Ava Ganache

The Kate Winslet look...

2009-01-13T21:35:00.000Z

/me sobs

Here comes the flood

2009-01-06T22:48:00.000Z

It's nearly time for the great post-Christmas thaw, and as a result, the water level near my house has risen...

With apologies to Peter Gabriel (from 'Here Comes the Flood') this seemed quite appropriate to the rising water experience in Second Life...

When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
use up what we used to be.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

Clags sunrise

2009-01-04T14:32:00.000Z

These moments have happened so rarely recently that I've taken to photographing every time I meet Clags. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. Well, it certainly doesn't diminish the desire.

[lg_image folder="/Clags" image="20090104_001.jpg" align="left"]

This little image, by the way, is a link to the gallery. Its behaviour seems a little erratic, but hey.

Wallpapers

2008-12-29T14:30:00.000Z

A couple of the photos sis took yesterday make pretty good wallpapers, I think... so here they are, if you want them. They're 1600x1200 jpeg files, but you can crunch them any way you like.

You should also be able to find these in the 'Wallpapers' album in the Gallery

Holding my Clagsy

2008-12-29T10:20:00.000Z

Holding my Clagsy

Check this out!

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It's snowing

2008-12-29T00:29:00.000Z

It's snowing

Thanks to my neighbour, Hans... some good-looking snow :)

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Playing with a Christmas present

2008-12-28T18:43:00.000Z

Sis took a drive out to Snowdonia, playing with her Christmas present - a new camera. These are some of the results I've stolen from her...

These are, of course, tiny thumbnail images compared with the originals. They don't show the true quality of the original images, but they do show that the weather wasn't bad.

Christmas, white, dreaming

2008-12-24T23:41:00.000Z

Christmas, white, dreaming

I finally met up with Clags today, after missing her time and agin over the last week. A wonderful Christmas present.

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The longest hello

2008-12-24T15:15:00.000Z

This is me, sitting, and waiting. Someone could probably sit down and calculate the probability that two people who really want to see each other somehow fail to be present in sl at the same time. Not once, but fail for days on end. So this is me, sitting, waiting, looking wistfully at the spot in my house where Clags will finally appear.

And this is what I did while I waited... a poor imitation of the sort of treatment Clags would give this photo.

Sitting, waiting

2008-12-24T14:12:00.000Z

Sitting, waiting

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Snow blindness

2008-12-17T19:25:00.000Z

You saw the title of this post, and you saw the picture, and you thought "Oh no, this is just another of Ava's snow pictures, with some boring blurb underneath, just like the other ones she posted".

Wrong.

Well, right and wrong, I suppose. There's a certain amount of pointless drivel in this post, as always, but if you bear with me I'll introduce you to a metaphorical extravaganza (something which sounds as though it should be related to organza, but isn't. Organza is a fabric. Though in turn, organza sounds like it should be an unusually exotic orgy, maybe involving silk somehow).

Anyway...

While tweaking the image you see above, getting the colour balance right, I thought "If I carry on doing this, I'll go snowblind. Maybe I should tint the whole thing yellow, as though I'm wearing goggles." But then I've heard stories of yellow snow, and didn't want to attract the obvious comments. Even though I quite like huskies.

And then, the next thought I had went something like this...

I have a dear friend, who I think must have suffered something like emotional snowblindness. Ordinarily, she's the most drama-averse individual you could hope to meet. But suddenly, there she was... ploughing her way through the emotional snowdrift of domination and submission, wearing nothing but a collar to keep her warm. She'd worn a collar before, but not one so tightly fastened. And this one felt warm at the time, I think, only because it was chaffing her neck.

Maybe the thing about snowblindness is that you don't realise that you're blind. And maybe you're inclined to say, when friends ask, that you see everything clearly.

In the end, she found her snow goggles again. Then, with no small amount of courage, she dug herself out of the drift.

I really don't like snow at all.

Pop Tart

2008-12-14T20:56:00.000Z

Pop Tart,
originally uploaded by Clags.

That's me!

