I’ve been writing this blog from June 2007, that’s some like 4 years and a half, not a short time at all. But you know, sometimes one needs to move to new paths and possibly this is the right time to do it.

I’m facing deep changes in my RL in the next months, i feel a bit less attached to SL too, i presume it changed in a way i find difficult to feel connected as i was before. Not trying to speak like an old cranky man like “My times were better..”, just saying for several reasons i can’t feel so into Second Life to write a regular blog with some quality (it never was too much quality, lol). So i think it’s time to stop blogging in “A Crimson world”.

I’ll keep writing and posting shots and almost blogging in my Facebook page (you can see a widget of it in the sidebar), i mean, i won’t stop writing and posting things, only i prefer to do it in other system, like Facebook is.

Also i will keep using Flickr and other microblogging tools like Twitter and Plurk (links also available in the sidebar).

What i mean is, i’m not leaving SL, i’m not stopping posting about SL, but i stop doing it in a blog, that’s all. After the project of Soup Radio ended i just feel the need to change the way i express my SL side or actually the SL side of my life(s).

Many thanks to all of my readers in this blog, love you, people!!!

If you follow me in Twitter or Facebook you probably read about that change of home in Second Life i’m into now. I will resume the story: One of the estate managers told one of us the estate owners have not be around for some time and none of the managers had any news about or from the owners, also they were not sure someone was actually paying Linden Lab the monthly region fees.

We were a nice group of friends living in that sim, so we just didn’t renew our rentals and removed all our prims before they would be removed and deleted. We decided also to look for a new place all together… and we are now in that process. We found a couple of nice sims we would move to, so you will have soon-ish some pics of a new place.

Well, all together is not actually a big drama, just an inconvenient, but anyway this makes you think about the nature of Second Life. This (virtual) world is made of people and full of what that people makes, it is dramatically dynamic and time has a special relativity in it (the SL cycle of day/night is 4 hours and it seems like the REAL time cycle of SL, 6 days in one, 6 years in one).

It seems one should not feel attached to “something” in Second Life, or even to “someone”! Places and objects change, they get destroyed, deleted, rebuilt continuously. People come and goes, you meet new great people and suddenly that one you really liked doesn’t come “inworld” so often. About people, the good thing is you can link with them in other ways (email, other social networks, etc.) but what happen with the places or the objects in a virtual world like ours? I presume that’s why a lot of people, including myself, love SLphotography, it’s the way to “keep” those places or objects, to keep the memory of a virtual world.

Will rebuild my home soon, will be maybe better than the old one, and i will enjoy doing it. That’s part of the charm of Second Life, the ability to change everything again and again… only to change it again. Some way is fascinating how we expend time and energies in houses built on quicksand, but maybe it’s only the illusion of permanence we need, the illusion of living in a world that never changes.

So i’m here, seating on a bench in an abandoned train station somewhere in the grid, with my friend Kevin, talking about this and that:

So yes, Kevin, it seems the Teens will be officially in the Main Grid… yes, we talked about this two years ago… no, i d0n’t think either this will change much, Linden Lab made some clear changes to the maturity levels of content and regions some time ago…

Oh, Kevin, yes… also heard something about the new CEO of Linden Lab… Rod Humble, right? Well, he comes from managing The Sims series in Electronic Arts and also he was part of the team who managed EverQuest so… maybe i think he can make some interesting things for Second Life, let’s see what happens with him… and let’s be patient, we all know the resident can be sometimes really demanding… Well, call me naive but i think things will go better from now…

The new web style profiles in Viewer 2.5 Beta… i think they should do some work on them, they places the side bar to reduce the windows in screen and now we need a giant window to check someone’s profile… and takes a lot to load compared with the traditional profiles! Well, let’s think it’s in Beta still and they will work on it… It’s nice, Kevin, we think alike about some things!

Oh, yes.. i met a man i like a lot! *smiles* Yes, but well, let’s see what happens with that, we met not much ago but i like him, he is just sweet, fun and really sexy! *winks* I’ll tell you more about him soon.

So, yes, Kevin, my friend, everything come and goes… life is nice, isn’t it?

I don’t remember who started this thing of the “Love Thursday”… Possibly it was Berry, but anyway, i think is a lovely idea, to write a blog post about something or someone you love. And specially today, Thanksgiving… So, since this is my first “Love Thursday” post, i’ll start saying THANKS to Second Life®.

