ATTENTION to all Second Life Residents

I just received this message, which might be important if
you get the same announcement and request to click on it.

"If someone gives you an item called "sexy dick" DON'T
accept it, it will try to STEAL MONEY from your linden
account.
Take care and please inform you're friend about this.
I'll repeat ;THIS IS NOT A JOKE !!!

thanks,Darren Parisi"

Release notes Second Life 1.18.0(5)+0(6) - New update especially for the Germans

Release Notes for Second Life 1.18.0(5)+0(6) July 11, 2007
=====================================
Changes:
* Message system changes to support transport via TCP (HTTP) as well as UDP.
** More details are available here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/21/a-big-change-youll-barely-notice/
** And here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/06/25/dia-de-la-liberacion/
* German language added to the Windows installer
* Updated translations for German language viewer
* Updated translations for Japanese language viewer
* Updated translations for Korean language viewer
* Viewer "channel" (Release, First Look, etc) now visible at login in the lower right corner next to the version number

Bug fixes:
* Fixed SVC-286: deleted fully-permissive objects owned by others skip trash
* Fixed SVC-251: Death teleport fails when teleporting to a home point you no longer have access to
* Fixed MISC-273: Enrollment fee is incorrectly deducted if you belong to max. # of groups and try to join new ones


I wonder when the Dutch language will be introduced!;)

Immediately followed by 1.18.06 (but still no Dutch language.) :(

What is the Second Life Jira

I can imagine that not everyone in Second Life knows what the JIRA is. Reading some articles from fellow bloggers, talking about the JIRA, it was nearly Chinese to me in the beginning.So I thought it would perhaps be interesting for those who are in the same position as me, to find out what the JIRA exactly is.
Linden Lab uses the JIRA for tracking bug processes. You will be able to find if the problem you are thinking off, is already been fixed, and, if not, if there is any progress on it. Other residents also post comments, so it might be of any help to you, to see how others solve, or deal with the bug.As the developers of the JIRA stated:” JIRA is a bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management application developed to make this process easier for your team. JIRA has been designed with a focus on task achievement, is instantly usable and is flexible to work with.”

Features of JIRA
- Ability to manage bugs, features, tasks and improvements
- Ability to track components and versions
- A clean and powerful user interface that is easy to
understand for both business and technical users
- Highly customisable dashboard views and work flows
- Full text searching and powerful filtering (customisable,
saveable, shareable and subscribeable!)
- Custom fields and field layouts
- Automatically generated project roadmaps
- User/group permissioning and security
- Ability to add file attachments to issues
- Highly configurable email notification schemes
- ‘Print page’ option on every screen
- Easily extended to and integrated with other systems
(email, SOAP, Excel, XML, CVS, SVN, Perforce)
- Runs on your existing hardware and software platform
- Compatible with almost any database

Where is the name Jira coming from:

According Wikipedia: “JIRA is a Java EE web-based bug tracking and issue tracking application developed by Atlassian Software Systems. Although JIRA is a commercial product, it is freely available to open source projects and non-profit institutions.JIRA runs on many popular databases and operating systems (see Comparison of ticket-tracking systems).Some features include customisable dashboards, saved searches (filters), statistics generation, RSS, email, and more.The name comes from the original Japanese name for Godzilla, "Gojira"[1][2]. The developers of JIRA wanted something related to Bugzilla, and so they came up with Gojira. JIRA is therefore not an acronym.”

How to look for a bug?

