It’s called Rowan, and as with all dD hair it’s mod/copy so it’s easy to tweak the colours or adjust it to fit with a hat.

A pack of 4 colours is great value at only L$180 and there are 36 colours in all.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Synchronicity/181/145/27

The t-shirt I’m wearing here is one of a range of fabulous designs from LnL designs (is that Lizzie and London, or London and Lizzie? I can never figure that out).

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Borgatti/248/57/301

Skin is Daniel by Signature and the eyes are made by me.

But I do want to say something about yesterday’s announcement that Mark Kingdon has stepped down as CEO of Linden Lab, and Philip Rosedale is back in the hot seat (at least for the interim). I understand that he’s going to be working closely with Bob Komin (whoever that is).

My first thought is that I am initially very happy about this. Morale amongst residents is at what is probably an all-time low, and people are quitting left, right and centre.  Many of the projects that M Linden has wasted money on have been either an utter failure (Avaline, Avatars United), or have been strongly resisted by residents (Zindra, XStreet purchase, Viewer 2) and to many people all he’s done is just waste money with no return – with the possibly inevitable consequence of having to sack 30% of their staff in order to make up for it. It’s been clear from the beginning that Kingdon had no real interest in the product other than as a way of making money.

Philip is different. Second Life is his baby, he gave birth to it, and nurtured it. Residents are going to see in him a person who, they believe, will not let Second Life die, and in the immediate future I think we’re going to see an upswing of morale amongst residents. There was even, so I gather, an impromptu parade in Bay City in his honour yesterday afternoon.

Me, I’m not quite dancing in the streets but I am cautiously hopeful.  I’m glad to see the back of M Linden, and I don’t think that SL would have survived another 12 months with him in charge. With Philip at the helm I think survival hopes are higher because I believe he’ll fight tooth and nail to keep the grid going no matter what.

But, the reason he stepped down last time was because he’s basically a hippy with absolutely no business sense whatsoever. SL might be his baby, but by the time it grew into a stroppy adolescent, he couldn’t handle it and unless someone’s given him a brain transplant in the last 2 years, that’s not changed. What SHOULD have happened 2 years ago, was that Philip remained the frontman but appointed a business manager to deal with all the nasty numbers and stuff that Philip doesn’t want to handle.

Hopfully this is where the mysterious Bob Komin comes in, as he’s been promoted to Chief Operations Officer. In any case, Philip says he’s returning only as an interim CEO, so presumably they’ll look for someone else (although I would be honestly surprised if anyone else is crazy enough to take it on as things are at the moment – so I think it may be a long interim).

Time will tell, and I would like to know more about this Bob Komin fellow and his history.

Instead here’s a more relaxed pic. I don’t have a pilot’s outfit but I picked up some new things recently and I particularly wanted to show off the hair.

Hair: Alli & Ali – Hercules, Copper (they are offering 2 shades of brown free at the moment but you know me – it has to be ginger)
Shirt & vest: Freak Yo’ Pixels (I never heard of them before but this was featured in one of the freebie blogs a week or so ago – free as a group gift)
Jeans: Signature (old hunt gift)
Shoes: Duh! Leather sneakers
Seaplane: Apolon Motors

Starting from the top:

Hair (and goggles) – Philotic Energy Jet (custom colour)
Eyebrow Piercing – Circle Widdershins
Beard – Discord designs Multiway Goatee
Tattoos – Kanival Phoenix
Choker – SS Designs Bounty Hunter
Tanktop – Tonktastic Union Jack
Wrist cuffs – Sensual Mistery Eros
Gloves – Sassy Kitty Skull Gloves
Belt – Kosh Patchouli
Pants – Rockerwear Vespa Jeans
Boots – Duh! Sneakerboots Red

I took advantage of Viewer 2 by ditching the invisiprims and making myself an Alpha layer with invisible feet. Much better.

Most of the posts were from people desperate to unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe link didn’t work (or else it’s horribly delayed – maybe it unsubscribes you tomorrow, or a week next Thursday?)

I couldn’t log in to Grouply (the new service) because, as I’ve never even heard of it before I have never created a username or password for it. I tried putting in my email address and asking for a password reset but it says the address is not registered. It suggested my Yahoo ID which I tried, but which is apparently not signed up to any groups at all. Not surprising since as I said, I never heard of it before.

I have written to Grouply support in the hope that they can explain how I can stop receiving all this crap. I recently got rid of an email address due to spam, now it looks like I will have to delete another.

Edit: The owner apologised, and turned all messages off. Thank god.

Search is unusable. For one thing it’s nearly impossible to find (which is a total disaster because the first thing a newbie needs to learn is how to search for things And now it’s buried in the “Destination guide” several clicks in). When I did finally find it, the page remains totally gray, even after its finished “loading” and says “done” its just an empty grey box. No text, nowhere to type in keywords or anything. Just empty. Like this:

Other things that involve opening a web page (eg dashboard, webpage on my profile etc) will workjust fine.

