Tag: M Linden

30000 hits? You’re having a laugh!

30000 hits? You’re having a laugh!

by Lisa Millar ♥ 2 Comments

..oh my goodness, blimming heck, lawks-a-lawdy and any other relevant exclamations you can think of! Thirty thousand hits on this site!?! MADNESS, but an amazing number and as you can imagine I’ve been transfixed watching my stats increase towards this benchmark figure over the past few days. 

I thought that I’d perhaps hit the mark around Yule, and thought what a wonderful achievement that would be, but to hit it in November has seriously delighted me! The blog is certainly achieving more than I ever expected. I’d have been happy to have just a few hits, so to achieve 30k is just utterly astounding to me.  I’m very humbled, but also chuffed to pieces, because there are some absolutely stunning blogs related to all things metaversal out there, so to think I have a regular readershipwhen there is such superior competition out there is a real mind-boggler!

As regular readers know, this blog exists purely for me to witter on about the wonderfulness that is our happy little metaverse, and I do so like to witter..you’ve probably noticed! Despite all the pixels and prattle the blog has developed in a strangely organic way as time has progressed…Kitty has developed too. For a start I’ve developed a skin fetish that I never thought possible when I first started ( “What’s the point of different skins? Why make yourself look different? Shouldn’t you just stay as one character?) and don’t even get me started on hair!  Who’d have thought that the words ‘prim’ and ‘flexi’ would have become permanent fixtures in my vocabulary? It’s utter gibberish! Would I have even considered that one day I would be staring wild and goggle-eyed at my screen as a virtual fashion show takes place, or dancing like a loon down at the pub, in a virtual world but with MY REAL-LIFE DAD! ( Which is let’s face it, completely crackers…)

I’ve often said that Kitty is me and I am she..but it’s more than that.  I studied Journalism at college and like most good ideas it fell by the wayside when I discovered the mediocrity of real life, so writing the blog has provided me the opportunity to vent all my pent up creative juices.  It’s enabled me to enjoy clothing-something which may sound crazy but it really isn’t. In real life I am a complete slob…I’m not materialistic at all and think it’s utter madness to spend more than a couple of quid on a T-shirt, but Second Life allows me to unleash my inner goddess and wear couture gowns and designer threads that Gok Wan would cream his tight pants over. I’ve always been excited by haute couture, daft as it sounds for a Northern lass I’ve always had an Issey Miyake/Yohji Yamamoto fetish ( I blame the PSB’s for that though..)

In second Life I go to sleep on pretend Egyptian cotton sheets and I live in my house of virtual dreams, with amazing furnishings that have funny coloured balls on them that make you do all sorts of rudeness when you sit upon them.  To an outsider it sounds crazy when I explain that I write a blog about my exploits in a world that only exists on servers and microchips.  It’s not tangible; I can’t reach out and run the fabric from my virtual hemline through my fingers and I can’t smell the coffee brewing on my virtual stove, so why is it so enthralling? So utterly addictive?  For me, the answer is simple-I finally feel like I’ve achieved something, and it makes me happy.  I have never been an achiever, but now I feel like I have at last done something to be proud of, and people may scoff but you know what? I care not a jot.  I write this blog entirely by myself and it’s funded from my own somewhat threadbare pockets, but I’m not complaining because the pleasure it has provided me with is priceless! Here’s a thought to blow your noggin; if I’d had a pound for every hit I’ve had on this blog I’d have been able to quit my real life job (seriously!) or at the very least go part time,  and spend the remainder enjoying real-life and blogging the metaverse.  What a mad bonkers thought! But if Wagner James Au can do it, then why can’t I…?

So, what about the next 30,000 hits? What will Kitty be doing then? I have no idea.  I’d love to be able to earn some sort of living from my writing, that is certain, a pipe dream I know..but something to aspire to nonetheless! In an ideal world I’d host Kittywitchin on my own server which would allow for selective advertising, but there’s more to life than Linden dollars….honest!

My Second Life aspirations are to keep enjoying it, increase my enthusiasm, rather than curb it and avoid all the dramas. I want to keep loving the clothes and discovering talented new designers, as well as worshipping at the altars of the established in-world  superstars.  I want to go to tons of events in world,  I want to see more real-life celebrities here (I hear Stephen Fry is a regular? I bloody love him!!) and using the metaverse as a way to connect with the people who keep their careers afloat by buying their books and records. I want to log in to a world that rezzes relatively swiftly and doesn’t crash that often.  I want to be visually excited by what I see and thrilled to be a part of it. I want to see how M Linden and co fare, especially as the global downturn really kicks in , and I wonder what our metaverse will be like in 6 months time. Will Second Life even exist? (God-can you imagine? what the hell would I do if it didn’t? Perish the thought!) 

