The Very Expansive Definition of 'Victorian'

Perhaps I'm just crabby today.

First up, seen in Glengarry: Miss Nikki Kimono and Miss Violet Jolles. (I realize I risk sending the wrong message about Caledon to Dr. Beck, who will leave his home in Steelhead Shanghai in search of scantily-clad Caledonian beauties. So be it. )


Now, I'm not really complaining about their attire. The more people who see Caledon, the better. There's no dress code. Still, are you comfortable roaming about Miss Jillian Vayandar's estate dressed like that? Aren't you a tad chilly?

But what really made me cranky was to see the site of the old Steampunk Resource Centre transformed into...I don't know what. But take a look:

Note that the yellow house in the background is Rhianon's. The waterfall suggests the foundation is likely to be in serious trouble, what with the underground stream obviously eminating from beneath her house. The structure in the foreground is...Moorish? In any event, not remotely Victorian. Or Steampunk. Even by a generous definition.

One advantage of more tightly-controlled areas, such as Steelhead or New Babbage, is that the leader/mayor/dictator can ensure that builds adhere to the theme. The Babbage "brand" - grimy, sooty, industrial Victorian - is not diluted by random builds. Caledon is different...more relaxed in its adherence to theme. Fair enough, I suppose. But why would one want to plant stakes in Caledon, with its Victorian Steampunk theme, only to build something else? It's a big grid.

If this were an isolated incident, I'd say that things happen, and not worry about it. But these kinds of...unusual sights are fairly common. Hey, I can't build a lick, but there are plenty of talented people who sell nice Victorian homes!

Ho-Hum, Another Birthday Come and Gone

Not mine - bite your tongues! I refer to Second Life's birthday celebration. By the time this posts, I strongly suspect that SL7B will be history. I don't really know the dates - certainly I could look them up, but the uncertainty reflects the casual attitude the Lab seems to have taken this year. I was around for the fifth and sixth year birthday bashes, and they seem to be getting steadily less bashier. I recall I was bombarded with notices about number five, and was made aware of the starting and ending dates of number six. This time? I wouldn't have known it was underway but for reports of yet another SL birthday controversy.

(For what it's worth: I fail to see the connection between a naked Barbie doll (add the TM if you like) and attracting the attention of the child-molesting Bad Element. And, as others have noted, the situation did not seem to be handled well. But I digress.)

Mr. Carl Metropolitan mentioned that Caledon's Oxbridge gateway was represented at SL7B, so I thought I should pay my respects. It's a small but stylish structure clearly modeled after Oxbridge's architecture, flying the flag, with some information about Oxbridge classes inside.


In looking around the Oxbridge build, however, all I found was a hodgepodge of...stuff. I can't recall if SL5B had a particular theme, but I do recall large, elaborate builds, including Caledon's. For SL6B, the theme had to do with the future, and the builds made some effort to fit within the theme. Now - well, look below.

There are birthday cakes. So far, so good. Is that a plywood roof behind it? Hard to tell, but why risk making your roof look like you can't apply a texture to a flat surface?


Dunno who the people in the foreground are, but they apparently like soccer. Or football, as everyone else says. All very confusing, really. If the inventors of American football could have just called it "American rugby," or "painful yard-by-yard gains" or something, we could have saved "football" for soccer and been on the same page with the rest of the world. Then again, would that mean we would have to have adopted the metric system? Because, frankly, it hurts my head when people elsewhere in the world say things like "Boy, is it hot today! It must be nearly 33 degrees." But I digress again. The large hotel-like structure to the right of the Oxbridge build looks impressive, but the view is marred by the Lego-looking building to its right, and the medieval tower to the right of that.


Moving a little further afield, there's the Time Capsule exhibit in the foreground - except that, as text floating in the air kept telling me, it's not really the Time Capsule, that I have to do something else to get there. And the swirly thing doesn't really scream time capsule at me. Behind it is a large emerald structure from the good folks at, naturally the Emerald viewer. It showed off the developers and probably had more to it than that, but by then the lag was starting to get to me and, let's face it, it's a big green thing - not terribly inspiring.

I slogged a little further. The guy below was pretty inspiring, in a cute Saturday morning cartoon character way. Not sure who he was, though. I did like the scaly texture on him.

