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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Brahma Yoga Class Still Going On In Second Life


By Grease Coakes

Even with the departure of Pramiil Magne, a Guru or Teacher of the ashrams of the sims at
Airtol Hill (67/242/61), the mediation upon Brahma is still going on. In real life, Pramiil has been a Guru for over thirty years. He said he was lucky to have two Gurus, Babaji and Baba, that he met in real life.

When Pramiil left Second Life to be more involved in real life, his students like myself missed him dearly. To honor his teachings, we still have classes and spiritual dancing in the ashrams. Stjohn Noyes himself over voice said he had a funny sense of humor and a funny laugh. We both wished Pramiil to return in Second Life, but at this point and time it seems very unlikely.

He was also stern and fair. One of the things that he stated as a spiritual teacher was how important it was to serve others. One of the things that Stjohn said was that he met his girlfriend, who he is now engaged to in real life, through Brahma Yoga class. That's one of the first people I met in class, was Eyll Tripsa a long time student of Pramiil.

Stjohn and I both miss Pramiil dearly. As I remember, his catch-phrase over Voice was “Time to wind up class.”

Stjohn also made the comment over voice that I didn't think of that Guruji's or Pramiil's energy was still active in the many ashrams. Even though his avatar is long gone, over a year, his energy is still around after teaching and guiding meditations for so long.

Stjohn said he had other things to do, so I went to talk with Aldaida Resident and Mirta Alecto, both students of Pramiil's teachings they had these things to say.

Aldaida Resident spoke, "I found this ashram a little more than couple years ago. Since that time, my life has completely changed. It was like I found a missing piece of me in the teachings of Guruji."

Mirta said the energy at the Babaji ashram was good and cozy. Also that she was used to familiar people that are her classmates. She was speaking in Italian but her words were translated into English through an SL attachment. 

 Aldaida had this to say as well, "If I had to add one more thing is that although I miss Guruji, I am happy that Stjohn is taking care of this ashram now. Guruji made the best choice to pass the ashram to him. He is indeed the best person for this."

Mirta Alecto was saying Stjohn is a mirror which we reflect ourselves. Dominater Haven, who logged off before I could catch a hold of him, is the main builder of the ashrams. Before, it was Pramiil Magne who built the ashrams and temples. Now Dominater, who Stjohn told me is doing a wonderful job, is a professional who does quality work. He built upon the old Brahma Ashram and improved upon it, making it seem very realistic. Right behind the Shiva Temple at Airtol Hill (131/208/30) is an amazing view that Dominater built.

Not only are there lovely ashrams, but Dominater is a building wizard with gardens and a fountain I found with an elephant. One of the gods of Hinduism is Ganesh, A furry version of an elephant. He is seen as a god of wisdom and knowledge.

Stjohn said anyone is welcome to come participate in Brahma Yoga classes. With Pramiil gone, he was put in charge of the ashrams and teaching classes. One of the classes is at 4AM SL time at the Shiva Temple at Airtol Hill (131/208/30) on Saturday. On 5AM SL time spiritual bajons, or songs, and meditations are at Quietly Tuesday (205/131/35).

Or also if you wish to explore and see the wonderful sights feel free to explore the ashrams and gardens.


Grease Coakes

Friday, July 25, 2014

The Hanging Trial



By Gemma Cleanslate
Some of you may recall that I have written about the roleplay town of Tombstone Arizona several times and my friend did a story about her time there ( though she is no longer there at this time)
http://slnewserplaces.blogspot.com/2013/01/reader-submitted-tombstone-roleplay-in.html. Breezes Babii also did many articles about things she experienced in the towns and she is still happily living there. I went over for the trial of one of my fishing friends who lives in Tombstone. 

The Courthouse was packed when I arrived (late from being lost in the wrong town on the way. ) to witness the hanging trial of Angi Spires. Before the trial started it was necessary to remind all to remove their weapons since one idiot had not parked it at the door. The jury was seated already when I arrived.  Angi was seated at the table looking terrible. Her eye was healing from being blackened, rope burns around her neck,  and her face was scratched. She was eating a taco handed to her by a compassionate member of the  audience. Her eyes looked confused. Angi is on trial for shooting Garth 'Dead Eye' Mcleary (gamloth), a self proclaimed territory bad guy.  and this may lead to a hanging.  There is more to the story it seems and I am hoping it will come out in the testimony.

 You must realize that in the late 1800‘s the court became more like a theater with many allowances , eating , drinking , smoking allowed by the members of the audience.  So in this wonderful roleplay sim many of them also made comments to each other and expressed their thoughts in role play mode. This added to the theater of the moment. 

The decorum of the trial  however was well controlled despite the asides  and the lawyers well prepared, both prosecution and defense. Jimmi Ruble, the Judge, instructed the jury on conduct , gave us a little history of the court conduct of that era and the trial began. 

There was not much of an opening statement and the first witness was called The Marshall, Kristoff Jamison , was sworn in, sat and the prosecutor, Nimbrel Sassoon began to question him. Marshall Kris witnessed the whole event. It seems that he was in the process of arresting the man who had wronged her when Angi took out a carrot and tried to shoot him. Well, since that did not work she grabbed a gun from a bystander and  finished the job.
The next witness called , Julielynn Slade staggered to the chair leaving an alcoholic haze  behind her. However, her testimony was consistent with the Marshals.  A statement was read and submitted to the court that clearly describes what happened the day of the incident read by the prosecutor,  Nimbrel Sassoon
Territory of Arizona
Dated: 7/17/1899
Name of Witness: Ben Stolen

DESCRIPTION OF CRIME: I was enjoying the fresh air on Allen street ,talking to a few friends, Miss Angi being among the crowed, she was cleanly not in her right mind, when along come Mister Garth...In a split second Miss Angi just seemed to start shouting accusing Mister Garth of being half dead, most folks were to assume at that point that Mister Garth were the one that had near beating Miss Angi half to death , I ain't never seen Mister Garth to be that sort of man and still find it hard to believe if it was to be truth, anyways, before I knew it, Miss Angi had pulled my colt from my holster and blasted the poor SOB in the knee...she then dropped my colt in the middle of dusty ol Allen street..I was more mad about that seeing how I spent the morning cleaning the dang thing, she did apologies to me for it a bit later..but none the less..I couldn't react fast enough to have prevented any of it from happening....”
The Doctor, Jessicajewells. took the stand next  to recount her treatment of Angi’s injuries when she was returned after being kidnapped and beaten leading to a complete mental breakdown. Next Paisley Nelson was sworn in and confirmed that her behaviour before the shooting was disoriented. After she left the stand a young girl , Nora ... was called by the defending lawyer, and testified to Angi’s behaviour since she returned from her kidnapping had been completely opposite to her organized previous self. Angi is the Matron of the orphanage and Nora is a helper there. Many of her charges were in the seats witnessing the trial looking sorrowful and frightened when they were not throwing candy at each other. Angi was called to the stand finally and after telling of her tribulation at the hands of Garth and her action in the street, in her confused way threw herself on the mercy of the court by accepting her actions as completely wrong. 

The trial progressed to its closing statements. The Judge instructed the jury and they retired to the jury room to reach a verdict . There was much discussion in the room with sudden shouts and  hollering amidst many comments from the people waiting in the courtroom while they were out. 

Finally they emerged to the waiting crowd with a verdict of not guilty! The court erupted in applause and relief. Angi was free! The doctor was ordered to treat her and help her recover from all the events . Happy to be released from this long trial( when I arrived the judge said most trials last about an hour but it was now over 2 hours. I was about to leave when shots were heard from outside the court. A man marched in and began to berate the Judge for corruption . Time to leave before getting involved in a new episode. Tomorrow the trial of Angi’s abuser will begin . She left with Nora and the children to go cook chicken. 