Visions

2008-12-08T07:09:00.000Z

Posting this image could be vanity on my part, but what I really want to know this... how does Clags manage to see these wonderful images ? I wish I had a fraction of that vision. Maybe some of it will rub off.

Corwin, and me, and a tree

2008-12-07T19:25:00.000Z

Corwin, and me, and a tree

It's that time of year

Image Galleries in Wordpress

2008-12-07T11:31:00.000Z

I had a discussion with Nina earlier this week, about the ways to incorporate a picture gallery into her blog. I suggested two alternatives: Lazyest Gallery, which I use on this site, and the Nextgen gallery, which is one of the more popular plugins (at least according to the download count at the wordpress plugin repository).

I use Lazyest, because it's simple, and I find it logical - each folder on your server is a gallery, and each sub-folder is a sub-gallery, so using it is just like browsing through folders and subfolders of images on your local file system, using a file manager (Gnome's Nautilus, in my case, or Finder on Apple's Mac. I think Windows has something similar).

I posted a few more pictures into my gallery yesterday, and realised that Lazyest has had a couple of significant updates - including the ability to add comments to individual images. For me - having tried a whole load of gallery plugins - this is without doubt The One. Take a look, add add a comment, why don't you ?

Sitting, contemplating

2008-12-06T23:10:00.000Z

There's no doubt it's been a strange week. A curate's egg of a week. A week to contemplate fortunes and misfortunes, things won, things lost, things found.

And now I'm sitting here, contemplating what might well be the start of a new and wonderful chapter in my second life, while other people dear to me are starting new chapters of their own.

First life ?

2008-12-05T00:19:00.000Z

Nice. All credits to Darren Barefoot.

Chillin' while it's chilly

2008-12-02T19:12:00.000Z

Chillin' while it's chilly

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Not so Lively after all...

2008-12-01T09:41:00.000Z

I saw this article in the Technology section of the BBC's website, noting the passing of Google's virtual world experiment, 'Lively'. There were various stories a year ago, mostly of gloom and despair, along the lines of "Google will trample us all to death, woe is me !".

It didn't happen.

This article, by Bill Thompson - a writer I have serious time for - takes a more measured look at virtual living, including Second Life, than pretty much any other article I've read recently. I'd recommend you read it too.

Snow (again)

2008-11-30T23:19:00.000Z

This was a surprise present from Corwin ! A lovely, cute, non-melting snowman, complete with carrot nose and scarf !

Oh... notice how sl snow is so realistic, that my right foot has sunk into it, while my left foot - with no weight on it - hasn't ! This must be one of the unremarked marvels of the new Havoc engine. Or a glitch with my AO / shoe combination. Take your pick.

Chez Clagsy

2008-11-30T22:52:00.000Z

Chez Clagsy

A good place to be

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I took this picture just a couple of minutes later...

[caption id="attachment_933" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Sunset at Clags' place"][/caption]

Contemplating snow

2008-11-29T21:43:00.000Z

Contemplating snow

Notice there's no fog when I exhale

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Winter arrives - suddenly

2008-11-29T09:36:00.000Z

Winter arrives - suddenly

I looked out of my window yesterday, and discovered it's now winter. Apparently, winter starts on the Americans' Thanksgiving holiday, and finishes on the 2nd of January, when summer will recommence just as suddenly.
Don't ask about my neighbour's balloon - I have no idea of the answer.

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Clags: a couple of piccies

2008-11-16T23:45:00.000Z

[caption id="attachment_902" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Clags, spotted in her native habitat"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_903" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Red sky at night... shepherd's delight"][/caption]

Pondering life

2008-11-16T22:36:00.000Z

Pondering life

It's been a strange weekend in sis's rl, so I've not seen the light of day until now. Just time now to lie back and contemplate on what a strange thing life is.

Gazing on a Sunday Afternoon

2008-11-09T23:04:00.002Z

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Bergamo photos...

