Zee Linden and the Bot question....

Zee Linden is the finance guy for the Linden Boys.
And he has published the yearly figures here
and in the blog here he answers angry residents questions and opinions on whats wrong with SL...... and, to be quite honest I feel for him a bit cos he gets to recieve all the rotten apples thrown at him.
Well, he gets paid well...so I am not sobbing or anything.

So, after an hour or so reading, what did I learn? just to save you the time...:))... well, statistics are a very dubious thing as we know...... and no-one believes anything the Boys say anymore....thats not news...

but this is what he has to say about bots. the subject of several blog post by my good self...and others, Im sure

in a random order...


"As I've said in the forums before, bots do impact these numbers. But we have seen evidence in the data that bot usage has not grown as a percentage of total use over time. making trending relevant.

Though I know people find it hard to believe - its very difficult to differentiate bots from live activity - there are signs that we are working on correlating but is very expensive from a database perspective in real time.

We talk a lot about bots in these forums when I bring up user hours. Unfortunately I'm not the datawarehouse guy that could tell you exactly why something works and other things don't. All I know about bots is that I don't think about them when I look at our financial statements. Our revenue has grown similar to user hours for many years, so I don't see any change in bot behavior in our revenue numbers. I keep saying the same thing about that because that's all I really know. Probably someone more technical than me could do a post about bots and what we know and what we don't know and then we could have a forum discussion just about bots.

That's right. This is a very complicated problem. I was just in a meeting where our Datawarehouse team talked about bot detection and alt detection. There are things we can do. There are things we should do. Real money transactions are generally bot free - especially where we charge a fee - so growth in the LindeX is a key thing to look at. But as I've mentioned that's not perfect either."

well....conclusion....they dont know how many bots there are.....


so I kinda guessed that...


:)))

a mixed bag

This is Selavy Oh, as many of you know, possibly my favourite builder in SL. I have blogged her amazing pieces of work before, and missed getting a photo of her for my "best of 2008" post. She has become one of the latest friends of mine to be asked to join NPIRL, and recently Cube Republic has also joined. Congats and welcome to both...:)))





New products for sale at the beach....well....round the corner in Iz Space actually, bordering my bit of beach....( I will get them into the shop eventually...are the new flexi fern and the bunches of `Morning Glory...





I have spent quite a lot of time this week just hanging out and chatting to good friends, maybe a reaction to the Gallery Show and the work that that entailed. Been IM ing like a mad person, actually, amazing how friends change your life and how good they are for your self esteem....:)))





And how amusing it is when creativity and humour collide.... here is a strange scene from last nights opening.......I cant describe how funny it was, but the gruesome photos gives an idea that something unusual had happened....we were all in fits of laughter, Wizzy and Nada (I think....god I am terrible with names) had me doubled up so i could hardly type..(same old, some of you might say..:)) ) A spiral stair of noobs is a surreal thing to behold, and Wizzy ("likes to sit on stuff") made some noob sofas, except they were not noobs, but named after a member of the LL clan....

Well, she did have an axe to grind.... honestly..

:))

wizard gynoid at Caerleon Isle

well, get over to see Wizzy's latest masterpiece of geometrical design......its at Caeleon Isle, 84,110,24.....or IM me or wizzy for a tp.

The purity of the geometry is a thing of great beauty and well worth the visit.

I particularly like the vertices of the amazing E8....like electrons swarming in a primordial soup to create a new life form....



:)))

Mr Widget for President (MUZIK HAUS)

More real lives....




Mnzu Newman




Lulu Francis




noho Yokosuka




and the wonderful Mr Widget, keeping us all going through emotional traumas, and all....::))
with the lovely Nur Moo from Sintetika in the background.

real lives......

:))

The real world

She woke to find a feather on her pillow, she laughed, she’d fallen for an angel....


and the maiden dressed in white silks felt the heat from her dragon lover healing the scars of her youth...


the pixie awoke to pose-balls strewn like discarded clothes around the room and the twinkle of particles still hanging in the air...


and the slave girl hurried back to her Master, his bed would be empty now, but his soul had been kissed...


the butterflies of the night
hid in the shrubs of daylight


these are tales from the real world

art pales in their light


xxxxxxx

The Show

A very amusing photo, tho of poor quality....:))) ...looks like an art mob. The Antler Gang.... its Aliz and Wizzy who came to support me at the opening yesterday. We had 83 people come round to see, which is very good, cos we had 40 something people on Saturday too.

The music obviously contributed, Phoe Nix played piano and sung, which was very nice.

Thanks to all my supporters....xxxxx
(and those that bought my stuff)...xxxxx


:))

Textures in Second Life......Workshop 4

Well, I thought I would share another little observation with you concerning colours of textures in Second life
My previous posts are to be found here...3.......2.......1


This one is about orange, the colour orange.






Anyone who has had stuff uploaded onto the net, in whatever form, be it for printing purposes or whatever will know that the colours available are sadly lacking compared to the original painting.......photos escape, often because the loss has happened between the object and the camera. Lime green and bright pinks were my earliest frustrations, but orange is my big obsession at the moment.

If you look at the colour palette above, that well known SL option.... you will see how the yellow, orange range is compressed using RGB, compared to the natural spectrum we are used to working with.





soooo....trying for a better orange than we are normally given, I have used this work-around. Using a pure red....note the figures in the top corner of the palette....255...red, 0 blue, 0 green....





I place infront of this a pure yellow prim.....255 red (should be).....255 green (should be)....0 blue





Then, reducing the transparency on the front prim by 50%....a better orange, i think is achieved.......if you then make the back prim fullbright......well... I would be interested to hear what you think...:))

This is more akin to using prims as stained glass, and letting the light shine thro them.

More than 50% of your colour choices are in the green/cyan/blue range as the spectrum is weighted that way. This is another reason why the browns are so poor in SL, and, in my mind, a good reason to avoid them.

:))