You can log in to the Jira with your Second Life user name and password, or if you just want to look for a bug, simply go to the page of The Second Life Jira.Typ in the “Quick search” the bug you are looking for, in this case for example: group notices.
Than you will find a complete list referring to this subject. Clicking on the bug, will give you further details, if it is solved, if they are working on it, etc…
You also can vote to have the Lindens fix the issue. (see top left corner)

If you open an issue in JIRA, be sure you give as detailed information of the bug as possible. If you are looking how to file a decent described bug, go to the JIRA Wiki and search for "reporting an issue" and this will give you detailed instructions. The link to the JIRA from the Linden blog takes you to a FAQ (Wiki) page, which is not very clear and a bit confusing, as I did not find the direct link to the JIRA.
In the top right corner (above the Quick search field), you will see some personalized options for your account. If you've opened a bug in the JIRA, it should be listed

Hopefully, this description of The JIRA will help some people to find their way through the web of bugs.

Grand Opening Spin Lounge

Tonight there was the grand opening of the Spin Lounge, a club/bar of Spinneke Jewel, Coolz0r's wife on Second Life.
It was a big success, with club dancers, dressed in white bunny clothes, which indicates the comfort of this unique lounge in SL.
Spinneke, dressed in white for the occasion, was really excited by the success of this evening, and promised me, there will be more events in the future.
Being at this place, Strawberry's Premier Night Club, you could not ignore the warmth, coming out from the design, with different pose balls, where all couples can dance, and even outside, you are able to find those pose balls, for a more private moment, yet distinguished.

Second Life - A Moment of Rest

Initial, Second Life was a perfect alternative for having my thoughts fixated on other things, such as PS, as mentioned previously.
The more I get involved with the pressure of blogging, of uploading pictures to flickr, the more I get stressed.....:-)
Thus it is not a good alternative, let that be an advice to everyone who was still not convinced of it.
After next week, I have a holiday in RL, and this time I will use it to get a moment of rest. Away from stressed Second Life for a few days, away from blogging every day, the hell with the ranking.:-)
And after that, well, we will see........

The frustration of Second Life Rankings

Google’s pagerank, Google Analytics, Technorati stats, Alexa ranking, AdSense account, SLtopsites, topsites etc... People have enough different rankings to keep up with. Knowing that daily updates are important, bloggers often tend to focus more on quantity than quality. This is why a lot of people have started a daily post which has links to recommended blogs. This gives them an easy way to do a daily update, as well as a possibility to give someone else an inbound link, wishing for someone to return the favor, so they can climb even further up the Technorati ladder.
When it comes to pageranking, I am still waiting for my first ranking, not that it is so important, but 0 is kind of low, don't you think?
I even found a new ranking, where I did not know of: Second Life Blog 40.
It speaks for itself that this is a ranking of the 40 best blogs of SL. The only thing I am wondering about is, on what is this ranking based on? It is good to see that there are some friend bloggers in the ranking (apparently I was too, but am now 53th on the ranking) But who is keeping track of these blogs, is it based on content, because, as far as I know, there are not linked to my blog, is it with google analytics? When somebody knows, I would be happy to know too. One remarkable point: The Official Linden blog is number 40.

So the more views you get, the more chance there is that someone would leave a comment. And that is what it is all about. But to achieve that, we have to wait and to try different things, such as subscribing to SLTopsites. This ranking is obviously not loved by all bloggers, yet it gives an opportunity to advertise your own blog to other members and visitors of this ranking page.
You can of course walk on SL with a tag above your head saying that you are a blogger, but to my opinion, subscribing to a blog as SLtopsites is more efficient. :-)
Personally I try, and I say try, to write a quality post , about something I read or saw...., but that ain't always easy.
I must say that reading a blog with quality content, but a pagerank on 0, has more value than one with a higher pagerank but no quality content.
But than comes the question, do we have the time to do what we should do for having our ranking rise, looking for quality and quantity. Do we even have the time to keep it updated?

I am convinced that if someone really likes to blog, they should not pay attention to those rankings but write quality content, and I am sure the viewers will come and leave their comments, but this could take some time. And time is something we all are short of. So we need to spread the word as soon as possible, for not having the idea that we are blogging for ourselves without someone reading your blog.

So now, we are back to the beginning, keeping track of all possible rankings, and therefor trying to write quality stuff, but thinking in the back of our heads on the rankings.