When I receive an IM that’s part of a group conversation, it’s not immediately clear what group is chatting, or whether I’m receiving a private IM. When I logged in and had my usual colection of IMs to go through I had absolutely no idea what these notifications were, or how old they were. There seemed to be no obvious way to tell the difference between a group notice and a private IM.

Because people’s profiles, group profiles, land info, landmark info etc all show up in the same sidebar panel, it appears to be impossible to have two of them open at once. Only inventory seems to be exempt – the “open new window” for inventory is still there, thank god.

FPS is down to about 60% of what I had with the old viewer (used to be around 60-ish, this viewer is down to under 40).

Overall I kind of like it, it’s neat and streamlined and gets rid of a lot of the clunkiness of the old viewer.  But the failure of Search makes this viewer 100% useless to me. I rely on Search ALL THE TIME.

I’ll be sticking with Emerald.

Well, I don’t really have a girly alt (Salo is more butch than me, and my lady hobbit ended up getting deleted when I got bored with it).

And I started to wonder, what would Lewis Luminos look like if he were…Louise Luminos? So I went into Edit Appearance, clicked the “female” button, did a little tweaking… and then I went shopping.

I’m actually really pleased with this result. She could be my sister.

I’m tempted to sign up a new alt now, but I know what women are like. They just steal your credit card and spend all your money. (Actually I spent less than L$100 on this avatar – the only thing I bought was the top (L$10) and the shoes (L$75 for a fatpack) – everything else was either free, or already in my inventory.

Stats:

• Shape: Mine
• Skin: Eloh Eliot freebie
• Hair: Calico Ingmann
• Eyes: Mine
• Top: Pixeldolls
• Pants: Eros
• Shoes: Duh

Muggle 1: yuh
Muggle 2:   u here by yo self
Muggle 1: no. tina heree
Muggle 2: wif tina
Muggle 1: *Mmhmm*
Muggle 2: oh  u bought dem boots
Muggle 1: Nuuuuuuu! buh im finna disz a demo- mama got det fit
Muggle 2: rainboots or knittedboots
Muggle 1: det hair dont go wit it doe sar.
Muggle 2: ik
Muggle 1: knitted boots
Muggle 2: me
Muggle 1: yuh should have got a hair form det place  get dha white ones so yuh can match
Muggle 2: i got on black ho
Muggle 1: wdff so yuh gpne get blk jjusz  match det fit oki well be stupid  iight i got em
Muggle 2: im gettin black  match my scarf freom reek
Muggle 1: smhh
Muggle 2: from* smh wat

I swear, if the language degenerates any further we’ll all be grunting like Neanderthals.

People are de-listing their stuff in droves.

It seems to me, based on their stated intentions, that this is exactly what they want to happen. LL are not interested in allowing small businesses, newcomers or hobby merchants to trade, because they (potentially) won’t bring in as much commission. This, coupled with their new proposal for a FIC mall of major designers paying 30% commission is paving the way for a SL Grid where the only merchants that are able to trade at all are major ones with a massive annual turnover that can swallow LL’s fees without blinking.

Someone suggested piling all your freebies/cheapies into one box and selling them at a decent enough price to swallow the fees, but really this is what BIAB resellers are doing anyway, and that’s one of the stated things that LL want to get rid of.

There are a few alternative merchant sites where SL content can be found. I went off to look at one of them and the first thing I saw on the main page was a box of eyes for L$400; the same box of “fantasy eyes” that’s available in all the freebie stores for nothing. In any case as soon as any competitor gets anywhere near being popular or successful, LL will carry out a hostile takeover, and shut it down, as they did with OnRez.

Now that LL’s main “product” is the Standalone behind-the-firewall grid, and the only customers they really want are corporations, the rest of us; the consumers who only buy, and the small merchants who run a business with only enough profit to maybe cover their tier, are seen as pests to be gotten rid of ASAP because we spoil the professional image with our nightclubs and sex clubs and roleplaying games.

I am left wondering now, how long it will be before LL apply commission charges and “listing fees” to all inworld merchants too, not just those on XStreet. Playing Nostradamus here, I’ll take a guess at 12 months, and then the death of the grid as we know it very shortly after, because then the only people who will be able to afford to stay in this supposedly “free” grid are those major corporations that LL are so keen to suck up to. Small merchants will be gone because they can’t afford the fees. Major merchants will raise their prices because (a) they have to recover the value of the fees and (b) they have no competitors any more so they can charge what they like. Consumers will leave because there’s nothing interesting to buy any more, and what there is left is pretty, but too expensive. That leaves the IBM executives. And none of them are going to buy stuff either, have you ever noticed that people who are inworld for actual work are still wearing system hair and skin, and wearing the same freebie suit their avatar started with.

For the rest of us, I think it’s time to look for another grid. And don’t think that’s not what LL really want. They don’t want your hundred bucks a year. They want residents who are going to spend thousands.