Today’s Mystery Quotation

I will now place myself under the auspices of he who sometimes dons the philosopher’s garb, who – ambiguous – is more often to be sought in the comedian’s banter, but who is always encountered in the politician’s secretive action: the good logician, odious to the world.

10 Lindens to guess its author.

It’s time to ask ourselves a serious question.

Love is a Download

This was first aired in 1997. The uploader mistitled the episode. Its correct title is Love is a Download.

Building Better Worlds

Weyland-Yutani was the fictional megacorporation featured in the Alien movies. I thought their corporate logo was a fun fit with a Second Life build.

Synchronicity

I logged into my blog today to make a belated comment about the OpenSim April Fool’s “joke” that the OpenSim devs felt like visiting upon their community of users. When I logged in, I saw an unapproved comment waiting in my queue so I checked that first. It was a comment from an RKOSTER who I assume is Raph Koster, the designer and general dude behind Metaplace. I had written that I couldn’t log into Metaplace for some reason and the comment basically said “you shouldn’t have any problem and please submit a bug report.” The problem, apparently, is an issue with the Adobe Flash 10 player on Linux. I also said some shitty things about Metaplace which I will get to later as it relates to the newbie experience but first I want to contrast RKOSTER’s response to a response (which I presume is *the* response) from the OpenSim developers concerning the power-gaming head trip they laid on their unsuspecting users. Really, my point should be obvious.

An obscure blogger writes a small post on their equally obscure blog saying that they are having difficulty accessing some beta software. The designer of said software (or a representative using his name) miraculously discovers this post and makes a small encouraging reply, even going so far as to include a smiley happy face! Like so Brilliant, I say, this is what serious grown up people do. Note that serious grown up people *DO NOT* reply like this “Hey it’s an open beta so what the fuck do you expect. Go outside and get some fresh air.”

Ok, next up. On April 1st, the OpenSim developers commit a prank patch to the OpenSim svn trunk that turns all avatars into stick insects. There are just so many things wrong with that. It’s juvenile, practical jokes are never funny, practical jokes are power-gaming, practical jokes are for the weak, geez, we could go on all day but the main issue I have with the OpenSim devs is in a reply I read by one of them on another blog. This is it:

“The April Fool’s joke was in completely good faith with the hope that everybody in the community would enjoy it. It was a funny and inventive change (in the best tradition of creative coding). As you’ve written, it happened last year and was always going to happen this year. All the core developers supported it.”

(If you agree with that statement then we share absolutely no common ground upon which a reasonable discussion can take place.)

So what’s my point? It’s simple and it’s one I have tried to make numerous times. It doesn’t matter if you are “open source” and that :”nobody is getting paid”. That DOES NOT give you the right to fuck with the people who use your code. Oh, but it was harmless, you say. No, you fucked with them when you forced them to accept your puerile definition of what is “harmless fun*. Professionalism is professionalism is professionalism, PAID OR NOT! I am so sick and bloody tired of opensource fanatics who insist that people who use open source software have no leg to stand on when they *expect* the code to work in certain ways.

A famous young man once said “we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Open Source, as it is practised by the OpenSim gang does things because they are easy. It’s easy to develop a thing in the solipsist’s basement, no peer review, no UAT, no boss keeping you down and making you work to schedule, no user’s clambering for this or that function. They dare talk about creativity! Creativity isn’t easy.

What is hard is doing a Metaplace, or a Second Life, or a moon shot! What is hard is reigning in the rampant coder ego long enough to realize that a machine without users is a machine without function or *PURPOSE*.

My brain is “madly off in all directions” this morning. I just wanted to get some of that stuff onto “paper” as it were. Maybe I will flesh it out in the comments.

Just quickly, my problems with the Metaplace “new user experience” were much more related to the craptacular computer I was using to access it than it was to any flaw in the Metaplace UI. Yes, I prefer proper 3D like Second Life but Metaplace has so many likeable things about it that have nothing to do with eye candy that I will keep coming back to it. The TOS is brilliant, for example. Ever since Prokofy first wrote about it (what? a year ago?), I have wanted to see a world that had such a constitution built into its bones. If I may, “what’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh”, as we have seen in the case of OpenSim.

There was a massive comment thread on Slashdot a few years ago on the subject of placing easter eggs in code. Slashdot is a geek community generally but, on the whole, I think it’s fair to say that Slashdot is an *open source* geek community. There were two sides in the ensuing debate. Those open source developers who worked for a living who were mainly aghast at the idea of easter egging code and those open source developers who are really just students or unemployable (sorry, self-employed, sorry, self-under-employed!) sociopaths who took the position “it’s my code, I can do what I want, the luser can patch or get the fuck out.” I mention this because it would be unfair if this post suggested that *all* open source advocates have the social maturity of developmentally delayed 3 year olds.

One last thing. Prokofy’s April Fool’s posting announcing he was open sourcing himself actually *WAS* funny. I mean, it was *really* funny in the way a good April Fool’s joke should be. Nobody was made to look the fool, nobody felt foolish, there was nothing mean spirited or power-trippy about it.

Ya, ok, I’m done with that for now and will go take my meds (that’s tea and a cigarette) You can’t get the good stuff any more as it is all being shot into V.V.’s butt to keep her from posting on Second Thoughts.

