World AIDS Day
Somewhere over the rainbow, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.
Next December 1st is World AIDS Day, and i think is a good moment to remember our friends and all the people in the world, victims of the HIV.
Since June 5, 1981, when AIDS was first recognized, it has killed more than 25 million people. In the world there is an estimated 33.2 million people living with the disease, specially in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the 64% of the HIV-positive people. Furthermore, this people has to live with the “AIDS stigma”, ostracism, rejection, discrimination and avoidance of HIV infected people; compulsory HIV testing without prior consent or protection of confidentiality; violence against HIV infected individuals or people who are perceived to be infected with HIV (including volunteers, helpers, doctors, nurses, relatives… any individual in contact with HIV infected people); and the quarantine of HIV infected individuals. In many developed countries AIDS stigma is expressed often in conjuction with one or more stigmas, specially those associated with homosexuality, bisexuality, promiscuity, and intravenous drug use.
Some of my best friends are HIV-positive, one of them knows it since 1992. Luckily, in my country, the treatments are covered by the Public Healthcare System, so they feel quite good. My personal experience with them about the AIDS stigma is not only related to the individual ones (if the hell they talk about exists, sure they will burn there), also traveling with them to New York City in a tourism visit. “…Currently, the USA is one of 15 countries to effectively ban HIV-positive travellers from entry…” (from an article on MedScape Magazine).
Thanks to that post from Rik Riel i knew about the sponsored activities in Second Life for this World AIDS Day. Healthinfo Island (SLurl) has some activities from 09:00AM SLT including workshops, information, tours, … including activities in The Teen Grid.
DenmarkCopenhagen sim (SLurl) is hosting a fundraiser party from 02:00PM SLT to raise money for the World AIDS Foundation.
I’d like to remind also the “Super Fan Happy Club” installation by Arahan Claveau (big hug, Ari! 
), sadly this installation is not in Second Life anymore, but you can find images about it in this Flickr set.
Maybe the image in this post can seem too “happy” (the image was not originally took for this post) but is my way to try to talk about hope in a post about something so sad and hard as AIDS.
Home, sweet home… reloaded
After showing my home in a post two weeks ago i wanted to show you my house by the inside, so… why not to make a Machinima instead of taking pictures?
Was also a good oportunity to try to make a Machinima with Windlight, i moved the Graphics tab to Ultra, is the best graphics level, but the frame rate was quite low, so i’m sure you will understand the image “jumps”. 
As you can see the furniture and decoration follow the main lines of the house. Mediterranean, warm, some touches of arab style, carpets, tapestries, curtains… I’ve tried to find rich textured objects.
I tried to work the light with the “Enviromental Editors” of Windlight to make the image look as natural as possible, trying to show different moments in time, from the sunrise at the begining of the movie to the sunset at the end. I accelerated the movement of the sun also at the end to make the sunset faster, no edition of the movie.
About the movie in itself, i used two options, moving the camera by myself or with the Machinima Cam by CodeBastard Redgrave (I won one in a photo-contest in the SLBloggers group Thanks, Codie!!!!! It’s a great tool!). For the image capture i didn’t used the SLClient tool (it works bad and crashes often, anyway Data Linden told me that because they didn’t updated this feature since version 1.4 and is very buggy they are thinking in remove the feature from the client), instead of this i used a program called iShowU (only for Mac) and for the video-edition i used iMovie’08 by Apple (also only for Mac, sorry).
You can find the rest of my small movies in the Vod:Pod widget in the right column of the blog, in my Vod:Pod page or in my YouTube channel page.
Rezzed.net, the new social network for Second Life
Luc Aubert, scripter and weapons builder, has created Rezzed.net, the new social network for Second Life. In fact is quite similar to SLprofiles, but looks quite (much better!!! i personally think SLprofiles is UGLY!) better and offers the possibility of post a blog and show your pics in a nice way in your profile page. Also all accounts are verified in Second Life, so the information seems quite valid. Personally it reminds me a lot Facebook, but for pixels. 
Rezzed.net is in public beta (you can through a Rezzed.net terminal in-world) and offers for the moment only 10MB for pictures (I want more!!!).
I knew about Rezzed.net thanks to a post on Codie’s blog (thanks, Codie). If you finally decide to join you can add me as friend in my profile page there.
Variety show
Not alone this sunset…., originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.
A small post to talk about my Second Life lately, is not my SL is a Variety Show (sometimes it almost is), is just that i want to talk about some different things.