I came away feeling uninspired, which I'm sure was not the intent. Maybe it's the event, maybe I was just in a bad mood that night. I dunno.

One of These Characters Will Die Tonight

I watch too much TV. It’s a vice I apparently share with a great many people, so there isn’t quite the social stigma attached to it as, say, heroin addiction, or liking the music of Miley Cyrus, but still, I have enough self-awareness to be mildly ashamed.

It’s that time of year again, when Sweeps Month meets the Season Finale extravaganza. For some reason, that got me thinking about the great Circle of (TV Show) Life. Back when writers and producers didn’t overthink things, each episode tended to stand alone. The end-of-season cliffhanger was something of a moot point, because there were no cliffs on which to hang. The Avengers replaced John Steed’s partner at least four times with nary a dramatic death or illness among them. (They explained Diana Rigg’s departure with two minutes at the very end of the episode, in which Emma Peel’s long-gone husband returned and collected her. I thought it was a big mistake, not the least of which was that kick-ass, independent Emma Peel meekly got in the passenger side of the car, just another 1960s TV wife. Gag. But I digress. These days, her departure would have taken at least half the episode, with some foreshadowing in three earlier episodes.)

Nowadays, after the Hollywood brain trust decided that the way to create loyal viewers was to have more crap about the characters’ lives cutting into the weekly stories, and to have story arcs that span episodes or even seasons, we have the spectacle of the Season-Ending Cliffhanger. “Who will live and who will die? Tune in tonight!”

One problem is that we don’t buy into certain types of cliffhangers. Their outcome is entirely predictable because, if the show is back, they can end in only one way. On Medium, the lead character has a brain tumor that – cue the dramatic music – could deactivate her psychic powers or kill her. Okay, and if that happens, do we rename the show Small and go on with just her widower (who can finally get a full night’s sleep) and her kids? Seems unlikely. On Bones, one of the two leads decides she doesn’t want to do this crime-fighting work any more. Oh really? Any chance of that lasting? Was Dr. House really going to spend the rest of his life in a mental institution, suffering from weird hallucinations? Seems doubtful.

Of course, you can kill off peripheral characters, or even main characters in ensemble shows. Get a big enough cast, and anything can happen. CSI lost William Peterson and went on (though he got the teary farewell, rather than the cliffhanger). And you can create plausible situations in which the principal setup of the show changes. When they “closed down the X Files” at the end of one of the early seasons of The X Files, you could imagine that Mulder would find paranormal cases even as he worked in some other unit of the FBI, or that he’d quit the FBI but would turn to his former partner to do the law enforcement bits. Okay, the betting was always on finding some excuse to get Mulder and Scully back in that basement office, chasing monsters on the taxpayer’s dime, but the alternative was at least conceivable.

It strikes me as cheap and lazy writing to get an emotional charge out of threatening the lives of characters we’ve come to know over the years. In some cases, perhaps it’s a matter of making a silk purse (ratings) out of a sow’s ear (the departure of an actor). Mostly, though, it’s an overused and hackneyed technique.

As it turns out, it’s a fairly ineffective technique on me. I have such a bad memory when it comes to such things that, by the time the new season rolls around, I’ve completely forgotten how the previous season ended. I’m not looking to see who survived the shootout at the lab because I no longer recall it.

Clothing Fair and RFL

It's that time of year again: Relay for Life, also known as the Spring/Early Summer social season. (Only half a joke in that statement.) Because one dare not be seen at such events in last years glad rags, it seems logical to start things off with a Clothing Fair to benefit RFL.

I started in the London area.

The square evoked Trafalgar Square, with Nelson's Column in the center...

...except that, upon closer reflection, the statue did not seem to be of Lord Nelson. At least the London Eye was there to reassure me I was in the right place!


Good cause or not, I find these fairs to be frustrating experiences, and this was no exception. Too many people and too many shops with too many textures create an immense amount of lag. Moving is painfully slow. Worse, some of the textures never rez completely. Far too many items were nothing more than gray panes; most of the good that were to benefit RFL seemed to fall into this category. I bought a few items, but concluded that my time and money would be better spent buying things I liked in low-lag sims and then donating money to RFL directly.


As they say, your mileage may vary.