Well, thanks to Linden Lab, and to Philip Linden (or Philip Rosedale, as you prefer), for making this amazing world and for keeping it up together with all the residents inside of it. I love Second Life because it gave me the possibility of meeting people from all over the world, with different views, opinions, visions…

I love SL because thanks to it i decided to learn myself Photoshop, GIMP… and some other software related with images, video and 3D creation and edition. And because it helped me to improve (not enough, lol) my English, and made me think about blogging and writing. I love SL because it opened my mind to my creative side with new unexplored options.

I love SL because i met there WONDERFUL friends, amazing creative minds, fun, caring, loving and amazing. Because it gave me the opportunity to share experiences and moment with these friends, to laugh with them, to cry with them, to share much more than a simple conversation.

I love SL because i can build my dreams (and my nightmares) in it and i can share them. Because is a strange world full of crazy and awesome people. Because all you can find inside that world is build by someone like you, another resident.

I love SL because it can cause PASSION in its residents, passion to love it and even to hate it.

I love SL because, after being more than 4 years in it, it can still surprise me.

I love SL because my pixel soul lives in it.

This last times were really time of changes… after more than two years and for some private reasons i decided to sell Ursa Major, my sim in Second Life. It was not an easy decision, but i need to concentrate my investments in the so called “Real Life”. Anyway, the new owner is a good friend, Thaumata, and the sim will remain with a similar project, almost the same group of people we always were with new neighbours and new projects. So… with all the Ursa Major topic… i’m really happy about how all was fixed finally.

So even this meant the end of a lot of projects at the same time it meant the start of some new ones and new illusions. Thanks to Thaumata, to all the Ursa Major residents…

For almost four years i’ve been Raul Crimson, and i will be Raul Crimson for a long time (i hope). And i know this may sound kinda silly, but i’m sad about that Display Names thing Linden Lab is working on (read more in their blogpost).

I understand this feature may be useful for a lot of people, but at the same time i’m not happy about how Linden Lab is planning to implement the feature:

• Your actual name will become your username with a period between, so Raul Crimson will be raul.crimson.
• Anybody can use any Display name and change it once a week, so anybody can be Raul Crimson as display name and the option that Linden Lab offers me if someone uses my display name is… change mine to another one.
• “Real” Usernames will be hidden by default.

There is something i find… funny. In the Wiki about this new feature says you can keep your actual name… but also anybody can take your actual name too. That’s what i don’t like at all.

Names are something related to identity, Raul Crimson is a way to identify me and i feel it only identifies me, not anyone, only me. The only thing i say is, ok, go with this feature, i’m all for new things and i’m sure a lot of people would find this useful and interesting, but please, make the direct transcriptions of usernames (like Raul Crimson to raul.crimson) only available to the username owner, so only me can be Raul Crimson.

So… what do you think about this new feature?

I was not a big fan of Mr. Kingdon, i think his view was not as passionate as Philip one, maybe was more about marketing than about community, and even i’m sure he tried his best to make Second Life a better place (or maybe only a better business) he had some… let’s say wrong (or “non popular”) choices or issues: SL Enterprise, the ban of freebies in XStreetSL, Zindra, Avatars United…

Anyway, i think those were not “bad” decisions themselves, but all of them together made a lot of residents be against him and his management. Of course there is also Viewer 2.0, but i’ll talk about it later. It seems sometimes we like to make M look as the Devil, but i’d like now to make some positive comments about M’s management:

In the time Mr. Kingdon was CEO of Linden Lab i think performance and stability has been better and better. Of course that means generally and sometimes is understandable a system so complex as the Second Life Grid has some problems.

Viewer 2.0 is a good product, works pretty good, has less problems with memory use that Emerald or any 1.23 based viewer and has some really cool features. And even you don’t like the UI (i like it personally even it can/should be improved) you can always use alternative viewers based in 1.23 UI.

I’m saying all this from my experience and point of view and is possible someone doesn’t agree, specially about Viewer 2.0, but i think is a question of preferences and nobody HAS TO use it, is an optional viewer.

And i needed to say all this because i’m tired of negativity, of “Second Life is crap”, of all this shit. Is difficult to find positive comments sometimes about Second Life, specially from the residents. Some of the SL residents seem to be incredibly reluctant to any minor change and they will complain about anything in any case (I still remember people complaining about Windlight), and to those who always complain i ask… if Second Life is so crappy and they have nothing positive to say about it why are they still in it? Why are they just complaining and complaining and they just can’t make or say something constructive? What are they doing to make Second Life better?