2008-11-09T17:04:00.000Z

We didn't get a lot of free time, and mostly during the week the weather varied between bad and awful. But on Friday morning, we (by which I mean my sister, really - I just tagged along) did manage to get up to Bergamo's Citta Alta and have a walk around for a couple of hours. After the week of meetings, it was nice to get out into fresh air and daylight. That's when I realised sis hadn't got her 'proper' camera with her - the photos in the montage below were taken using a mobile phone (for the nerdy, it's a Sony Ericsson C902, just like Bond's in a Quantum of Solace, which I saw yesterday evening). You'll find the originals of these photos in the Gallery.

That's some probe...

2008-11-09T10:17:00.000Z

I couldn't help noticing that the Indian lunar probe made its first moon orbit today. OK, it's maybe not the most exciting piece of news of the last week or two, unless you're Indian of course. Nonetheless, it's quite an achievement.

But that wasn't all that caught my eye. In true geek fashion, I took a look at the mission website, and then a look at their propulsion system. I quote...

PSLV has four stages, using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. Six strap-on motors augment the first stage thrust. PSLV-XL is the upgraded version of PSLV. In PSLV-XL, the six strap-on motors carry 4 tonne more propellant compared to PSLV; There is also an increase in the length of each strap-on.

Please Santa, for Christmas, I want a strap-on with one of those motors!

Sweetest Goodbye - hello !

2008-11-08T11:52:00.002Z

Sweetest Goodbye - hello !

Thanks to Vextra for the LM... this is a wonderful outlet. Love it !

Bergamo: a day off at last!

2008-11-07T13:31:00.000Z

After working all week in Bergamo (near Milan) I (we?) finally managed to get a little free time. Luckily the weather improved too - it was dry for 3 whole hours!

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Lewis Hamilton

2008-11-03T00:14:00.000Z

What's Lewis Hamilton got to do with SL ? Nothing at all. But I sorta wanted people to know I'm still alive, because right now I'm with sis in Italy, in the heart of Ferrari country. Well, the outskirts of Milan are close to the heart anyway. And being British, on the day when Ferrari thought - just for a moment - that Felipe Massa had won the championship... well, it's an interesting experience. The one thing that works in my favour is that sis drives an Alfa Romeo.
As it happens, this is the only race I've failed to watch all season. And from what I can tell, it was possibly the best Formula 1 race in a long time. Winning the championship by overtaking in the last few seconds, as I understand it. Awesome.

Wenceslas Square at night

2008-10-27T17:22:00.000Z

Interesting place. Wenceslas Square isn't square, it's just a long wide road. It's not even called Wenceslas Square - it's 'Vaklavske nam'. There was also a distinct lack of snow - deep, crisp, even, or otherwise. The shops were ok though.

---
Sent from my mobile thingumyjigger

Where on earth am I?

2008-10-26T18:11:00.000Z

Maybe this is something of a rhetorical question - after all, can a virtual existence such as mine ever claim to have a physical location? Yet somehow, for some reason, I feel more comfortable when I associate myself with the physical space my 'sister' occupies. If that's the case though, where am I, physically?
It's hard to imagine myself 'dormant' but still present in sl at this very moment. For one thing, I don't feel dormant, writing this. For another, no-one in sl can see me right now.
So the next, most logical answer is that I must be where my sister is. And that means I must be either in her head, or in her phone.
Next, logically, if I was in her head, I wouldn't be able to discriminate between her thoughts and my own - unless I'm unknowingly schizophrenic. While I can't exclude that possibility, it seems altogether more likely that I reside in whatever communicating device she's using - in which case I'm probably the manifestation of some electromagnetic field my sister emits.
Hmmm... I'm glad I've cleared that one up.

---
Sent from my mobile thingumyjigger

Prague: the Charles Bridge

2008-10-26T17:18:00.000Z

I think this is the bridge Clags was talking about when I said I was going to Prague. Sadly, there was no-one roasting chestnuts when I went there today - but maybe I'll be luckier this evening.

---
Sent from my mobile thingumyjigger

Testing Vextra's... couch

2008-10-19T01:11:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, further testing of furniture is needed, even after manufacturing is complete. And then there are all the promo photographs, of course.