So ends the trial of Angi Spires. I will be visiting Tombstone again soon to see what is going on. If you are interested in learning more about Tombstone which still exists in Arizona today ,  and its adjacent sims and roleplay you can visit the greeting area. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Broken%20Rose/177/174/704



Gemma Cleanslate

Monday, July 21, 2014

The Oldbie Project – Kim Anubis "Making Lemonade Out of Lemons" Part One


By DrFran Babcock

I can’t even remember how I ended up interviewing Kim Anubis, but without a doubt she was amongst the few oldbies I interviewed who are not only still in Second Life, but are still just as enthusiastic about it. As you will see, I didn’t have to work very hard at this interview. Thanks, Kim!

Interview Preparation

I am usually quite well prepared for my interviews with the oldbies. If I know I am going to meet with someone, I do my homework, and find out all I can about them. I had planned to do the same thing before interviewing Kim, but I had entered the meeting into my calendar using my time zone instead of that of Second Life, and ended up losing three hours of preparation. Although I would never do this again in an intentional way, I ended up learning about the remarkable Kim Anubis spontaneously.

Kim teleported me into the snow lands, where she has lived for most of her ten years. We spent time in front of a simple shack she had built, close to a road, and across the creek from more of the land. This land had remained pretty mountainous and rugged until Michael Linden and the moles came and placed a few bridges on it, thereby improving the accessibility.

The Questions

I like to ask all of the oldbies the same few questions, and then go on from there. Kim said so many interesting things, I kept having follow up questions:

SL Newser: How did you find out about Second Life™?

Kim Anubis:I did a Google search for online communities that might be hiring.  I was especially interested in Virtual Worlds. Search turned up There and SL. There was hiring, so I went and worked in house there for a while.  I came back to SL the next year.

SL Newser: What even made you think to look for that?

Kim Anubis: I had worked in online community management for a long time—I moderated big special events for a partner of AOL, that sort of thing.

Sl Newser: What are your earliest memories of Second Life™?

Kim Anubis: I logged in the first time and arrived at an island where there were tutorials and an actual live Linden, who was handing out useful notecards and offering assistance.  The customer service was stellar.

SL Newser: You come from a social or community network background, what were your thoughts on the SL experience.

Kim Anubis: I actually also worked on educational software back in the day, which added to my perspective, I think.Back then, Linden attention to customers and community was absolutely remarkable.  They used to collaborate with Residents like mad. I recall, before I joined, writing in to make a suggestion about the last names on offer—back when we had last names. I said that I didn't really like the names available, but my friends and I were interested in joining if we weren't going to be stuck with names we didn't like.  I made suggestions, including something Egyptian. As you can see (Anubis being the name of an Egyptian god), they jumped right on the suggestion.  They added three Egyptian-inspired last names right away. That was how it was back in 2004—very eager to work with anyone interested in SL.

Last names were really important back in the day. It was a great conversational icebreaker. Occasionally, someone would throw a party for everyone with their shared last name.

SL Newser: What kept you logging back in during the early days?

Kim Anubis: Bill Mysterio. I met him when we were both “power loitering” at the Sage market.  Back then,  there were these big open air flea markets for shopping, very different from the malls and boutiques that came later. Power loitering was a term I made up that day, I guess, when Bill first walked up and asked what I was doing.

Sage market, the big Show and Tell competitions, and the White Star Casino were the hot spots at the time -- most grouped dots on the map, at least at my usual time of day. At the top of the hour a Linden would announce events in a blue popup, and Show and Tell was one that happened every day. I won a prize at one of those my first week. With my thrilling three-prim build. It was my first build. Everyone was very kind to newbies back then. Bill had shown me how to stick a couple of prims together. He taught me a bit about scripts, and how all the parts of a build go together. He built many fine temples to Bill Mysterio. Pretty soon, he introduced me to Mae Best (Ed note: The avatar upon whose land RacerX first ran his snail races). Maesie dressed me up in some decent clothes; gave me sooo many pairs of shoes. She ran a trivia event at Montmartre just about every day.  That was fun, fun, fun.

Somewhere along the line, I ran into Racer. I think we met at a build contest. That was my first big SL romance. I even have pics of him as a human; I mean his AVATAR as a human. He was SO sweet. We would both spend all day off getting new clothes—shopping, building. Then he would pick me up for our date. He built a flying carriage pulled by a giant snail for dates. We would go to a wedding or a dance club, all dressed up in our fancy duds, making an entrance in the carriage, etc. Then we would sneak-build during the event. Like, w’d be dancing away, but you would notice a line of particles to the nearest parcel where we could rez. So, you know, we'd be knocking together a new chair or whatever during a wedding. We could not stop building. 

SL Newser: Are you still building?

Kim Anubis: Yep, I went on to start a company called The Magicians ( http://themagicians.us/ ), which serves educators, nonprofits, government agencies, and enterprises. I also wrote two "official guides,” how-to books about SL. http://www.amazon.com/Second-Life-Grid-Communication-Collaboration/dp/0470412917/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405362063&sr=8-2&keywords=Kimberly+Rufer-Bach and http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Your-World-Official-Advanced/dp/0470171146/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405362106&sr=8-1&keywords=Kimberly+Rufer-Bach

It all goes back to Bill showing me how to modify a freebie Linden slot machine, and RacerX showing me how to add animations to an object, etc.

I did take a building class for a while, too, in world. I came here, I came from another Virtual World: There. Some of my friends in There came from Habbo UK, and some of us went to Habbo from Sissyfight.com. We migrated from world to world. When I first came to SL, I brought a bunch of friends, and we bought land together It’s part of the Forest of Kahruvel now.
We had a village in There, and we recreated our old village banner in SL—it’s hanging in front of my old cabin across the river here.

SL Newser: What are your funniest memories of the early days?

Kim Anubis: When Lordfly (Digeridoo) released the scripted “zombies” on the grid and my friends and I got dressed in our most badass outfits and armed ourselves heavily and coded up a Zombie Finder, and then we went hunting.

Oh, one time a real-life friend of mine came in to try SL and we went to one of the many Snow Crash themed clubs. He picked up a free object called Snow Crash, and it was a scroll attached to his hand.  He couldn't take it off.  He panicked, was logging in and out, we contacted Linden.  It was a couple weeks before it was removed.  For a while there, he thought he had been infected by Snow Crash, that it was part of the SL “game.”

I came to SL from There, where we had branded content, like Levi’s jeans and Nike shoes. There had a licensing deal of some sort; wasn't my area. I was in community management, moderating the forums etc. Anyway, I figured if SL was really the metaverse, and they wanted everyone using it, that would include corporations and universities, etc. I asked about it at a Town Hall once, when there was discussion of changing the permissions system; asked about something like how the corporations would take it if they had branded content in world, etc. I don’t recall anyone ever asking a question like that about SL before then, but I always assumed it.

Of course, a few months later, I was hired to build a bunch of objects for UC Davis Medical Center. That was my first client that paid US dollars for a build.  Before that, it was mostly stuff like custom waterfalls.  I built a lot of big waterfalls.

My first custom build, I stayed up all night to make a waterfall for a friend, who paid me a couple hundred Linden dollars, because I really, really wanted a pair of boots with—oh, the innovation—prim heels!

The Next Question

I have found that when I ask the following question, most of the time I get a short “yes” or “no” answer, but not much elaboration. I have come to accept that. However, Kim is not just like any other resident.

SL Newser: Did you fall in love in Second Life™?

Kim Anubis: Yes! A few times. I moved most of the way across the US once, to be with a man I met in world. It was so romantic.

SL Newser:  Who was your favorite Linden?