Criticism is good, it is even needed, but not empty one. Some people who doesn’t like the viewer is creating cool viewers with different features, that’s constructive criticism! Of course most of us can’t create a new viewer, but we can point what we don’t like, suggest how we think it would me and keep loving what we deeply love in this virtual world, say i like this and i dislike that.

As always i don’t pretend to tell people how they should act or react, i just express what i think, so feel free to comment and share also your point of view… and about Philip… welcome back home, Phil!

Image by Daniel Voyager published under a Creative Commons license.

Second Life is supposed to be a world “built by its residents”… and it is, even the “government” (in this case Linden Lab) promotes some works, some like other governments do. They do it with the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW from now) and the team of residents who build the projects are The Moles and since they are residents i presume this way Second Life remains as that “world built by residents”…

The first work by the LDPW was Bay City, this was a quite huge project, and under my point of view is a really good work, if Linden Lab wanted to “dignify” the Mainland with a project then this was good, land in there is INCREDIBLY expensive.

The there there was urban, a city full of channels of water, bridges, a port, industry… including public transportation (tram and water-tram systems).

Other big projects were Nautilus (ancient mediterranean culture themed), Zindra (the Mainland area dedicated to Adult content), the Mainland sail sims, the Linden Homes sims… and i presume they are planning some more.

But their work is not only about this kind of themed communities, also they are developing roads in Mainland (in the top picture walking around one of the newest roads) and working a lot lately in the SLRR (Second Life Railroad) and a ferry connection between two “Maritime stations”. But loving as i love railways i’ll write a special post about the SLRR soon.

Knowing the chaos the Mainland became when Linden Lab decided to “leave it for its own” i think this LDPW is a really good project, first for Mainland residents, making their neighbourhoods better and keeping the value of the land, and second for all the residents, providing nice places to hang out or explore. Possibly the land auction system was not really smart and caused the prices of land to raise due speculation, specially in Bay City, but i really hope Linden Lab learned about it and the new projects would have better ways to “distribute” the land.

Photos by me, Shadoe Landman, Wildstar Beaumont and Alpha Auer, all published under Creative Commons license, follow the images links for more info.

One of things that really amaze me in SL is how fast it all changes… i presume is like a speedy version of the so called “Real Life” (even i think both are real, only in different ways).  What is really important for you some day is not so the next one, maybe is we are still learning, like really tiny babies exploring the “adults” world (and i’m not meaning Zindra in this case *winks*).

And then it comes when someone you really trusted is not as honest as you expected, and someone who had to leave SL for personal reasons is back and you are really happy about it, and something you were worried because it was taking a lot of time to be done IS finally done and most of the old friends are always there and some new wonderful friends are there too. Maybe it all seems to be changing but some things don’t change, i will be always there, standing, smiling at the good things that always were there, at the ones that had to go but are back… and just ignoring the “not so good” things, because they are past, and as we say in my country “The water that passed the river can’t move the waterwheel”.

…a few good avatars to help us with a new ad campaign intended to bring the tremendous diversity and depth of the Second Life community to the forefront of more people’s minds…

Since i have a dirty mind once i read the post i so needed to parody it, i mean the example ad.

I wrote a long essay of 500 words about all this but was boring and possibly not all fair, so since i don’t want to bore you and i try to be as fair as possible i’ll try to express my ideas about this in short and clear ways. First, even i agree Second Life may seem to some people only a game, a place to have virtual sex or to grief i agree the other side of Second Life, the one of artists, educators, musicians, creators… should be promoted and make public. But since both sides are the real SL if they want to show the diversity they should consider an ad in the style of the one i made.

Second, they will find a problem since most of the SL residents prefer to keep privacy at some levels, and if they look for people in Facebook where the TOS clearly forbid to create accounts for “not real people” like avatars they will find only a small representation of the diversity they want to show. So even all together may be a good idea and i hope it works to bring new people to Second Life i think opening the discussion inside the SLblogs would be better than doing it in Facebook. Also i wonder… will those “good avatars” get paid for giving his both images for an ad? Because if they pay enough i can show whatever they want!!! *joking*