General bloggery

2008-10-18T17:28:00.000+01:00

This is really meant simply as an aside: if you hadn't noticed, for the last few days there's been a menu item (in the menu bar above the title on this page) called '[About blogging]'. Littered through this blog are numerous references to my experiments in operating a blog in conjunction with sl. The new pages are an attempt to distil and condense the results of my experiments, and hopefully make them more useful to anyone embarking on a similar project.

I'm not claiming any great authority in this. I'm most definitely an amateur and sporadic blogger, and you can draw your own conclusions on my abilities as an author. I have, however, spent a good time investigating ways to make the process of living a second life, and maintaining a blog about it, reasonably painless.

The first two pages are a general commentary on creating blog postings from within sl, and on selecting a blogging platform. I'll add other topics on an ad-hoc basis.

Hopefully, someone will find these pages useful.

Smug mug

2008-10-14T19:30:00.000+01:00

This is me looking pleased with myself, after Corwin noticed my name in (rather small) lights in the current viewer's Help / About box. Can you see ? And all I did was report a bug and how to reproduce it.

Cartoon stardom

2008-10-10T22:19:00.000+01:00

Another of Nina's excellent cartoons... this time, with me. What you see here was the product of hours of gruelling rehearsal. It was hard work, but it had to be done.

Testing Vextra's pillows

2008-10-10T19:04:00.000+01:00

There's plenty of scope for innuendo in this title, which I would hate to discourage

What hot tubs were made for

2008-10-09T00:49:00.000+01:00

What hot tubs were made for

The Cory Story (pt 2)

2008-10-05T16:56:00.000+01:00

Having found paid work at EMI, sl's erstwhile technoguru Cory Linden (or Ondrejka, if you prefer) has been pretty quiet - as measured by his appearances in my favoured techie site, The Register, at least. But then this rather dismissive piece appeared.

I don't know Cory, and I don't know enough about his work, so any opinion I might have should rightly count for nothing. I cut out the argument by having no opinion. But when I read someone expressing opinions, particularly negative opinions phrased in derogatory ways, I find it hard to avoid forming an opinion of the author. And because I dislike baseless opinion, I did a little googling on Andrew Orlowski - the author of the Register piece.

If you read the Register article, you'll see this...

Ondrejka was hired by the equally utopian former Googler Douglas Merrill [Taurus | Year of the Dog | extremely dull blog] earlier this year. Ondrejka may not know much about the music business, reliable systems or consumer marketing, but he knows what to do when cornered. Like a squid making a rapid exit, he blows out a black cloud of Web 2.0 buzzwords.

So I thought, well, I'm quite interested in blogging and I'd like to see how my own blog compares with an extremely dull one. And actually, having done that, I'd probably rather read the extremely dull one than read mine. It's quite moving. I even wonder if Orlowski read it himself.

Then I thought I'd look to see Orlowski's own blog, or website, or whatever, to get an idea of Orlowski's background and experience. Sadly, it's a poorly presented site, out of date, and somewhat lacking in any substance. Glass houses and stone-throwing came to mind. I still don't know his background or experience, but now I can't be bothered to find out.

I don't know if Cory has gone up, or down, or sideways in my estimation - I still don't have an opinion. But I won't waste time reading Orlowski again.

Same old home - but newer

2008-10-05T12:43:00.000+01:00

Same old home - but newer

Meet the new home (it's the same as the old home).

This version just has updated menus and stuff, but it was interesting to position it exactly where the old one was, without removing the original contents first

Vextra, Corwin, and me

2008-10-04T15:59:00.000+01:00

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Imogen, encore

2008-10-02T00:32:00.000+01:00

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Imogen

2008-10-02T00:28:00.000+01:00

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Ace's place

2008-10-01T19:33:00.000+01:00

Ace's place

It must be nice to own, or co-own, an island. Endless possibilities for building. I'm a bit jealous.

Tiffani - an indulgence

2008-09-30T01:16:00.000+01:00

I haven't done this in a while - put several images together in a single post. Mostly, I've been working on getting the mechanics of bloggery working how I'd like. This posting, though, is a bit of pure indulgence on my part.

