woman as number one? I ask ya. Very very sad indeed.

I may be ranting sometime...

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Herbidacious

Pig came over this weekend, and we turned a pile of hardcore and rubble into a herb garden for the Mrs and the whoppits.



You can't believe what a shit tip this was before we started. It was full of pebbles, gravel, plastic sheeting, and earth that hadn't been turned over or had owt growing in it for the last 6 years.

Bit 'rustic', but it came out all right :-)

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Swaggering Texas Cock

George Bush, the tit, winked at our Queen. I mean, for gods sake. The Queen.

That quality rag of truth I work for, the Daily Mail, has this to say:

When you’ve just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there may be a few ways of recovering from the gaffe. But turning to her and giving her a sly wink is probably not included in any book of royal etiquette.

That’s what happened yesterday after George Bush mangled his greeting to the Queen on her state visit to the U.S. Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776.

And although the President’s following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder. After the blunder the President paused and turned to the Queen to acknowledge his gaffe, joking that she “gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.”

Ripples of laughter echoed around those gathered at the event and the President laughed off the mistake and continued his speech...

Absolute plank.

Lets not forget this is the turkey who
greeted our (all be it pranock of a) Prime Minister with the words “Yo, Blair, how are you doing”. A man who once told her majesty (when he met her in 1991 when daddy (George Bush Snr.) was in office) that he was the black sheep of his family, and then asked her “Who’s yours?”

Now okay, we've got Prince Phillip, and well, he's a bit damn special. But even Phil wouldn't make a boob like this in the etiquette dept.

True,
Bush isn't the only international big dick to overstep the royal mark. I remember the Aussie PM (Paul Keating) putting his hand on the back of HRH during her visit to Australia in 1992 and there was global outrage from armchair monarchists.

You'd think though, in front of her majesty, Bush could loose that 'off the ranch' image and conduct himself as a gentleman and international statesman should in the presence of (arguably) the greatest icon of England.

It's not that 'this is the Queen damnit' that's bothering me here, it's just that Bush is such an unmitigated fuckin' grade A knob jockey.

Bruce Willis - Dies 2nd

Uncle Bruce will be coming to SL, live-a-mundo, in a "Live Free or Die Hard" Q&A on Friday June 1st.

We can get in there and chat to Brucies avatar, and "hear his real-time responses audibly". Sweet.

"So Bruce, why was Hudson Hawk shite"?

There's a compo to get access to this somewhat pointless event, here.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Nano-Expo

This looks cool. Nano-Expo , or NottinghamNano, in HoodTown.

11am - 5pm Wednesday 16 May & 9am - 4 pm Thursday 17 May.

A 2 day conference with top level presentations by industrial and academic brains who are active in the field of micro- and nanotechnology. Leading international experts will be doing 3 plenary lectures and will be presenting on one of 6 topics, running in 2 parallel sessions.

NottinghamNano is the kinda Borg-lite version for the public with interactive whatsits and safe with children and household fabrics. It's also on the Friday too.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Top Dog


Foxy and Daz went to Collectormania11 at the weekend. God love them, they didn't bring me owt back but they did get visual effects hero and K-9'd papa Mat Irvine to sign this for Oolon (he even wrote "Mr Sputnik" in Russian underneath) to go in the the lab in the ETC. I'll frame the original and stick it in my office at Pemberly.

Do I like it? Affirmative Mistress. My friends are so cool.
Check some of Foxy Flickr pics of the Irvine stuff that was there. That Face of Evil is just so damn sweet it brings a tear to my eye. Thanks guys ;-)

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

How Many Users Does SL Really Have?

In a follow up to my post last week on the ACTUALLY number of residents in SL, here's a little something on 'How Many Users Does SL Really Have?' that Daz just forwarded me from Digg just now.
In a story for InformationWeek published last week (blogged previously), Executive Editor Mitch Wagner asked a representative of Linden Lab for a clarification of Stern's quote. As he describes in a blog post last Friday, the number he received in return was staggering: While the company estimates its own flesh-and-blood user base to have reached 3.2 million at the end of last March, he learned, its actual user retention rate is close to 10%. Based on that formula, Linden Lab's everyday user count is close to 320,000.
Ouch! That's gotta be bollocks? Surely?
Pfffft!

Germans + Iitigation = Age Verification

What happens when the main media in your main user group comes to you and says they have pictures of child porn from inside the pocket universe your pitching as the next big corporate thing?

Age verification, that's what.

See this post on the official Linden blog, and do the maths y'self.