A Few Words on My Inability to Multitask

It's been one of those weeks - again. Snow on Saturday, shovel on Sunday. Snow on Wednesday. Snow predicted for this Saturday, and maybe again next Tuesday. If I wanted to live in Volare-land, I would have moved there! (Though I shouldn't complaint too much: as bad as the mid-Atlantic states are at snow removal and residents who are unprepared to drive on slushy streets, I am led to believe that our friends and fellow travelers in the UK are even worse off when small amounts of wet solid stuff falls from the sky, and they've had their share of such events this winter.) In between watching it snow, cleaning up afterward, worrying about the next snowfall, and complaining about the whole thing, I've been obsessing about an upcoming office move - other than my telephone, computer, coffee maker, and whatever is still on the top of my desk, my work life is contained in 16 or so crates, and will remain that way for another week and a half - and obsessing for no good reason, as everything beyond the packing is being taken care of by someone else.

On the home front, I've been wrestling with living in a two-computer setup, mainly with efforts to get iTunes on the Mac to understand that the actual music lives on a networked PC. Really, this shouldn't be so hard, but even the directions thoughtfully written down on the Aetherweb and obtainable through the Googles have yet to work.

All of which is to say that I've been lax in my explorations in-world, and still more lax in writing them down. I've made an initial foray into Deadwood, having meant to do so months and months ago, and running out of time to see this version of the town before it is rebooted in March. More on my brief visit at a later date.

Also, the good people of New Toulouse have created a fun mystery to solve. I will have more on this as well in a few days, but I wanted to mention it now, because the mystery runs through the end of the month only. As much an effort to showcase this Louisiana-inspired estate as anything, the "Basin Street Irregulars" have constructed a plot, twenty clues obtained via notecards throughout New Toulouse and the adjoining Algiers sims, and a HUD to track one's progress with the promise of a prize at the end. Each clue provides a general location of the next, and some indication of the object to be found, so this is more like a hunt than, say, New Babbage's recent mystery. Still, it's fun, the objects have generally not been so difficult to find as to be frustrating (though I did spend a great deal of time in at least one location and thus fell short of finishing last night), and one sees much of the towns along the way. Read about the crime in the New Toulouse Tattler, then visit the link above, to Laveau Square, where more information, including the first clue and the HUD, is available.

On the Outside, Looking In

As I tried to log in last night, I was greeted with the message "Login failed. Second Life cannot be accessed from this computer." I tried several obvious steps, finishing with a visit to the Googles. Though there was some uncertainty about the issue, most seemed to believe that this meant a LL-imposed ban on either the account or the IP address. To make a long story short, acquiring a new IP address solved the problem, and all I suffered was a half-hour of anxiety.

But this was an odd experience in several ways. First, the message regarding my inability to log in gave an e-mail address to contact the Lab for support. I sent a message, only to get a bounceback that support was no longer handled through that address, but on the company's Web portal. As there seems to be a new viewer once a week, would it be too much to ask that outdated contact information be removed and replaced by accurate information?

More troubling than the bum address was that the message itself was cryptic beyond belief. Sure, it was clear on the problem: I was locked out. But I knew that already. It provided no explanation for why I was excluded, and therefore no information about how I could solve the problem. My Aetherweb search found several references to the message on official LL forums, including a JIRA and a weekly session to identify bugs in viewer code. Nowhere did a Linden say, "Yeah, that's not a bug, it's a message that means ______." One was left with discussion groups where one user would say he or she received that message and others would recount their own experiences (some of which took many days to resolve). How about a message that says, "You can't log in to Second Life from this computer because of a ban. Click here to get some information about possible causes and solutions." In fact, if I had been banned for some reason, one would hope that there would be an easy way to find that out and to contact a live person for help. If such a thing exists, I couldn't find it.

Let's suppose that the accumulated wisdom on the Googles was correct, and that my problem was caused by an IP address that LL had banned. What good does that do? I know that some connections to the Aether involve fixed IP addresses (cable broadband? dunno, though), but mine does not. So this kind of ban (a) punishes the next innocent but unlucky soul who gets that address and tries to log in, while (b) not really punishing the miscreant. How sensible is that?