These are a few photos Tiffani gave me. She's one sultry girl, with a good eye for a picture. It would be a crime to keep these to myself when she said I could share them

Gravatar puzzle

2008-09-29T21:40:00.000+01:00

I was flicking back through some recent comments, and I noticed that the little picture of me - the one that appears next to the comment - was rather old. So I thought I'd change it.

First, I simply assumed it must be stored as part of my profile on this blog. Wrong. In fact, I don't have an 'avatar' in my profile on this blog (sl residents will chuckle here at the use of 'avatar' for a static image, but that's what they're called in blogspeak). I do, however, have an avatar for use with my wordpress.com blog - but it's not the same image as the one I was trying to change.

So I thought.. hmmm... maybe it's tied to my gmail account (since that's identified in my blog profile, and it also has an avatar in the profile). Wrong. I'd updated that image a while ago. At this point I was stumped. I couldn't imagine where this blog was getting hold of the image.

So I started trawling my way through the Wordpress codex (the thing that anyone else would just call 'documentation', or even 'help'). And I hit upon the word 'gravatar' being used in this context - globally recognised avatar. Somewhere, a dim light sputtered into life. I googled 'gravatar' and found gravatar.com. What was surprising is that I also discovered I had an account there.

What was more surprising is that I was able to manage my account, and change the little picture, without actually logging in. I assume it was picking up data from a cookie left behind by Wordpress, or gmail, or some such, because I was doing all this on my little eee. And I know I've not logged in to gravatar.com using the eee.

Anyway... final upshot is that the little image you see in my comments come from gravatar.com, and is associated with my email address. And I thought changing it would be simple.

(By the way... if you didn't already follow the blogspeak link, you should. Do it now)

The next blogging tweak project

2008-09-29T15:03:00.000+01:00

I've never been able to sit still. Always fidgeting. So when Corwin mentioned that he wasn't able to see the few pictures in the Gallery page, I was all set to have another look at gallery plugins for Wordpress. And there are a good number.

But before I got started, I just wondered whether there was really a problem with the plugin I was using anyway, which goes by the title of 'Lazyest Gallery'. I just wondered whether there was some peculiar browser behaviour, or maybe something odd about the cacheing plugin I've been using - WP Supercache (sounds cheesy, doesn't it?).

So I turned off the cacheing thingy, and suddenly I can now drill down into the galleries again when I use Epiphany or Opera, just as I can when using Firefox. Maybe it was the cache plugin after all, or at least a plugin cache clash.

Anyone tried the gallery with Safari, or something else? IE, perhaps - if anyone still uses it?

Whatever happened to... Vegas #1 ?

2008-09-29T13:42:00.000+01:00

It's an interesting question.

You can see from the posts below this one that I was walking around a sim that was intended to be a reconstruction, with some artistic license, of Vegas. Several of the postcards I sent arrived safe and sound, but the first one didn't. I had an error message from the SL viewer each time I sent a postcard - probably because my net connection was stretched to the limit doing other things.

So rather than look a complete idiot, I thought I'd just explain. I do know how to count, starting from 1. The message called Vegas #1 is out there, somewhere, lost in the ether(net).

Vegas #4

2008-09-28T22:58:00.000+01:00

Vegas #4

Luxor - or Luxout. Take your pick.

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Vegas #3

2008-09-28T22:53:00.000+01:00

Vegas #3

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Vegas #2

2008-09-28T22:52:00.000+01:00

Vegas #2

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Theme

2008-09-28T13:04:00.000+01:00

Here (with any luck) is a snapshot of my Wordpress site theme. It retains a lot of the features of the original 'Green Apples' theme upon which it was based (nice work and thankyou, Liane), but it's different enough to be worth making available separately. At least I think it is.

greenage-20080928-2

One caveat: you're welcome to download, use, and play around with this theme under the terms of the GPL - just as I have - but I'm not sufficiently skilled in the ways of CSS, PHP, XHTML or other appropriate acronyms to be of any help to you if it goes all screwy.

The Subterranean Progressive Rock Music Bar

2008-09-26T12:56:00.000+01:00

The Subterranean Progressive Rock Music Bar

Excellent piped music from Morow, but disappointly empty on my quiet Friday morning away from work. Love the seat though !

