Category: 3D

Virtual poetry reading

Last night, my sister, my mum and I went to a virtual poetry reading. The guy that was reading, his and works of others, is the multi talented Russell Taylor Ashby – Russell Eponym in Second Life and other virtual worlds. He’s a poet, artist and musician with a beautiful voice. Perhaps I wasn’t as happy about his selection of poetry as I am with his music, but it was still a very nice experience.

Can your avatar enter into an agreement with someone?

Some time ago, when I was still unemployed, I tried to keep busy taking small assignments like creating websites. One time I got a bigger job to make some templates for an organization. Some of the templates were for Word. Being an Apple fangirl, I don’t care much for Microsoft. I love Pages and when I need a simple word processor I have a couple of free office suites I can use.

I wasn’t going to pay for the whole Office package so I downloaded the trial version. It was for 30 days and that would be enough for the job. I finished the job and got paid for it. A while after I started to get strange withdrawals from my PayPal account. The company that took my money was Microsoft. I tried to contact PayPal, but they just told me to contact Microsoft. It was out of their hands since I had “signed an agreement” with the company.

I didn’t have any contact information with this branch of Microsoft, since I had never signed anything. I had even stopped using the trial after I had finished the job. Still the withdrawals from my account continued. One day, a VAT invoice came in my mail. Not in my email inbox, but in paper form. The name of the one that had entered into the agreement with Microsoft was one of my Second Life avatars. This avatar, no matter how real I sometime feel that she is, is not a real person. Microsoft obviously thinks she is, but I’m sure no law would support that belief.

With that paper, scanned and emailed, to PayPal, I thought I would have a chance to stop the payments. They got back to me pretty fast. Their reply was strange. Although, they still claimed that everything was right and that we had an agreement, they would be kind enough to pay back the money that was withdrawn from my account. They did, not all, but some of it, so I stopped arguing with them.

I am just wondering what will happen next time my avatar wants to buy something, perhaps something even more expensive, will I be able to stop it? It’s obviously legal to enter inte agreements with digital personas without the owner’s knowledge about it. Or perhaps it’s just Microsoft that claims that right.

Blue mars – are you there?

I wasn’t able to log in there even though I finally got the invitation. So I have to wait until I can see for myself what it’s all about. I’ve heard a lot. Some says it’s really bad. While others say it’s the best thing they’ve seen. I came across this amazing video shot in Blue mars. From what I can tell the graphics are wonderful.

Blue Mars – New Venice

Can’t wait to explore it myself:)

Rant about LL

I know I shouldn’t take time to post this, but sometimes things happen that makes you want to air your opinions and blow off some steam. Those of you who knows me or read my blog regularily knows I’m having financial troubles in RL. I have had to close down everything that cost anything in SL, sold my land, and I have downgraded my premium account. Now LL have taken tier money from  me. I have a basic account and can’t even use the land I have payed for.

I thought that if I sold my land, withdraw my contribution to the land group and downgraded my account I wouldn’t have to pay tier, but obviously I was wrong. :( Those money was drawn from my bank account and even though most ppl wouldn’t think it’s a lot of money, to me it is. Now I won’t have enough money to pay for one of my RL bills. And I will end up paying a penalty fee for being late with it. All for a tier that I can’t use. I have lost my store but still have to pay for the land.

Now I thought that I might be able to talk some senses into LL so I tried to file a ticket as I’ve done in the past. That wasn’t possible however since I don’t have a premium account. Basic account can only get help with simple stuff that I already know about. Someone once told me that poor people shouldn’t play SL and it seems like it was true. I only hope that I won’t have to pay anything next month as well. What can I do against the mighty LL people? Nothing of course.

My Second Life – a summary

Today is the last day I’ll spend online. Well if you’ve read my other posts, you’ll know I won’t take a complete break. You’ll still find me in worlds once a week and in between that, I might pop in to fix acute situations. What will change is my focus. SL has taken a big part of my life, both socially and practically and that won’t be possible to continue. I need to take care of my self now and my RL.

I’ve met very good friends in SL and I’ve had a wonderful time during my years there. And I’ve lived my SL life as I live my RL. I care about other people and causes. A (former) friend of my said once that I’m pushing people away because I’m too serious. I don’t know exactly what she meant but I think she was right. But if that means I have to change who I am and to stop caring, then it’s no use. I don’t want to change and I don’t think it won’t be possible for me to.

My SL life has been very intense at times and at other times it can be long between my visits, but I guess you can’t stay just as interested in something for several years. First few months in SL I almost replaced my RL with my virtual one. I spent every waking our there. Of course it was an amazing world I had discovered but it probably said more about how I felt at the time. I had starting to see the first symptoms of my depression and me being overworked. Those two aspects of my RL has been following me during my SL life too.

I also discovererd SL related forums. Those too replaced a social life that I didn’t have the strenght to keep up in my RL. Being part of a community has given me so much good things and I’ve found some really good persons I can call my friends. I’ve also experienced the opposite. I know that you shouldn’t let word affect you, but no matter if it’s spoken or written words, they can have a huge impact on you. I’ve become a lot better at not letting it affect me, but on the same time, I can’t really enjoy it as much. I lose something else.

What’s always been the biggest part of my SL life is the creative part. I love playing in Photoshop and in 3D and in SL I could do both. Economically, my creativeness hasn’t been a great success. Only a few of my products sell and only at short periods of time, it’s been worth having an in world store.  Except the fact that I really would need some extra cash for my RL, it’s never been a main goal to make any money on my creative work. I love doing it and that’s always been enough. Before I got my stores, I used to give away my products and I always loved seeing them used.

Now I’ve sold my land, downgraded my account to basic, got rid of my stores. All this because I can’t afford keeping it. It feel sad in a way, but very necessary. It’s now come to the next step. I need to move my focus to my RL to save what’s possible to save. That means not writing this blog for a while and it also mean I won’t be reading the xstreet forum and not post anything there. I’ll still have my products listed at xstreet. If I sell something, that’s really good, if not, that’s ok too. I’ll also still be going to the salsa dance every sunday which is hosted by my oldest and best friend in SL. Look me up and say hi if you want.

This will be my ‘I’m taking a break, but will be back’ post. The last post on this blog before my RL is taken care of. Take care everyone and thanks for reading my blog. If you want, then post some nice comments here. I will read those. See you.