Deja Vu

I got my invite to Metaplace today. I did their 2 minute registration and after some clicking around on the website (How the heck do you actually get *into* the world, I said to myself!) I managed to start the process of logging in. They must be very busy today because I failed on several login attempts. What I wanted to say, however; the reason for this blog posting, is that on the “Go” page where they feature the various worlds you can enter there was one called Antfarm Redux! For a moment, I was like, wow these guys really know how to make you feel at home. It was a coincidence of course. I can’t wait for the login queue to settle down so I can go play Antfarm Redux!

This one goes out to the ones I love!

Get it? It’s an REM reference. I don’t know what struck me this week with the whole focus on music thing. Well, you guys all know that music is a big part of my life and I just recently discovered the little icon that lets me insert YouTubes into my posts! Hahaha, so now, rather than suffer my gibbering, you can suffer my taste in music (although we all mostly share that taste) Ever since the first mix tape was made by a lovestruck 14 year old and passed on to the object of their earnest affections, people have co-opted rock & roll recordings in their quest to be profoundly understood. I am no different. WOW, that was weird, I just flipped back into SL to turn on the music stream and it was Lou Reed doing Sweet Jane, his version sucks Anyway, it’s one of those late afternoons where you just want to listen to music and chat with friends. Here’s what I would put on. If nothing about it makes sense, so much the better. I am no Young Werther, dying for love. Just a rock & roller with an internet connection.

We begin enigmatically with something which is for me the most precise distillation of austerity and passion ever recorded. It’s the so called ‘81 recording of the Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould. This is what I listen to when I really need to *think*. If I listen to it when I am not thinking, it just simply moves me to tears – as the Aria moves into the 2nd variation, like wow! This is what all those SL people who *claim* to have Asperger’s Syndrome don’t get – the actual definition of “high functioning”. Take it away, Glenn

Now, this next one I have been thinking about because of all the talk of “simulated rape” and cyber-rape and, alas, about actual rape, that has been going on in the SL blogosphere recently. It’s a high-powered, raunchy, near perfect rock & roll song and it’s about rape; it *doesn’t* try to make it anything but the ugliness and horror that rape is. The band, X, later became conflicted about this song because they came to recognize a disconnect between what the song was about and the way the song had become almost “anthemic” in the LA punk scene. Watching this video doesn’t make it clear that the band itself didn’t suffer from that (with the exception of Exene herself); nevertheless, the guitar is searing and the whole thing rocks out, both flawed and flawlessly.

Ok, next up is another longish video by a band that I dearly love. It’s two songs recorded on the Old Grey Whistle Test by Holly and the Italians. If you’ve ever spoken to me about music in Second Life, I have pushed this video on you! What can I say about this band? Holly said it best:

“Some people achieve greatness, others have it thrust upon them… and then there are those… who are *born* Italian.”

Holly’s brash, gutsy soul is a fucking inspiration and there is nothing Italian about me other than my overwhelming desire to live in Tuscany. Maybe if I show up with a copy of “The Right to be Italian” under my arm, they’ll let me in! LET ME IN!

Everyone makes the obvious connection between Holly and Joan. I love Joan and she is here in spirit even if I don’t post a YouTube. It kinda goes without saying. Holly is a rock & roll girl entirely in her own right and comparing her to Joan isn’t necessary. But, since I am on the subject of Rocker Chicks and since I am always on the subject of Canada and how pure and great and supremely wonderful we all are up here in the Great White North, here’s a woman you might have never heard of. She is Bif Naked and she is also sui generis and needs no “achievement by comparison” because, in Bif’s case, there simply is *no* comparison. Read about her on the tubes, she’s outstanding. And she ROCKS!

CAUTION: This video might cause the universe to implode. You’ll understand if you watch it.

Nothing more need be said. Bless you, Bif. <3 <3

Wasn’t going to say any more but it’s the4th of the 9th. Sue me!

Punk’s Not Grief at All (apologies to The Exploited)

Oh somehow, in some alternate universe, that blog title makes sense. I was looking for today’s video selection on the YouTubes and I wanted to find Canadian punk legends, The Demics, doing their ode to the source of all Torontonian street angst entitled “New York City” (as in, I wanna go to) and instead found an old CBC piece dated 1977 on the subject of this “new fangled Punk Rock stuff” done by none other than the lugubrious Hana Gartner. You might remember her from that atrocious piece of reportage on Second Life she did a few months back for the CBC’s Fifth Estate. It seems Hana’s approach to things she doesn’t understand (i.e. refuse to try) hasn’t changed much in 32 years. Here it is, in all its awfulness:

Frankie Venom R.I.P.

Was this blog about Second Life?

It certainly started that way but I can take it wherever I want. Having said that, I finally had some “success” in SL this evening. I worked on my gas station and here’s some results.

Icha's Bayou Beer, Bar, Gas 'n' Grill

I see I have some correspondence on the blog to get through. I will for sure but my brain is in frivolity mode which is why I am ersatz dancing to 80’s tunes at an ersatz gas station in an ersatz world.

Toronto’s Finest

Ok, to make up for yesterday’s excursion into the dark side of things (hey, I just like the way that song sounds) your faithful DJ is going to play you her favourite all time song ever. It was a hard choice since I have about one hundred of them but, in the end, Margo’s voice wins the day. Heck, even Lou said this was his favourite!