Mind at Ease (a bit)

Okay, by this statement from the grid-bound Jehovahs, I do feel a bit better on this whole ID thing:
Linden Lab will not store any specific, identifying information. We’ll keep less exact information as a way to allow Residents, if they should so choose, to share verified aspects of their identity with others in Second Life — ie, not an exact date of birth, but an age (over 30) and not a specific address, but a city and country. Such sharing will, of course, be completely voluntary. Our verification provider will assess the consistency of the provided information and return a match code; at that point, a Resident becomes verified. The entire process takes less than two minutes, and will be available internationally. Our verification provider will only use information to provide a match code.
The words will not store count for a lot, and I'm glad to read them as part of this new statement.

Yeah, yeah, I suppose I should have read the whole thing originally, but this is the internet and I'm an impatient bitter generation X'er with the attention span of a guppy. What do they want, trust and understanding? We had Thatcher matey. We don't do trust and understanding ;-)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Here Come the Germans...

Direct rip-off from The Reg today:

Second Life has become the David Hasselhoff of internet gaming.

A study released today by digital census takers comScore shows that Germans make up 16 per cent of Sadville residents, making them the largest country of origin in the "game."

Between January and March, a 70 per cent population explosion of Deutschlanders placed them above US residents, the former population leader, by approximately 2,000 people.

In March, about 1.3 million people logged into Second Life, according to comScore. Of those people, 209k were German, 207k were from the US, 167k were in the Asia Pacific and 104k were from France.

The UK lags behind with a mere 72,000 redcoats (6 per cent) logging into the virtual world. (But honestly, it's a bit like coming in last place at a no-hands-allowed pie eating contest; No dignity lost there.)

The total Sadville population increased by 46 per cent from January to March. Sixty one per cent hailed from Europe, and 19 per cent from North America...

It went on to some inane inaccurate sexist cock, but, this first bit was interesting. Especially as the ETC is in a German sim and the RFL battle is against psudo-Germans...

Busy One

Well that was a busy weekend.

Friday night, Cornelia's rez day party (one of the nicest dos I think I've ever been to in SL) with a 'toy box' theme and Disney favourites 'till 5.30 am.

Saturday, Phil and Juno's wedding. Hardies came over in the evening (Alfonso and Fuschia) then franticly recording a shoot out through the streets of Caledon for Relay for Life (we SO need some direction next time). Oh, and
Who (which was only marginally better than last weeks unspeakable wank and I needed a bottle of red to see me through).

Sunday, a jet legged ginger arse with no volume control descended on me at 7am.
He did bring Hawaiian shirts and Tiki paraphernalia though, so I'll let him off. We gardened like mugs, putting in new stepped beds for Jems herb garden, basicly 'till we couldn't walk (needs finishing next weekend).

Miss
Katat0nik had a display on (I'm a big fan of her stuff) with a couple of other Caledon artists. I went with Miss Baxter (who popped into Mayfair to say hello) and Terry. It's sad I can only afford to buy art in SL these days. Then I crawled to bed.

Monday, dads 60th birthday. Trolled down to Lancashire with a picnic lunch and a lot of whisky. Trolled back. Tried to look through the footage I captured from the Caledon scrap but there's 22gb of it (most of it wobbly headed, badly rezzed cock and missing textures) and I'm dead to the world. Wrote some blog posts to make up for it and went to bed early.

Woke up far too early this morning, couldn't sleep.

My body clock is shafted again, and another day of editing
'Green Awareness' videos ahead.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Doc Rude



Rather speaks for itself. I laughed so hard I've damaged myself.

Why Misleading Numbers?

Nice article by Mitch Wagner in Information Week regarding the number of residents in SL and the figures Linden Labs keep using to illustrate user numbers. Worth a look.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Yippie ki-yay...



...motherfucker.

Well lookin' forward to the next one.

Age and Identity Verification

Read this. Are they on fuckin' drugs at Linden Labs or what?

You think your gonna get me to give you my passport number just to go to Baku or take an alt down Hard Alley to take the piss out of the Yiffies? Not that I would, obviously, that would be crass ;-)

Shirt buttons to granny to granny bonds there something deeper to all this. It's just come out of nowhere. Maybe you could try harder to piss your audience off folks, but I doubt it. Who thinks of this shit...

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Right Outside. Right this Minute.



Right outside our window at work, someone just chucked themselves under a train. I took these pics no more than 10 minutes ago.

God I love the internet. This is what blogs were made for.

Makes me realise what a Big Brother society we are.

I just saw at least 4 people take pictures with mobiles etc., myself included. Old news hounds, journos, and docco makers die hard I guess.