Kim Anubis: My favorite Linden was Glenn Linden! Yay Glenn! Glenn was in charge of the Solution Provider Program, and the Gold Solution Provider Program, and he was an editor of my second SL book. He was a good guy, hardworking guy, and funny.

SL Newser: What is the Solution Provider Program?

Kim Anubis: The Solution Provider program is something that no longer exists. Back when I and a few others were first working with Real Life organizations on projects in world, Linden Lab hired Glenn. Previously, he had worked at Apple as part of their developer program. The Lab wanted to offer official channels of communication and resources for people and companies doing projects for real-world organizations. The needs of a huge, complicated project are not quite the same as those of someone making consumer goods for sale in world. It was connected to the programs they had for educators, and fine Lindens like Pathfinder and Claudia who worked with them.

SL Newser: Why do you think the Lindens pulled their support away from education?

Kim Anubis: I have to tread really carefully when we talk about things in this area, because of nondisclosure agreements with the Lab. However, around the time they cut the programs, and cut the Lindens who ran them, they cut a lot of other things: shut down offices, let go a lot of staff. I think it was part of that. I think they were trying to tighten things up in a lot of ways.

SL Newser: What keeps you coming back to SL?

Kim Anubis: Well, business, of course, however. For example, the other day when I popped in and replied to your note, I was in world because my Real Life mom's avatar needed me to send a couple of copies of items. You know, a new Tiny hot tub, some more flappy wings.

My mom has been in SL since around…heck, 2005, I think. Both of my parents have accounts, and so do my brother and his wife.  In fact, my mom and sister in law are both, you will see, on the Magicians (Kim’s company) roster. My sister in law is a programmer.  My mom does events, Human Resources, and software testing.

When I started out in SL, I was living in a spare room at my brother and his wife's house. I was really, really ill at the time, and There had a massive layoff, me included. I would sit around online every waking hour. I couldn’t do much else.

SL Newser: Did you get teased by your family because of SL?

Kim Anubis: It was “that game” to my brother and his wife for a while, until I won a contest, a garden contest. Racer and I put together an entry. Anyway, they came up to my room and looked at the build, and then a day or two later came home with presents: Photoshop and. Poser. No more teasing after that. Well, you know, most of my family is pretty tired of hearing about SL.

My mom and I are the regular users, and well, there we are, talking about places and people that the rest of the family doesn't know. My Mom is not just a Tiny.  She is the Queen of Second Life Warthogs. She keeps me busy building her new toys and outfits. I mean, like, scuba gear and a mummy costume.  You can’t just buy those on Marketplace or anything, so Mom gets all her stuff custom.

Tinies ... I remember when Wynx (Whiplash) first came out with those. I was a bunny, and still am, sometimes. I would be working away on my UC Davis project—my first one—and I would have to turn back into a human to check scale on things.That was when I made my Tiny sneakers, and other Tiny clothes, furniture, flying teacup, etc. Which led to meeting Wynx!nWynx and I have worked together a lot since then.  She is so fun!

The Teen Grid

I asked Kim about Open Sim, and that triggered a memory:

Kim Anubis: It sort of reminds me of when my company was doing projects in the now departed SL Teen Grid. It was sort of like being stranded on a desert island with your few friends and whatever you packed in your inventory before you got stranded. You couldn't just transfer an animation or whatever when your work avatar needed it, and the region would usually be closed to the public while we were working. So there we would be, just us and occasionally the client would stop by with prims and prims and prims to use up, and whole regions to build on and it had to be entirely from scratch. You couldn't buy stuff in a shop, you know? I mean, as an adult avatar, cleared to work in TSL, I could not exchange inventory with normal teen grid avatars. So, everything from scratch, which was good preparation for working in a client’s closed OpenSim grid. We did needed special clearance to work in Teen SL. There was a formal background check by an outside company. There were a lot of rules and restrictions, made it quite a challenge.  But the Lab was very helpful. They went above and beyond to make sure things worked. Blue Linden saved our butts a few times.

SL Newser: Do you know any teens who made a successful transfer to the regular grid?

Kim Anubis: Daniel Voyager. There are others, too, but he’s most prominent, I think.


SL Newser: This is the last of the standard questions: What would you like the world to know about Second Life™?
Kim Anubis: It's still here. The media buzz died down, but things are still chugging along in SL.

SL2.0

Now there is another question that I have added to the questions I ask the oldbies, because of events that have taken place since SL11B.

SL Newser: What are your thoughts on SL 2.0?

Kim Anubis: They haven't told us much about it so far, so it’s really hard to predict what will happen. I mean, “…just like SL, but better,” okay? Is that going to come with LSL?  Probably not?  What language, then?  If they tell me, I can go learn it, or hire someone who does. I do suspect that SL2 might be stuffed full of HiFi DNA. Like, I could see Philip working away there as a Lab again, and then licensing the tech to LL…a tech company instead of a Virtual World company, for a while.

Well, when they announced the last big TOS change, I thought it meant they felt they needed the ability to take our stuff somewhere new, and I thought: HiFi—way too early. Maybe some of our stuff will be importable. They said they are not making all of our stuff backwards compatible. However, I think some things will still probably work; or could. I mean, probably no reason they couldn’t bring snapshots and textures over, for example. Anyway, at this point, there is so little information out of the Lab about what they are up to that it's difficult to speculate.

It does mean SL’s days are probably numbered. If a company introduces a new product that directly competes with their existing product, and even plans a nice easy migration path where you can bring your name and your friends list it’s pretty clear what will happen.

If SL 2.0 doesn't turn out to be vaporware (not likely, but not unheard of in tech, right?), and if it takes off they will offer incentives to get everyone to go.  Oh yah, I believe they plan to move L$ over, too? Anyway, eventually, if the new world takes off, I imagine reduced support for SL, until the new world eats up the people. Of course, there could be a curve thrown in, another world from somewhere else, etc.

Since the Oculus started getting buzz, VR is ‘sexy” again. It has been fun to watch everyone and their cat jumping on the bandwagon there, using it as an excuse to send out a press release.
“My number two pencil will eventually support Oculus!  Give me some press!”

I laughed, and thanked Kim for sharing so much of her time with me. I knew I would have to save all of the post-interview tour for the next article.

A remarkable person, who seems to roll with things, anticipate things, and make the very best out of whatever life hands her. I am glad she found Second Life™ during her explorations.

Kim Anubis’ Links:


DrFran Babcock

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Interview with Prokofy Neva, Part One


By Bixyl Shuftan

While most in Second Life are known for what they do, Prokofy Neva is known more by what he says. Over the years, he's made a number of opinions on a number of issues, getting a reputation for never backing down from an argument. Besides maintaining some sims out to renters, Prokofy posts occasionally on his blog "Second Thoughts" under his real life identity Catherinne Fitzpatrick. Having met Prokofy recently, we agreed to an interview, and later on I traveled to his place at Waterfall Canyon in the Refugio sim (which has a security system - griefers don't bother trying to enter), and he welcomed me inside.

"We are at the site of what was once my First Land 512," Prokofy began, "in 2004. So it's 10 years old."

"That is pretty early," I commented.

"I came to it soon after it was born," Prokofy continued, "and Anshe Chung had already bought all the surrounding area for a telehub mall on the next sim. Well I wasn't the first here, it was taken over by some oldbies at first. There used to be a big TV and Radio store here."

Prokovy invited me to his den, "Have a seat."

"Of course," I answered, and did so as he took another.

I then asked him the first question, "So, when did you first hear about Second Life?"

"I first heard about SL from Barnesworth Anubis," Prokofy answered, "We were in the same group in The Sims Online where he had the name, Cornelius Vanderbilt and I had the name Dyerbrook. We had a group of parcels called 'Sim Arts' or something like that, and he was one of the first explorers to go from TSO to SL to see if it would be better, people were unhappy with TSO for a number of reasons. Eventually a number of us migrated from TSO to SL. This was back in 2004 for me. I actually made my first account in SL in May 2004, but then I didn't like it and left. Then (I) came back in September 2014 and made Prokofy Neva."