To close this out on a lighter note, I was glad I logged in when I did, for I had the opportunity to hear someone (name withheld to prevent further embarrassment, though he was the one who mentioned it) say in ISC chat: "My neighbor in the apartment upstairs from me is a gay man who arranges to meet people in his apartment through Craigslist." (!) Had I but logged in to that line, it would have been the best chatomancy ever.

After a pause, I timidly wrote: "I hesitate to ask how you came by that piece of information."

It transpired that two gentlemen arrived at the correct address, but one floor off, appearing at the door of our unnamed Caledonian. They explained their purpose, and he politely explained their error. Embarrassed, they left for their true destination.

Ah, neighbors!

Would You be Better Off Were I to Read the Funny Papers?

Being somewhat content-challenged today, I offer this OOC rant:

No doubt I have complained about this before, if not here then in other forums, but it bears repeating: IT departments are staffed by geeks who seem to think that their job is making their lives easier. (Note: I have nothing against geeks; some say I'm one myself, and I wear the badge proudly.)

In an effort to control large-scale wastes of time, my employer has a not-unreasonable policy regarding personal use of resources: "small" amounts of time may be used, as long as it does not interfere with one's job or the running of the agency, and certain categories of Aetherweb sites are prohibited in any event. These include pr0nographic sites, gaming sites, and, presumably for security reasons, online storage sites. Furthermore, installing programs onto any of the networked computers is prohibited. All reasonable, given the level of incompetence among the staff who, left to their own devices, would happily load a cracked version of Grand Theft Auto 5: Virus and Trojan Edition and infect the entire network.

My big complaint is in the simple-minded way that the Net Nanny software the IT folk use is deployed. If the software caught only obvious sites that violated policy - http://www.tigersmistresses.com/, say, or http://www.losemoneygambling.net/ - that would be one thing. They could feel free to check other sites manually. In practice, however, the software casts a wide net. In addition to blocking download or installation of any SL client, it blocks the SL forums as a "gaming" site. Well, in one sense, sure, it's a gaming site, in the sense that it discusses a game. On the other hand, it doesn't allow one to actually play the game (which is both a bandwidth hog and creates potential security issues), it merely provides a forum for discussing the game, and thus is no different from reading a web page devoted to reviewing a game. Or buying a gaming magazine and reading it in the office. Or... well, you can all think of exciting ways to waste time.

In recent months, Mr. Hotspur O'Toole's excellent blog, Hibernia on the Skids has been blocked as a "gaming" site (doubtless after he published his word search), and I can no longer access Miss Zoe Connolly's blog, either. For a time, Miss Ordinal Malaprop was also unaccessable, and no doubt she would take offense at being considered offering opinions on "gaming." Every day provides a little drama: what sites may I open today? Will the Steamlander forums be next?

Now, I quite realize that others have it much worse than I do. I could have no access to the Aetherwebs at all, or I could have a job that takes me away from the keyboard most of the day, or, indeed, I could have no job at all. All true. But for goodness' sake, geeks! All I ask is a little common sense. If I am considered a professional, and am expected to read papers or write memoranda on the train or at home as needed; if I should periodically check my e-mail while on vacation; if I am trusted to use my time as needed to get the job done, then surely I can peruse the Aetheric Journals of my choosing.

During the television coverage of Mr. Michael Jackson's funeral, so many employees at the U.S. Small Business Administration streamed the coverage onto their work computers that it created a noticeable slowdown in network performance, and the episode made its way into the Washington Post. Oops. If I agree not to degrade network performance and/or create bad publicity, may I have my SL community back?

In the Downs

Professor Swindlehurst's laboratory appears to be no longer. In its stead we have the dwelling of M. Chronos Ghanduhar. M. Ghanduhar's typist appears to reside in Deutschland, as the profile is entirely auf Deutsch.

I hope it does not sound too unneighborly of me to suggest that the residence is not entirely harmonious with the rest of the buildings. I note that this has been something of a recurring theme in the Downs. Pardon me while I sigh.

Fortunately, the Professor's airship is still moored above the Downs, so the redoubtable gentleman has not left us entirely.

I also purchased a pennyfarthing from Mr. Alastair Whybrow, though I have no suitable riding clothing. Nor do I have any idea how to ride a bicycle - airship, yes; bicycle, no - or even how to mount the beast. My next dispatch may be from the infirmary.