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Fleur: A nice build

2008-09-26T12:55:00.000+01:00

Fleur: A nice build

Another of CJ's builds, holding his Fleur skins shop. I can't help thinking this has a Mediterranean feel to it.

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All quiet on the virtual front

2008-09-22T20:11:00.000+01:00

Has anyone else noticed how quiet the official SL blog has become ?
I thought it was my imagination, until I looked quickly at the archive...
Pre May '08 there were typically 60 - 100 entries, a lot of them about system status
May - July '08 saw typically 35 - 40 entries, after the system status blog was separated out (or hidden, depending on your viewpoint)
Then August had the grand total of 9 postings in the official blog, and September's total, standing currently at seven, will probably end up similar.
Now I understand perfectly well that volume of content and quality of content are not necessarily related. This blog is perfect testament to that fact (and you can interpret that statement however you like). But recent postings really don't make exciting reading as far as I can see - judging by how few comments there are (and remembering that there's a limit of 150 comments per blog posting - a limit which was often hit within minutes).
Ironically, I'm making this comment in the wake of this posting, promising great things in improving communication. Of course, it's possible that the forum has become massively more popular and useful, and has drawn the Lindens away from the official blog - though I doubt it (the forum isn't exactly well signposted from the website front page or the blog page, after all). Or maybe the bounce has gone from their bungee (to quote from Wallace and Gromit).

Poseuse

2008-09-21T10:10:00.000+01:00

Poseuse

Am I terrible ? I just like posing.

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Welcome back, Ren

2008-09-20T10:44:00.000+01:00

By pure chance, when I logged in this morning, who should I see but Render. She was partner for many months, then found rl taking its toll and mostly left sl. I've noticed her footprints around from time to time (by which I mean, I've seen the 'last logged in' date change when I've checked groups we have in common), but in any meaningful sense she has been away from sl for over a year.
Welcome back, Ren.

Ren

2008-09-20T10:18:00.000+01:00

Ren

Check this out!

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Neighbour's balloon

2008-09-20T10:07:00.000+01:00

Neighbour's balloon

This neighbour has Peculiar gorundwork - which you can't see here - but also has a rather fetching little ballon thing. Messrs Montgolfier would be proud.

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...spreading all the light all around

2008-09-20T09:34:00.000+01:00

...spreading all the light all around

Check this out!

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Sun arise... bring in the morning

2008-09-20T09:30:00.000+01:00

Sun arise... bring in the morning

Check this out!

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Who ? Me ?

2008-09-19T18:37:00.000+01:00

I like this picture. Don't I look innocent !

From my phone...

2008-09-17T17:11:00.000+01:00

It's all well and good to say how wonderful posterous is, but it occured to me that I hadn't recently mailed from my phone. If this fails I'll have a very red face.

Sent by me

Longer hair

2008-09-16T21:43:00.000+01:00

Longer hair

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Blogging from SecondLife - the story so far

2008-09-14T23:08:00.000+01:00

[Postscript: this posting now forms the basis of a static page on this site, and is one of a growing number of articles on the general blogging process, and on blogging from SL in particular. These pages are linked from the header menu - above the blog title - or here (Ava Ganache, 20081013) ]

As you will have seen, if you read through the postings over the last few weeks, much of the time I've spent on this blog has been concerned with the simple matter of finding a flexible way to post from Second Life. It sounds like the sort of task that ought to be trivially easy. My experience has been quite the opposite - it's hard.

The problem

The problem I found myself with is simple enough: I want to post pictures into my blog while I'm in SL. I also want to be able to post to my blog by email, from time to time, because I can do that from my phone when I have a spare moment - I can't always get to my PC. To complicate matters a little, what I describe as 'my blog' is actually several parallel versions of a blog, running on several different platforms. So I have a blog at Blogger, one at Wordpress.com , one at Vox.com, and I rent space on a server which hosts a Wordpress blog, and a Movable Type blog.