"How did your first days here go?" I asked him.

Prokofy answered, "The first time I made the account Dyerbrook was difficult because I didn't have the graphics card to see Second Life. I went to a hockey game and struggled through lag and blur to see it. I gave up that time, and came back later when I had a new computer and graphics card. I happened to land on the very day that Philip Linden was holding a Town Hall. I went to an oldbie's place to hear it on a relay radio, the old-fashioned way they held those town halls. They had them on one sim but then handed out relay radios to get it broadcast to other venues."

"So I struggled first to sit down on a bench -- no mean feat for a newbie -- it didn't work like TSO. Then I heard Philip utter the magical words ...  I can find the exact quote for you somewhere ...  but it was basically that he had a vision then of real estate agents now appearing in the world, and an avatar with a name like 'Buzz' would appear with a helicopter, and show newbies new land, and have a business, and that someone would build a golf course."

"Now, mind you, this was just a vision at first.  It took me about 3 months to figure out how land worked, how to buy it and sell it, how to work it. I am a slow learner on technical things like SL and it took awhile. I remember the very first newbie mistake I made. I flew around vainly clicking on land that seemed empty, trying to buy it. Why didn't it work like TSO? In TSO, you could look at a map, and if you saw a blank spot on the map, you could zoom in and buy it easily if it were an empty square. So I flew around vainly clicking on what seemed like empty woodland (laughs out loud)."

"Finally someone explained the 'First Land' thing to me. But then I immediately ran into the harshness of Second Life. An oldbie had already captured the First Land on this sim under his various alts. His plan was to put it all under his old account. This was an oldbie and a group of alts that bedeviled me for years and  years. He kept trying to get me to sell him my little rocky plot. It was a mountainous waterfront, more valuable than most even being rocky. But I stubbornly clung to my little turf. I put out a modified house from Barnesworth on it and struggled to try to build or edit things."

"So, he wouldn't take no for an answer?" I asked

"He kept trying to harass me off the plot," Prokofy answered, "It was amazing. Eventually, I had a friend who bought another plot and then two parcels went up on the auction. I bid on them, using the money I had made from selling my TSO avatar, rares and simoleons on eBay. So my very first purchase in SL was $250 US on the auction, and it seemed very scary to me, like throwing money down a rat hole. Essentially, that *is* the case with land in SL as I can explain more."

"But in any event, I was so scared at having that huge parcel for that huge (seemingly) expense, that I immediately calved off half of it to sell.  I had no idea how to price it properly. I had no idea about waterfront, snow prices being through the roof then. I was still in the TSO mode. I remember very distinctly trying to edit the land, trying to make a group with a friend and alts, struggling, struggling. Finally I got the thing cut in half, put it to $6 and Anshe bought it within minutes. Everyone said I was so stupid!"

"Anyway, then I made the other classic newbie mistake -- I overtiered by mistake, sticking myself with a higher bill. Linden Lab was ruthless on that, they would never forgive. In my entire 10 years hear I maybe got them once to forgive on an over-tier mistake. That's when you actually up your bill for the entire month by one rash click on a 512 that is over your tier mark -- or even 16 m,  doesn't matter. So now I had to buy other land there for sale to make it all worth it."

"For those who don't own land," I asked, "could you please explain over-tier?"

Prokofy answered, "Well, let's say you are at the $40 tier level. If you go and click on land -- even a small square -- and buy it, it will immediately simply put you into the next tier bracket. So you go from $25 to $40 or $40 to the higher levels in a flash and are stuck. Nowadays, they have a menu warning (for) you, 'Are you really sure you want to do that?' It says 'This will increase your tier level to X.' But in the old days we didn't have that, so oops."

"Anyway, we decided to try to recreate what we had done in TSO, which was also very naive. But you can only learn from your newbie mistakes. We made a club with trance music, and we also created an architecture club and contests. We decided to reward good SL architecture, the way we had in TSO. The problem is, the meter is ticking on your tier bill in SL, you can't just fool around aimlessly. Tier is a harsh task mistress. How to make revenue then? You can't live on tips. I started making some content to sell, but it didn't sell very well, because I sucked at making things (laughs out loud). My first thing I sold was the leopard-skin men's briefs from TSO (laughs out loud), not a barn-stormer I'm afraid."

I responded with a few chuckles.

Prokofy went on, "Anyway we tried to have these contests and bring in traffic, and in those days the Lindens had these awards they would give out. First you had the dwell payments,
remember those?"

"I don't believe I do," I told him, "sorry."

Prokofy explained, "If you could attract people to your land, you would get Linden dollars into your account. Well, they used to have a loss leader to try to get the community to entertain each other and be creative with events. So they had a system that rewarded you for traffic, and another system for events awards. So let's say I put on an architectural contest, I could get a $500 Linden award. They were handed out like candy. You could have a wet t-shirt contest at the beach and get the $500 creative award."

I chuckled again at the thought.

Prokofy went on, "The dwell was something that could be real money if you had enough traffic. There was a formula. So let's say I could put 5000 traffic on to my club, it would translate as cash. That cash would pay out every Wednesday, just like group fees now debit. It used to be group fees debited AND credited. However, again, this wasn't enough to pay the bills."

"So then I started trying to flip land, and of course, that was disastrous because I had no idea what I was doing and got stuck with 'end of the world' land that I thought was waterfront. In the old days, you could see the sims as they were being rolled  out. You could see a sim being born, often in the middle of the night. The sim would rise up out of the mist slowly and then these little green triangles would fill it. Those were tree buds the Lindens planted. The trees would appear, and it would seem as if the edge of that thing was 'waterfront.' They'd set it to sale, and an idiot like me would buy it. I remember Dyerbrook's first purchase of his newbie land was a fake waterfront like that. Then oops, a week later, the Lindens would lay ANOTHER sim down next to it. Then it became swamp or woodland with no waterfront. So you get the idea, lots of false starts and learning by idiotic mistakes."

"I remember once going on the forums and asking if an oldbie would be willing to be paid to teach me Sl for an hour. And I was scoffed at. This is when I began to see the class warfare in SL -- the oldbies, who were mainly coders and graphics designers, and this other class of people called 'land barons' whom Philip had encouraged to come in in order to have a revenue stream to sustain the development of SL. There were hardly any island purchases in those days. We were terribly scared of islands because they performed badly and had the 'void' problem."

"Void Problem?" I asked.

Prokofy explained, "Also an old SL problem where you literally could not fly to a location over the void. This was a terrible problem, yes. I once bought land on the auction and couldn't fly to my own land. Remember, (there was) no pinpoint teleporting from the map then. These were the very old days, telehub landings, then fly 1000 meters plus, very rocky stuff, sim seam crossings, and voids where you'd crawl around the edge trying to get to the next sim. Eventually, the Lindens filled those in better."

"Anyway, I went from making the club, which I have to say didn't do very well, and got removed and turned into condos, to making a mall, also a trial-and-error process. The Lindens eventually ended their event awards and the dwell system, and it's just as well as it got gamed. After they pulled that, however, they set the stage for the camping stuff -- remember camping?"

"I do, I knew some who did it a little while reading email," I answered, "How did the condos do?"

"The condos were going to be great at first," Prokofy Neva answered, "I had a beautiful building, art deco, and some other beautiful FLW houses. Not many people had tried apartment buildings. It was a bit counterintuitive because you're all on the parcel and you can't have dedicated media. But I thought there was a market for people who just needed a little space to change their clothes, sit with their friends, put out a few things. Not much privacy, but just a little area for newbies in particular."