As always good friends around, last week i was doing Tai Chi with Wolf Hartnell while he visited my place, was a great moment talking about the human and the divine things. 
Also, as you can see in the pic above, i met someone “special” and we are enjoying time together, knowing each other better and respecting each own space. No plans, just to live the moment, and i like the way is going (no more comments here ).
Do you remember i had an art gallery? Well i decided to open a new one (YAY!) in a sim called Dormillouse, still building it, but i think the name will be Assets SL Gallery, have to see if the name is not in use.
About SLphotography, you saw surely my Flickr stream, enjoying Windlight. Happy also becuase i won the Second Prize (ex aequo with Nephie Eerie and Kean Kelly) at the last exhibition at The Cannery. Mia Olivier won the first price with a great pic called Cyber Angel.
So you can see, varieties in this post.
Buggy, buggy Second Life
HAVE YOU HAD INVENTORY LOSS?, originally uploaded by MOFSL.
What a last week! As you can see in an old post, Second Life has more bugs than a Roach Motel! A part of the Windlight First Look client (with the normal bugs in a test client, well, maybe a bit more bugs) the bugs were mainly in the Asset servers (not sure if it has a relation with Windlight, maybe is just a coincidence), but not only in them as you can see in the following posts from the Official Linden Blog from Nov, 17th to today:
- Network, Website Problems
- Recurring Issues Within Second Life Over The Weekend
- Second Life Voice Issues
- Network problems affecting some logins
- Second Life Support Portal Down
- Sluggish Logins and Asset Performance
- DNS Failures Affecting Logins, Main Site Access, Region Crossings
Nice, right? This just in 5 days. Of course i’m not complaining about the information, just complaining about the issues. Specially the Asset performance one, objects take a lot of time to rezz or to delete (if they finally do, of course, because yesterday was impossible to delete one prim while i was building). And that really bothering issues with Inventory, that’s why i posted this image by MOFSL, and i ask you to vote on issue SVC-114 on the SL jira.
In the other side, Kean Kelly published this post in her blog with some really useful “workarounds”. Worried about missing inventory i’d like to paste this comment by Arteer Oliva on SVC-553:
An “angel” sent me this solution today. It worked for me this first time I tried it. I have been getting the “Missing from Database” messages for four weeks. Tried all The Labs solutions to no avail. This one form the “angel” worked for me. Not guaranteed, but worth a try, right! Go for it! Wooohooo!”If you realize that you have missing inventory, follow the steps below as soon as possible.1. If you do not yet have it installed, install the latest Beta Client.
secondlife.com/community/preview.php
2. Login to the Beta Grid and find a quiet place where no one will annoy you while you are trying to solve a problem.
DO NOT REZ ANYTHING WHILE ON THE BETA GRID. GO INTO BUSY MODE IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT ACCEPT ITEMS, DO NOT DELETE ITEMS, DO NOT PASS OR RENAME ITEMS.
3. Open your inventory, type in a search term (I used Tree) and allow your inventory to populate.
4. Got your goods back? Awesome! Quit the Beta client, login to the Main Grid and do the same thing. Once you have retrieved your items on the Main Grid and your inventory has fully populated, clear cache, logout and see cache’ing as you …
5. Log back into the Main Grid, recheck inventory, smile a lot, raise Hell as usual.
This technique has been proven to work more than half the time so it may save your hide. Please bear in mind that you should only expect positive results if you attempt this workaround as soon as possible upon discovery of your missing items. I am not guaranteeing that you will be able to recover your items but having at least a chance at doing so is much better than no chance at all. I hope this helps some of the residents that fall victim to this issue.”
So i’m hopping this buggy week ends soon… but…
After talking about all that, after all the hope, i’d like you read this words by Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) in CNET news last august when asked about the technical problems in Second Life. The articles says:
“…Linden Lab, too, is a bit unapologetic about its technical headaches, promising that it has been working to eradicate them but encouraging both current and prospective residents to accept them as a necessary component of such an experimental medium. Second Life got to where it is, Rosedale explained, by not waiting for the kinks to iron themselves out.
“If we had had that sort of traditional “stop, think carefully, seek feedback, listen to everybody” (mentality), I can tell you that as the entrepreneur behind this thing, even starting in 1999, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have made it,”. Rosedale said…”
Enough clear, right? Personally i imagine Philip showing up one finger while saying this words.
UPDATE (NOV, 22nd): Philip Linden wrote a post in the Official Linden Blog about last week stability problems, i think is important to read.
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