You may think I'm a masochist, and you'd be right. I'm afraid I like to experiment - probably more than I like blogging, if I'm deadly honest. So, my ideal is to be able to post from SL, from a phone, or from a PC, with the same post reaching several blogs on several different platforms, simultaneously. Not so trivial after all.

The best solution

If you've reached this page through desperate hours of Googling because you suffered the same frustrations that I have, I'll first set out what I think is the best solution I've found. The single, best solution, is to use Posterous.

Posterous is a respectable free blog in its own right, but it's geared to providing simple, robust blogging by email. It's smart enough, though not very configurable - at the moment. But the key thing is that it is capable of forwarding (cross-posting) to a lot of other blog platforms. And it's simple, simple, simple to set up. When you're finished setting up links to other blogs - a process that took me (at most) one minute per blog - you can simply email to post@posterous.com and that's it. The post goes to your Posterous blog, and gets forwarded at once to every other blog you've configured. (You can, if you want, exert more control - change the addressee to blogger@posterous.com, and the post will only go to the Blogger account, for example). For a resident of Second Life, the one thing that makes Posterous stand out from the rest is that it handles SL postcards perfectly. I should explain an SL postcard, perhaps...

A Second Life 'postcard' is a fixed format email message sent from within the Second Life viewer. It's accessed from the 'File / Take Snapshot' menu, which also allows images to be saved to disk or uploaded (because the viewer generates the snapshot image, and must upload it to SL if you want it in your inventory). The message consists of the snapshot itself (a sort of jpeg format screenshot), the subject line and message text which you can edit in the viewer dialog, and a number of other elements over which you have no control - such as a link to the location where the snapshot was taken, the SL logo, and a link to the SL website. There are several examples of SL postcards in this blog.

Almost every other method I have tried - and believe me, I've tried a lot - will mangle the postcard one way or another. One exception is that postcards will survive intact if they're sent to a Blogger blog directly from the SL viewer. On the other hand, Blogger blogs are hard to style well, especially if there are several images in a single post - at least, that's my experience. Posterous is not without its issues, though. Currently, you can't keep posts private (though you can delete them after they've been forwarded) - but this feature in coming, I'm told. And Posterous does two things to images contained in the post: it resizes them, and it stores them on the Posterous server, replacing the image with a link when it's forwarded to another blog. Luckily, the image is retained on the server and the link still functions, even if the email posting that it came from is deleted. Hopefully, this aspect of image handling will be addressed by the Posterous guys too, because I'd like to keep each downstream blog self-contained - text and images in the same place - if at all possible.

At the moment, Posterous can't post to blogs at Vox.com, although that's being worked on too. Vox is not a bad platform - one of the better ones actually - though it has some odd behaviours when it comes to cross-posting. When emailing posts to the blog, it uses a special email address, like (16_random_characters)@moblog.vox.com. Try typing that lot into the SL postcard dialog without making a mistake. Go on, try.

Other things I've tried...

SL postcard -> Blogger: works OK, if you like Blogger - as I noted earlier

SL postcard -> vox: Nearly works. The image and message text survive, but other elements such as the location are lost

SL postcard -> Wordpress.com: not possible, because Wordpress.com (the free hosting side of Wordpress) can't accept email. Not at all.

SL postcard -> Wordpress, hosted elsewhere: Wordpress is open source, so you can download it and host it yourself, or rent space on a server and host it there. This method allows Wordpress to accept postings by email, but... the native email support doesn't accept attachments or inline images, so it won't accept SL postcards. There are two plugins - postie, and postmaster - but both mangle SL postcards. Neither can accept multiple images. The better of the two is postmaster, but even this manages to lose the message text. What's more, all the Wordpress methods rely on an ability to run cron jobs on the server, which can be a pain if its on a rented host ( I know there is a 'cronless' method for postie, but configuring it is a pain, and it's not very reliable even when it works). For those lucky enough not to know, 'cron' is a *nix utility for scheduling other programs to run at intervals in time. [update 2009-03-03: Version 2.1 of Postmaster doesn't lose the text completely, and does claim to handle multiple images. For me, it still mangles SL postcards, but not so badly. It does need php5, though, which is a pain]

SL postcard -> Flickr, then Flickr blog forwarding: It's possible to email images to Flickr (again using an obscure email address which is awkward to type into the SL viewer dialog), and then to have Flickr forward images automatically to a blog, though this facility is somewhat hidden. Unfortunately, Flickr sees the SL logo as a second image, and forwards two postings when it receives an SL postcard. First it sends the snapshot image and the message text, and second it sends the SL logo and the message text. On top of that, I don't much like Flickr, though I don't really know why.