"So at first I filled the condo and the parcels easily, life was grand. However, I still had that old oldbie enemy harassing me and shooting me on occasion for the crime of not turning over my first land to him (laughs out loud)."

"Then suddenly, disaster struck:  The Barbie Club. A club of hookers and strippers, in my beautiful snow mountain paradies appeared on a 4096 that I had sold to Anshe. At first, I thought, no problem, the working girls can rent my apartments and condos. Boy was I naive."

"The problem is that the Barbie Club sucked up the available avatar spots on the sim, 45 it was in those days, and still is. So if I had tenants, they literally couldn't fly home. They were blocked from their own houses by the Barbie trade. Not good. So everything emptied out. Then I tried to make lemons out of lemonade and rented mall space to Barbie and tried to get the Barbie people to rent. However, they then demanded full group perms to *re-rent* my cheap land. Plus as a club, it was endlessly griefed. Clubs always attrack shooting, grieging, low-lifes."

"That was the end of my club rental efforts -- I couldn't waste my time policing griefers and having Barbie girls sell clothes at huge mark-ups and earn gadzillions more than they paid me in rent, while the rest of my customers couldn't get home. The mall rental prices then were much higher than what I charged -- Anshe charged a fortune. I was trying to get into business by offering rentals cheaper than Anshe. The irony is, that Anshe even rented from me, to then re-rent to high-end customers she had. Trying to break the Anshe cartel was nearly impossible, until a group of land sellers made a stock market and collectively bought and sold land to try to diversify the market."

"Then there was the telehub story, remember?"

"I remember some about those," I answered.

Prokofy told me, "Well, zoom over to the next sim and see the old telehub area, now an infohub with a mall next to it. This was once heavily contested territory. Anshe bought up the immediate telehub area, and another oldbie bought up the island on Ross you can see out the window. They were the early way to teleport, but from one hub to another. That oldbie tried to sell content and have events. So as hubs, they had commerce naturally attach to them. That was in fact the urban planning Philip originally envisioned. It would be like subway stops in NYC with stores around them."

"And it was a great idea but here's what happened, again, class warfare: the oldbies who originally populated SL, the coders and designers, they didn't want to be around telehubs which they viewed as lagfests and griefer venues and blinger hangouts. So they had their boutiques far away in prettier, more expensive sims, and they arranged their communities around them, and bypassed telehubs, which they protested against. The rest of us embraced telehub malls because it was more democratic."

"To get into the circles of oldbie merchants, you had to practically marry into one of the old founder families. To get a spot to display your wares in another's store -- endless suck-ups and cultivation. But telehub malls brought more Western-style commerce where anyone with the money to pay could enter at will and rent. You didn't have to be friends with Anshe or be approved by Anshe. You had to right-click and pay and get the group. So these areas thrived with newer people, and also some oldbies, but not the Brahmin of SL, the privileged early adapters I called the FIC, the Feted Inner Core. So that's where people sold the music systems, clothing, shoes, hair, etc. and that's where I opened up rental offices."

"So I opened up offices on Anshe's telehub malls offering people to rent in my condos or parcels. I started to have a little bit more area then, I had the area around Ross, Refugio, and then I bought the sim of Ravenglass, my first sim on the auction. Cost me exactly $1501, I beat out an oldbie."

"Anyway, the Linden coders hated telehubs. They wanted to have p2p like they themselves had in god-mode. And the oldbies hated that now they had competition to their boutiques in the boonies. This is my social and economic analysis of Second Life that many don't like to hear, but it is really the truth. I once went to Philip and asked me to tell him the statistics for traffic and sales per sim to prove that telehubs did way better than oldbies boutiques. And he wouldn't give me exact figures but he conceded they did very well. And quite frankly, that's why the Lindens put them on the auction at a much higher opening bid, and sold them for FORTUNES, Mainly to Anshe, Blue, and some of those early land barons who made a killing."

"So then the issue came as I've been writing about lately of the telehub cancellation. Word was leaked of a screenshot of a map showing the ability to travel to pinpoints. Before, this was done only by a script, i.e. people sold a script you could load with landmarks that would "fly" you to locations, like a plane or bus. So when that map leaked, some people instantly understood its importance. Anshe immediately switched from *rentals* to *sales* of telehub land at huge prices. She saw the handwriting on the wall. Not everybody did, and kept buying it, obliviously. In fact, Anshe sold me some of her land at the discount price (for then) of only $6/meter. Here I was, newbie-happy, thinking, at last, telehub land for a mall, whee."

"OK, so here's what happened. By that time, land barons were organizing into a political group, if you will. There was a period in SL when people organized into factions or political movements with interests, because there were things at stake like Mainland policy, new group tool policies, and so on."

"Political movements?" I commented, "Interesting."

"Huge struggles were had on the forums," Prokofy described, "Some of these groups were huge, because Anshe would essentially bus in her tenants. I had a group, smaller, with associates and tenants. Then people li"ke Lordfly and oldbies who were coders and designers made their own groups. There was constant warfare on the forums -- this was the period I was banned from the forums 'permanently' i.e. for 2 years until the Linden who banned me left SL and then it was instantly undone."

"Basically what it came down to was this, the same struggle we see today as the news from Ebbe Linden unfolds. Will you have 'creators as customers' or 'customers as creators?' Will the platform provider focus on a core group of privileged customers or 'pro-sumers' as they are sometimes known, the super users who are coders, designers, service providers, and have them drive growth and the economy, or will they have more democratic policies, as I would call them, making easier entry to the market for unskilled laborers or amateurs?"

"In one sense all  of SL is a pretty much an amateur created market -- I mean, most really skilled high-end graphics artists in 3d will not be opening in Sl, they'd work for the gaming or TV industries. But still, (they are) skilled compared to me or you, skilled in Photoshop, Blender, etc. When Philip opened up the land market, and when he allowed the Lindens to be cashed out to Gaming Open Market and other exchanges, he created a more Western style open economy, free enterprise, not the old guild-style economy that you could say was Eastern, i.e. privileged classes of people allowed by the state to be merchants or Medieval even, guild style economies. Some people said SL had a feudal economy if you will."

"Anyway the land barons who were provided the service of land sales or rentals communities banded together. They demanded a meeting with Phiip. Somewhere I have a copy of our agenda in my never-loading inventory, but it involved issues like:

"No more invisible Linden visits -- all visits to sims must be 'in uniform' -- Lindens used invisible mode to spy."

"No more Linden endorsements of only some oldbie businesses and not others by going to concerts to DJ, or appearing in billboard ads (Lindens used to do that, yes, hard to believe, but true)."

"A Linden code of conduct that would be publicized."

"This was because of a phenomenon that happened. At that time 1/3 of the Linden staff was drawn from the oldbies themselves. So you had this awful phenomenon of conflict of interests. People who had successful businesses in SL on one account could go and be a Linden, and then have inside info that would help the businesses of them or their friends. Or it wasn't always so crass, it was more about group influence, some people having greater reputational influence, and being able to use that politically, to prevail on the issue of telehub removal for example."

"We strove in vain for weeks of political debate to prove to the Lindens that the hubs were not laggy, they were a good thing, they were good for business,  they were good for serendipity. I personally took Robin Linden by the hand and showed her 10 telehub related malls and communities to prove they were not ugly and not laggy."

"But - in vain, as the Lindens pulled them. We as land barons then demanded compensation if we had bought the land on the auction, not knowing they were going to do that. And to their credit, the Lindens made a compensation deal. They bought back the land on a formula, or you had another option which they came up with later. First they took all those hated telehubs and turned them into infohubs with hippos in them. These were widely ridiculed. Hippos is a Linden inside joke. The infohubs did terribly. Nobody wants to go to a state-sponsored propaganda stand, which is what it was. So they then said they'd open it up to resident developers."