Contest at the New Mardes - Victory !!!

The contest at the new Mardes Club is finally over. A month can be very long, I can assure you that. But at the end the victory taste good.
I would like to thank this way in the first place, Yum Yum, who pointed the place out where I could make some beautiful pictures. And she was right.
Of course all the people who voted for me, and in particular Wilma and Flok, who did a great job as campaign leaders. Without them, I doubt if I had won.
I also would like to congratulate all the candidates, as their pictures were all really good, but especially Vint and Angillilah, who finished second and third in the competition.
And finally, and I hope I did not forget anyone, I would like to thank the organizers of the contest, AnnSophie, Vacature and Secondlifecrew.be, as they did a marvelous job.
When you would like to see the results, look here.
I don't know when the awards will be handed over, but I will surely report it on this blog.

Thank you all for your support !!

Law suit against Linden Lab dismissed

July, 2nd.
A French Court in Paris dismissed a complaint against Linden Lab filed by a French Group, called "Familles de France", opposed to adult content in Second Life.
As Linden says on their blog : "Today the Paris court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) dismissed the complaint filed by the French association Familles de France against Linden Lab, holding that the evidence brought by the association was unduly biased and should be thrown out."

Families de France and the Departmental Union of Families’ Associations of Ardeche alleged that Second Life features “pornographical, scatalogical and zoophiliac” content as well as advertisements for tobacco, alcohol and drugs.

This victory will convince LInden Lab that they are working in the right direction. They say that its age verification, to verify if someone is older than 18 years, will be available soon.

After the law suit against Linden Lab by Marc Bragg , where there is no outcome or pronouncement yet, this result will please Linden Lab and confirms that evidence in Internet cases must be gathered in an objective fashion, so they say.

(see French text from Reuters here)

Some tricks in Photoshop

Everyone of us, who works with Photoshop, is learning, day by day, the skills and tools of this program.
I am an amateur photographer in RL, as well as in SL, but I had not the skills for adjusting the pictures with PS. Now, in SL, you can experiment, and have direct response from your friends,how you can improve. That is one of my goals in SL, to learn and improve the skills of post processing.
So I am thankful to all my colleague bloggers who are putting tutorials on the net so we can learn, if we just have the time to read them or to see the video.
I am always looking for new things, as I see some of the artists, even new artists on flickr, make fantastic pictures, where I could only dream from.
Finding the right angle for a nice shot is one thing, but having this picture retouched is another one. That is why we need programs as PS, PSP etc.....
I have seen simple tutorials, which explain the tool very well, I have seen some bad ones, but now I have found a tutorial, which is not free, but the examples show which direction these learning processes will take you. As the developer for these tutorial, Conrad Feagin, says: "Some designers think a book or written tutorial is the answer. Maybe you have even tried this. If so, you realize this is a slow and painful process. It can take several days just to learn a few techniques, and you still have no clue how take that knowledge and actually create a final product."
He has implemented some free videos as well, as a kind of promotion, but are already helpful to learn something more about PS. For me that is anyhow.
Here are the free videos:

• Color Modes
• History Palette
• Filters
• Stone text effect
• Woodburn text effect
• Cloud text effect

If you want to read the whole story that comes with it, you will be able to find it at "Watch and Learn Photoshop".

Have fun, and I hope you learn something new with these tutorials, at least I did.

SL4B Final Impressions

It has come to an end, the second life fourth birthday. We will have to wait until next year to discover new talent, and to see new sculptures, buildings, pictures, whatever an avatar can do in second life.
For me, and for many others, it was the first time, and I have to say, I was amazed by all the art.
I can not wait to see what it will be next year, although, the sims were very laggy.
To close my series of the impressions, I show some last pictures that I have made at SL4B.
Within a couple of months, the preparation will start for the SL5B, so, if one of you is thinking of submitting a piece of art, you can already start by thinking how, what ..........