SL postcard -> Movable Type: can't really comment on this, since I've not used MT much. Broadly though, it seems to have the same issues as Wordpress, from what I've seen. I haven't yet managed to get MT to accept a posting by email.

TBR - on a wet Sunday afternoon (2)

2008-09-14T16:29:00.000+01:00

TBR - on a wet Sunday afternoon

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TBR - on a wet Sunday afternoon

2008-09-14T16:27:00.000+01:00

TBR - on a wet Sunday afternoon

All quiet... for now

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Moi, encore

2008-09-13T15:54:00.000+01:00

Moi, encore

Toujours la meme, c'est moi.

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Talila

2008-09-12T01:06:00.000+01:00

Talila

A quick little snapshot

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tbr

2008-09-12T01:01:00.000+01:00

tbr

TBR, on a quiet night

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Charlene's viewer death spot - fixed

2008-09-12T00:19:00.000+01:00

Charlene's viewer death spot - fixed

This spot killed Charlene's 1.21.1 viewer, and killed mine too when I tried it. With 1.21.2, it's fine and dandy

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Viewer Death Spot Pt II - the fix

2008-09-12T00:17:00.000+01:00

Viewer Death Spot Pt II - the fix

Here I am, stand in the spot where the previous RC viewer dies a horrible death. This time, with 1.21.2, it's looking good - even with the draw distance wound up to max.

Nice fix, Linden guys

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two images

2008-09-10T19:12:00.000+01:00

Simple text in message

»This post was processed by PostMaster

___

The original email, sent using Thunderbird, contained the text and two attached images. Only one of them made it.

More trees

2008-09-09T19:07:00.000+01:00

More trees

Trees, and stuff

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Have I cracked it ?

2008-09-09T19:00:00.000+01:00

Have I cracked it ?

Or more accurately, has Posterous cracked it ? I wonder. This ought to go to www.avaganache.com, avaganache.wordpress.com, and avaganache.blogspot.com. Me, indecisive ? Never. Well, maybe sometimes.

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Posterous - from SL

2008-09-09T18:22:00.000+01:00

Posterous - from SL

Let's see if this is any more successful at preserving text with images

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Posterous - from SL (again)

2008-09-09T18:21:00.000+01:00

Posterous - from SL (again)

Well, I'm an eternal optimist, OK ?

One more for the road

2008-09-09T13:56:00.000+01:00

This time, re-routed via a gmail account, to flickr, and then to
avaganache.vox.com and www.avaganache.com
I wasn't able to configure Flickr to access to the Movable Type blog
(avaganache.com/ava_ganache) at the first attempt

--
Want to try out Second Life for yourself? Sign up at
http://secondlife.com/?u=95edc2cd9ced486680c06bab1da34611

____

OK - at some point I'm going tosit down and write a summary of what I know about trying toblog from SL. Consider all the forgoing stuff as research material:)

This post started life as an SL postcard, sent to flickr. Flickr should then forward the thing to this blog, but actually sends each image as a separate posting. There are two images in an sl postcard: the snapshot, and the secondlife logo. The post above is the first image to arrive, and I deleted the post which contains just the logo.

This behaviour is probably ok for most purposes, but not for an sl postcard

Posterous... the answer ?

2008-09-09T01:13:00.000+01:00

If this works, I'll be stunned. If this works well, I'll be even more stunned. And if this really manages to post to several blogs at once, eventually, I'll eat the very paper this entry is printed on.

So far, my bet is:
Yes: avaganache.wordpress.com

No: avaganache.vox.com
avaganache.com/ava_ganache (you didn't know about that one, did you ?)