"Where did that come from, for those who don't know?" I asked about the Hippo joke.

"It's explained on an SL wiki somewhere," Prokofy explained, "somewhere in the SL code or something when you turn up a page it says 'hippos.' It's a placeholder perhaps. I remember I used to see that "hippos" in the old days when things loaded. So they had actual hippos on all perms they handed out that people could modify and make into things, I have one in my infohub. He is very miniature, wearing a fez cap, and you can click on him for the history of the telehub."

"Then we entered the flourishing Renaissance period when we developed all those hubs, with Linden cooperation and blessing, then they abandoned us with them. For a time, they had newbies able to opt to go to them, or be randomly delivered to them. See that was the issue. People said, 'you've just cut off all our traffic and business, all our customers by pulling those hubs and re-directed it now to your oldbie friends and their boutiques or new sims that were being build WITHOUT telehubs.' "

"Imagine, first they build the continent called the Moth Continent with NO HUBS. Literally you had to take a boat or plane there. They thought this would be more 'organic' and would 'prevent blight.' We pointed out acidly that the people buying their shiny (then) new land were not the people who wanted 'nature' in SL who didn't have the money to buy land. So we deserved telehubs. I found out to my shock that the Linden who built Moth Temple, who came and gave a talk to us once on his ideas and where he drew his images from in real life, that they could have made it a telehub sim with one rez and click, just like you do on your own island. There was no 'complexity' to it -- just an ideology."

"FINALLY after a huge battle, they added the telehub object/script to Iris, the Moth Temple sim and some others. Then they put in p2p, changing the economy forever. In some ways I think it never recovered. The Lindens have always wanted content creation, not land, to drive the economy."

I asked, "So point to point teleporting wrecked the Second Life economy?"

"Here's the thing Bixyl," Prokofy told me, "for unskilled newbies, for unskilled anybody, land is how you participate in the economy. Not everybody is a computer programmer or a graphic designer. But single black moms from Detroit, and disabled retired postal workers in Cincinnati -- or a single mom in HUD housing in NYC like me -- could become business people in SL by having land as their opener. They could buy and sell it, they could put rentals onit, they could make a club, they could make a mall by commissioning others to build, they could make some other activity like live music, etc. None of this required skill, it only required sweat equity. A truck driver could become a famous dress maker in SL, but she needed to break into the market somehow, and the telehub malls gave her that opening. That was made possible by land barons."

"Anyway you get the idea I think. Land is very important not only for the Lindens' business model but the SL economy itself."

I asked, "Was there any proposed compromise, such as making point to point teleporting available only to premium account holders?"

"Oh no," was Prokofy's answer, "because they flooded in free accounts. A lot of people didn't want them. They brought griefers, they said. I personally was happy to have them because it meant that an Italian shoemaker who couldn't get a US credit card could make money in SL even if he had no premium account with a credit card. That was hugely important. I had many customers who had NPIOF who made money in SL as dressmakers or club owners and then they had a little bit to pay for rent -- they never cashed out. There were many people who never had a dollar leave SL, they lived, worked, paid for their content inside the world because the freebie accounts were made possible."

"What I discovered from 10 years of having low-cost rentals, there is a high number of women in SL from ages let's say 30-50, or even up to 70. Many are married, and their husbands don't want them to make frivolous expenses. They hate the idea of recurring monthly fees. So this enables them to thrive. Also a younger continent, let's say early 20s who don't have a lot of disposable income. We used to get the economic statistics. We could see the TRUE population of SL, not this "30 million sign-ups" crap, not even the '1.5 million uniques' with a lot of bots. But the real population of people who spent at least $1 Linden dollar inworld. That population was about 450,000 to 500,000 a few years ago. A tiny percentage of those people could spent the equivalent of $5000 US -- i.e. they made money and cashed it out as big land barons or big content creators. Then there was a huge population of people who spent say $25 US or $10 US That was my market of people, and most people's, people willing to spend the equivalent of a movie or a dinner a month. This market wasn't endless. It was growing nicely. but then various policies crashed it."

"Today we don't know its size because they stopped publishing that information. Remember, I am seeing Second Life through the reverse end of a telescope. I am trying to put together my understanding of it based on field experience. Griefers might reverse-engineer the scripts of SL or the code, which they did before it was open-sourced. I tried to reverse-engineer their social systems. So I made land groups or I made newbie villages or whatever to see how things worked, what made them work. If I had been sitting at their consoles I could have gotten this information from their servers, but they didn't publish it. So I would have to test it in world my self. I made my rentals not so much for a business, as I had a demanding RL job, but to see how SL worked, to see how virtuality works. So I would put stores in malls and stores in fields and test how they did."

"We used to get a LOT more information from the Lindens. For example, I once got a windfall from Philip that was published in the Alphaville Herald. We had this problem of the Leader Board. Remember that? or you weren't here for that?"

I told him probably not.

Prokofy continued, "The Leader Board showed the richest avatars, the avatars with the most friends, the most build skill awards. It used to be every avatar had a profile where you could 'posrate' or 'negrate.' I was famous for negrating Philip, which few dared to do.
Posrate got gamed. Posrates gave you dwell points on that Linden awards system too you see. So people had posrating parties, it was awful."

"Anyway, that Leader Board was sus. People wondered, how did certain people get so high on it? And the traffic was sus. People used traffic gimmicks, posrating parties to lure in traffic, later they had the camping gimmicks. It was impossible to tell what was organically doing well in search: i.e. what people really did go to, without gimmicks or bots."

"So I suggested that Philip calculate it differentlly, not through the traffic numbers in search generated, but looking at the profile of each avatar, seeing their 'favourites' and seeing what that yielded. And it was a very different list than the top traffic veniues. Not completely different, because sex clubs will sell without gimmicks obviously. But it was just very interesting. The people and venues the Lindens endlessly promoted in blogs and in-person appearances were not the same as the people's choice. I noticed that discrepancy instantly when I began to study the map."

"Second Life has always had a lot of different interest groups struggling. I haven't even begun to mention things like furries or Gor or elves. They all had enormous political struggles with the Lindens on various issues. The group tool period. See here's the thing about the group tools, Philip had that vision of the land economy and Buzz, remember, that oldbies hated but he encouraged? But the groups didn't support that vision as we quickly discovered."

"The problem was the old officers' election system. Let's say you made a corporation of 5 people and made a group and made yourselves all officers of the group. Let's say one or two of you paid for the land, the others were builders or just supporters, tenants perhaps. At any time, 4 of the 5 who hadn't paid for the land could trigger an 'officers' recall' and *vote an officer out of his own land group, so he would lose his land.* This was a horror of course. The tools were made by California hippies, techocommunists as I called them."

"Interesting name," I commented.

Prokofy went on, "So they didn't want to have 'tyranny' and wanted the ability to overthrow 'tyrants.' They thought of their own start-up culture where coders often end up throwing out founders of start-ups. But this was devastating for a land market. It ruined private property by collectivizing it. See here's the other thing I have to explain. Originally in SL, the Lindens put an incentive into groups to make them buy land and make communities. If you put your land in a group, it would generate an extra tier free 10 percent, so you could hold 10% more land in a group and pay X tier that without a group would cost more."

"So that's why there were even groups. But they were not suited to *business.* They were suited to communes."

"Devastation happened, like the infamous mall story where a few people, aided by their Linden friends, (threw) a guy who had paid for the land out of his own group. I had griefers join my group as members, then trigger an 'officer's recall.' Oh, what that did was freeze me in the group. I couldn't buy or sell or do anything while frozen. So the only way to prevent that idiocy was to put alts into the group. But you could only have 5 alts under their rules, only 5 accounts per credit card. Most people only have one credit card."