I want to make my mark on this metaverse and revel in my 15 minutes of virtual fame, and each time I power down my PC I want to do so with a smile on my face, reflecting upon the wonderful time that I’ve just spent in world with all the friends that I’ve made from all corners of the globe..and most of all dear reader, I want to do this with you tagging along for the ride….I truly hope you’ll stick around and see where Kittywitchin goes from here. 

Thanks for reading, thanks to all the amazingly generous content creators for the wonderful freebies and words of encouragement, but most of all thanks for sharing this amazing experience with me:)

/Me raises her  glass of dirty Vimto in the air and says “Cheers, here’s to the next 30000 hits!

Uh-oh…..

Uh-oh…..

by Lisa Millar ♥ 1 Comment

I’ve been pondering the grid wide ghost hunt and thinking it is one of the most fun things that I’ve ever participated in.. I have never seen so many people in Second Life at the same time, and for me it’s been really fabulous to rezz in different locations and see them bustling and crowded; which is precisely how the metaverse should be. Sure, the lag has been an utter nightmare at times, nothing new there then, but it feels so nice to be exploring busy places in search of a common goal…Time to put all that aside though, because it would appear that the Lindens may have dropped a proverbial bollock with the announcement that they’re increasing the cost of Openspace sims. As you can imagine, there are blog posts aplenty where the writers are apoplectic with rage about the situation.This is the initial blog entry from the Linden blog announcing the pricing changes, and Rezzable was one of the first to post a less than favourable reaction. What a blunder…in the hours that have followed the announcement reaction has escalated into a revolution of sorts, and there are threats of real life protests outside the Linden HQ. The passion that this issue has aroused across the grid should will be an interesting challenge for M Linden and co. Avvies are a savvy lot, and don’t take such changes lightly. Many people are going to be impacted by this, and I’m so glad that I didn’t invest in a void sim now, because there’s no way I would have been happy with the increases that will be implemented come January 2009. In fact, I think a lot of people will be leaving the grid for good after this latest bombshell.

Has anyone else noticed that when it comes to issues like this the Lindens really do seem to cock -up big style? What goes on in their preannouncement meetings? Do they sit around on bean bags bouncing balls off the wall, or do they actually stop to consider the repercussions on the world that they have created and the patrons within it- the patrons who keep Second Life afloat?

If I’m honest, price increases don’t surprise me considering the current economic climate, but I didn’t see this one coming, although it would appear that some did. Second Life has appeared to be making really substantial progress with ever increasing numbers of patrons in-world (or so the Linden metrics would have us believe ) but for a change as substantial as this to come along, and with the controversy that it is generating, it may well start to see the beginning of an exodus into other virtual worlds. Apparently Openlife saw over a thousand join-ups yesterday!Regardless of the money and time I’ve spent in world, it has genuinely become my second home. I love my virtual life, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I don’t care about the people who scoff at me or look at me as if I’m a total weirdo when I tell them what I do..to me Second Life has enabled me to achieve some of my ambitions, albeit in a completely different way. Of course I don’t use it as a substitute for my reality, but it is definitely more than a hobby to me. It’s hard to define, but it’s a part of me now, just as much as Kitty is a virtual representation of the real me, although, alas, I have neither her beauty nor her fashion sense. I must confess though that this has got me worried about the potential implications that it may have on the metaverse, and has also brought to mind a conversation that Jez and I were having about SL recently, when he predicted that in 18 months time the virtual floor would have fallen away from underneath its feet for it to have been succeeded by other MMO’s and metaverses…I scoffed at the very thought. Now I’m not so sure. I need to ask Jez about this, but when Blizzard communicate with it’s 11 million WoW subscribers does it leave them feeling like they’ve been shafted, or are they more respectful of their audience? It almost feels like a stealthly attempt at self-sabotage…

Perhaps LL are trying to scythe their way through the masses and use this as a process of selection? I know that the idea behind void sims was that they would be for ‘light use’ and I’m aware that people may have abused that, but not everyone should have to suffer for this. If I had bought a void sim I would have had it as my own home;it would certainly have been used lightly by me and only my closest friends, but not everyone is so honest. Making the masses pay for the sins of a few seems incredibly harsh, which leads me to think that LL needed to glean extra revenues from somewhere…my ‘Witchy ‘sense is tingling because something seems decidedly off about this…A lot of people, myself included, have considered M Linden to be quite a reasonable chap, so I’m sure I’m not going to be the only one appealing to his better judgement here and asking him to meet the residents to discuss these changes before they come into force, and subsequently change the Second Life experience forever….