"The other problem with groups is that they lag out horrible and chat freezes, and griefing is a problem. So I solved that problem by making multiple land groups. But I didn't have enough alts to staff all of them. So I would find trusted people willing to donate tier, and give them a rental discount. I still have that system. Some people have been with me for 10 years."

"How has it worked?" I asked.

Prokofy explained, "I was hugely criticized on the forums as being a newbie deceiver by offering people to put tier in my group in exchange for $250/week discount, so that would give them a newbie house for $250/250 prims let's say. They would buy a premium account and put their tier in my group. If they seemed reliable, some of them I could make officers. Back then, I got ripped off only once that way. By and large people were decent."

"But we fought to have that idiotic hippie commune stuff removed from the tools. No one who bought land should be thrown out of their group by chance griefers or drama queens. So then they created levels of powers. You could make it so someone could deed media or terraform yet not sell the land out from under you. The nesting groups of powers were complex. Enormous debates took place over them in the forums, and the Lindens convened various town halls and then separate conferences inworld just on these tools. The problem is that the furries who were open source sandbox technocommunist types wanted to keep the old system without hierarchy. They had arcane reasons for this. They wanted to show 'co-ownership' like a socialist commune. The business people, the capitalists, if you will, wanted one owner, the person who paid for the land. Then underneath that, his tenants or workers, Say, if a club."

"The tools had to be flexible for all types of group use. But some insisted that their model of society like communism be welded into the tools. It was enormously frustrating because the Lindens wanted capitalism on the one hand to give them revenue, but wanted utopian socialism as a world model that they thought Second Life would help bring about. But eventually, those early utopianists left and now some of them cause major havoc in real life with things like Tor."

"Tor?" I asked

"It's the circumvention program for anonymous browsing," Prokofy answered, "Read my other blog called Wired State and you can see my discussions of that."

"In any event, the group tools finally shook out to what you see today,  which still contain some elements of communism regretably. That is visible in what I call a bug, and others call a feature. If I deed a prim to the group, a member in the group, whether or not I've given them the power to return objects from sims (one of the granulated powers in the group), can return that prim. That's horrible because it means griefers return TV sets, or anything that people put on 'share' not even deeded. Let's say they have a chair they want to move around. They put on share for others to move it. But then it can be lost because anything put on deed returned to the server is DESTROYED. The SL asset server, when confronted with collectivized property, destroys it."

"Eventually, the Lindens did two things to try to fix that horror. First, a warning, that did little good.But they also set it so that if the item was on all perms, it could go back to its original owner who deeded it. But if it is on no perms it is still destroyed. Most TVs are on no perms."

"Anyway, I talked to the original Linden who coded that. He conceded it was a flaw. But another Linden disagreed when I kept reporting it as a bug on the JIRA because he thought it was a great builders' boon. If you are in a collective, anyone in the group can return a prim that is in the way or they don't like. But it's havoc for rentals. That's just it again: 'creator as customer' or 'customer as creator?' Do you build policies and tools to feed the whims of a tiny caste of high-end creators who tend toward the open source cultism about property rights --they want to collectivize them away? Or do you build policies towards more typical mass market free enterprise types who want businesses where the griefers can't return the prims?"

"Protection of private property, this is a concept of the rule of the law the Lindens not only didn't grasp; they repudiated it. That's why we had ad farms and Impeach Bush."

"Yes, I remember the complaints about the ad farms," I told Prokofy.

"I have to wonder who was behind the ad farms," Prokofy commented, "I believe it was everyone from the RL Russian mafia who naturally gravitated to extortion schemees on line, to Lindens on their alts to Anshe and co trying to drive people to her island rentals. The plan was to exploit and ruin the Mainland and force people to islands. It worked. Only the hardiest pioneers remained through this awful 4-year period. That's a long time in business. 'Mainland Rentals' is almost an oxymoron, although you see more of them today now that there are less destructive policies. There are actually a lot of little interesting businesses on the mainland. I used to fly around and admire them and tip them sometimes or feature them on my blog. Some of them swiped my rental card (laughing out loud). I have an open source rental cube which I encourage people to use for business."

"This is my point about open source, that it is not to be rejected but to be used where appropriate, I'm not opposed to somehow removing open source from life, but I'm for removing the cult that goes with it which is anti-business."

Prokofy briefly went back to his business card, "Well I don't care if they swiped the card and its ideas. But then their customers would call me because they'd forget to remove my name from the card (laughing out loud)."

I chuckled a bit.

Prokofy went on, "Anyway there are plenty of newer people 2-4 years old doing interesting things. You never hear of them, they are not on the forums, they are not in the news, the sub-rosa life of SL. You have covered some of them of course."

I answered, "Yes, I have."

"I try to cover sometimes," Prokofy told me, "but my blogging is limited now. As we are sitting here, I just got ... let me count ... six new customers. Never heard of them before.  Some new, some older."

"And that's the amazing thing about Second Life. During that time I had one refund. It's a constant process, but SL is always regenerating. People have an amazing, amazing capacity to sustain the horrible storms and purges and blights that the Lindens have hurled at this world, mainly in the form of the technocommunist policies, and bounce back with free market initiatives time and again. The Lindens keep trying to destroy business. For example, they put in the Linden Homes. That undercut anyone with a newbies rental business. I had to close or revamp my communities after that. So many challenges like that, so hard a learning curve. But people keep coming, and amazingly, they start little businesses or clubs."

"So that's what keeps SL interesting to me."

*  *  *  *  *

To Be Continued, In Part Two Prokofy talks about matters such as the new Grid under development by Linden Lab, and last year's Terms of Service issues: Click Here.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Monday, July 7, 2014

The Oldbie Project – RacerX Gullwing


By DrFran Babcock
RacerX was amongst the earliest of my friends in Second Life™. I met him in several places around the grid, and he was always welcoming and helpful, and remains that way to this very day, even after ten years on the grid.
When I first came in, Racer was strongly aligned with the Elf Circle community, then led by Wayfinder and Forcythia Wishbringer. He came to the first classes in building that I taught there, and my fondest earliest memory was of what I think was a machinima conference put on by missing oldbie Susie Spicoli who was involved in the old Alt Zoom Studio. Racer’s build was a rabbit hole that you fell down, and into the world of his early videos, made with his then constant companion: Snail Dude. Rabbit holes figure in much of Racer’s work, as do carrots.
Did I mention that Racer is a bunny? The other thing that needs to be said is that of all the folks I know in Second Life™, only RacerX has remained steadfast and true to one ideal, one goal and one very special event in life, and this is Giant Snail Racing. I don’t think I can remember a time when there wasn’t a Snail Race over the weekend.
In fact, something many readers may not know is that while I am the world’s worst snail racer, I did spend some time being a broadcaster with Treet TV. It is almost impossible to believe that the Treet website just hosted the 300th anniversary episode edition of the snail races, celebrating nine years of snail racing.
Ten Years Old!
Along with over 1,000 residents, I received an invitation to RacerX’s tenth rezday party. While I couldn’t stay for the duration—marred by some griefing events—I was thrilled to share this day with an oldbie who has always been so positive about our beloved virtual world.

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Now that RacerX was ten, he qualified as an oldbie, and I wasted no time asking him for an interview. He consented almost immediately, which was just what I thought he would do.
Below are Racer's answers to the usual Oldbie Project questions. After that, I will share with you the time I spent as Racer delighted in showing me around his two parcels.
SL Newser: How did you find out about Second Life™?
RacerX Gullwing: My brother hipped me to it.
SL Newser:  What are your earliest memories of Second Life™?
RacerX Gullwing: Well, I came in at that old welcome area with the Start Here sign in an archway It was daytime. I got nervous and left, but got my courage up about a about a half hour later and went back in. Now it was nighttime. I flew out of the start area and went to that town to the east and wandered through some of the shops there.
SL Newser:  What kept you logging back in during the early days?
RacerX Gullwing: Within two days my brother bought me a membership so I could get my free land; at that time it was called first land. I found a nice plot on top of a hill in Koleamoku and put in my application for it. When I got it I was surrounded by others who had just got their free land,and we became friends shouting to each other as we built our first homes. It was a great time. We were all learning how to build and texture.
SL Newser: What are your fondest memories of the early days?
RacerX Gullwing: My neighbor Snow Hare invited me down to enjoy her hot tub. I felt like I was home. This was a cool place. I experimented with a flying vehicle script I found somewhere, and made a butterfly and Snow and I proceeded to crash into everything. Good times!
SL Newser: What are your funniest memories of the early days?
RacerX Gullwing: I found the events page, and started looking up upcoming events there was an Evil Clown contest. That sounded like fun so I made a pretty evil looking clown, pulled out a bazooka, and went to the party.The prize was 500 Lindens. I figured what could be more evil than a clown with a bazooka?  So I flew up to the rafters and commenced with the blasting. They nicely asked me to stop it.  So I did, and I didn't win. There was a good Ronald McDonald impersonator with his penis out and a sign hanging from it I forget what it said but he won.  Still was fun. Yes, I was a griefer at my first event.
SL Newser: Did you fall in love in Second Life™?
RacerX Gullwing: Oh, yeah!
SL Newser: Who was your favorite Linden?
RacerX Gullwing: Well, usually whatever linden was helping me that day.  The Lindens were more accessible back then. I've known quite a few: Pathfinder Torley—even before he was a Linden—, and Hamlet. Spike was great, and helped me set out the detour signs for some of the cross country snail races. Jill linden, who was in charge of the tour group, and allowed you to give people rides from the Welcome Area.
SL Newser: Do you still log into SL?
RacerX Gullwing: I do log in daily, mostly to hang with friends. I also log in to build new things, but not so much anymore. There’s a lot of work that goes into the giant snail races every week: updating leader boards, making textures we use on the show, figuring out what’s going to happen to snail dude in the coming week.
SL Newser: What were your favorite activities?
RacerX Gullwing: I loved the Misty Rhodes Show and Show and Tell. I met some great script writers and avatar designers and sometimes won prizes.
SL Newser: What would you like the world to know about Second Life™?
RacerX Gullwing: Hey world, this is one of the most wonderful places on the Internet, and it's all been built and uploaded by the people that live here. It’s like Leggoland with better bricks. Whatever you can imagine, can become a place here or a thing or an event.
I had one more question, instigated by fellow reporter Gemma Cleanslate:
SL Newser: Racer, how did you choose your name?
RacerX Gullwing: I was playing Battlezone, a hovertank game, and I tried a lot of names there and that’s the one that stuck. I wanted the last name Racer, but it wasn’t available, and Gullwing was most related to cars, so I chose it.
A Visit With RacerX at Fujin
RacerX teleported me over to Fujin, which I recalled was one of his original plots of land. The Beer Eats shack is still there, and Racer told me he had retrofitted it back to the original form. If you have never been there, it’s a must see. The psychedelic shack is all I will say. Trust me; take the Landmark below.
Early in his days on Fujin sim he was approached by Dane Zander who asked him to build a castle for him. He completed the high prim (over 800 prims), four story castle, that Dane loved it, and placed it on the sim of Montmartre, where the Giant Snail Races lived for many years. Racer wondered how I would write about all of the stuff that he showed me, and I admit it’s a challenge. However, I think you should take the Landmark to Fujin, and visit the Bamboo Beer Eats Bait Shop, and go for a trippy ride. Don’t forget to touch every button there.
Devon Dream
For the past few years The Giant Snail Races have been held on Devon Dream, a sim owned by RacerX’s SL wife, Safra Nitely. Along with Safra, Racer holds Giant Snail Races every week with the able assistance of Tindalia Soothsayer, Oodlemi Noodle, and several other residents and props. Each week there is a theme, and the track is decorated anew each week. I am not planning to write about the races, though, I want you to stroll RacerX’s tidy rabbit hole on Devon Dream.
 “So this is my place. I say it’s under the track, but its way under the track. The Snail Race Track is 777 meters up from here. The build is sort of a recreation of the rabbit hole I made for one of my first machinimas.
Racer steered me over to a wall map I had never seen before. He explained that it was created shortly after the snow sims were created on mainland, and there were only about 100 sims: “This is Montmartre, or was, it's moved a few times and been resold. It used to belong to Mae Best. It had a wonderful sandbox area and was home weekly quizzes made up by Mae three or four times a week. I met a lot of great people there. I’ll never forget, because The Giant Snail Races started there running in a circle around the sim in November. 2004.”
“My first land was on Koleamoku. There’s a store there now. I only stayed there about a month until my neighbors found a new place, and I followed them to Fujin. It was at the edge of the world at the time. It was the golden age of SL.”
Racer took me to a wall that was covered with snail memes and photos. He told me that these were all gifts that had been sent to him.  He showed me a chair that was from one of his earliest machinimas, that was made by Adrienne Belvedere, who was also responsible for the avatar of Snail Dude’s girlfriend. Racer showed me some other pictures, and we chatted a bit about Waelya Tenk, on hiatus from SL to raise a child. The most astonishing shot on the wall was one of RacerX as a tall, grey bunny. Even stranger, though were some of the first pictures he took of himself, when he was still humanoid.
Racer was in no way finished with his tour. He pointed to a basket in the corner of the room, and slowly a cobra emerged and started to stare us down. RacerX climbed on the cobra, and was soon climbing out of sight. I followed him, and emerged on the roof of the house, dotted with huge carrots growing out of the sod on the roof.
I could almost hear Racer giggling as he led me to a small prop plane, and explained: “OK, so up here we have Snail Dude’s plane. He’s just learning to fly it, so grab onto the plane.” Of course I did. After I crashed, I returned to Racer who asked: “He’s not very good, is he?” I guess not. Racer also pointed out the windsock he had scripted. It was a carrot that grew longer the higher the wind speed.
I envy RacerX for saving things from his early days. My early builds were trash-worthy, so that’s where they ended up, but RacerX has held on to a lot of things. With great pride he showed me a flower chair that he had made by twisting prims in 2006—right after twisted prims were released. He could only use seven prims. RacerX elaborated that the butterfly part of the build was made by Kim Anubis, another name from the past.

But, wait, there’s more. RacerX couldn’t wait to show me his rocket ride. This is a bit hard to write about, but what I can say is that it’s his first really large build. You actually get to rise up to the rocketship entrance on an erector set elevator, and once seated you become weightless. There are countdowns and audio input galore. We were told that we were drifting off course, that it seems we used feet instead of meters when we worked this out on paper, this isn’t good looks like you’re too close to the moon, and that's just going to increase your speed, and that we were in a collision course with Jupiter unless we could get the retro rockets to fire in time.
Sadly, the Control told us we had skipped off Jupiter, and were leaving the solar system. Yikes!
In typical RacerX fashion the whole thing exploded and we tumbled down to the ground. Lucky thing this was SL. Racer has made some adaptations to this build in recent years to accommodate lower prims, and changes in the story, but the spirit of the rocket remains.
At this point I thanked RacerX, and told him I was off to do a lot of editing, because I had so much material. It was an enjoyable few hours passing time with a historic bunny. See you soon, RacerX Gullwing.
Video of RacerX’s Tenth Rezday Party: http://vimeo.com/99681505
 DrFran Babcock
Snail Races every Saturday on Devon Dreams at 11:00 AMhttp://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Devon%20Dream/143/112/779