SLim is virtually useless

And that pun in the title WAS intended.

I’ve been a user of MetaBolt for a couple months now.  Metabolt is a simple text only IRC-style chat client that logs you into the SL grid, with no 3D interface. Mostly metabolt is great for camping, which is something I could have used years ago when I was a camper at various casinos.  Since casinos are gone, camping dosen’t pay off anything worth wile anymore.  But if you’re a land owner you can use it to camp your alts to artificially raise your traffic numbers, or set up security avatar bots (running lsl scripts) at your establishment.

These 3rd party stand-alone text only clients have been around for some time, and now Linden Labs is going to release their own thin client called SLim, but it’s not the same thing.  In fact the Lindens didn’t develop it, it was developed by their voice chat service Vivox. Since this client allows you to use voice chat, where as the other text clients don’t, however the other clients (e.g. Metabolt) are acctually useful.

To get this working, first you’re required to download the First-look SLim Viewer which is a normal standard 3D viewer that some how syncs up your friends list with your SLim account (yes they are seperate).   I know this is instantly going to confuse so many users thinking that this new “SLIM” first-look client is a new low-resource hogging client, that still gives you a 3D environment.  Nope, it’s just the same old client from Linden Lab with extra code so it can sync your friends list with SLim which will probably later get rolled into the next official update of the SL viewer.

First you have to set up a SLim account that’s separate from your SL avatar login. The links to sign up is on the dowload page for SLim,  you need to be logged into the Second Life website first to even get the download links (no login requred to DL the regular viewer). This is because it uses your logged-in avatar name to create your SLim account.  Because of this it’s not possible for anyone to “Hijack” your account names.  They do recommend you use a different password but most people won’t since they won’t understand it’s almost completely separate from the SL Grid, since in order to IM and voice chat with your friends in SL, they also must be logged in with SLim.  So apparetly IMs and voice chat dosen’t work across the SL viewer users, and SLim users because they are diffrent services.  Which makes it completely useless.

This means that SLim is no different from using Yahoo, Skype, MSN Live, AIM or any number of IM clients where your friends also have to use the same exact software as you are in order to chat with them.  So do we really need yet another IM client just to talk to our SL friends when it’s completely separated from Second Life it self?  I mean isn’t that the whole FUCKING POINT is to chat with your friends on SL when they are logged in?

I can’t get my friends list to appear on SLim at all, and I’m also logged in to SL using the first look SLIM viewer, which is no diffrent then any of the previous viewers.  But like I said before, people will ASSUME that “First Look SLim viewer” will be a new low-end, low-footprint, low-resource using 3D viewer client that will run on slower/older PCs.  When all it really does is contain some small amount of software to sync your friends list with SLim however that really works.  I supposed this will be rolled into the next version of the offical viewer, but you’d think this can be acomplished in a diffrent way with out having to download and install a diffrent viewer that does nothing else. This viewer dosen’t fix any bugs like the nvidia rendering bug with palletized textures.

This also brings up a potential security risk by having yet another 3rd party with your login information. Sure your passwords can be different from the SL Grid, and the SLim service.  However if someone can get into your SLim account and access your friends list and you can send messages to your friends can be serious problem. I guess the Lindens didn’t learn their last lesson about the Age Verification fiasco that no one is bothering to use because of the potential security risks when using it.

All in all this is a useless aplication.  If you REALLY want to have IM conversations with out having to be logged in to SL, simply set SL to send you e-mails for offline IMs, since you can also respond to them via email and they will see your messages.  It may not be as clean as SLim, but it’s not nearly as cumbersome or as vulnrable.  And you’re better off using a client like METAbolt anyway.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

I just got the game today, and my first impressions are rather good. I’ve not touched the vocals or drums yet. One of the first OH YES THEY READ MY MIND! additions to GHWT was they added an open-note strum. This is where you strum with out holding a fret button down. Anyone who’s ever played a real guitar knows that the strings do play a sort of “default” note when you don’t hold the strings down on the fret board.  It appears on screen like how the bass drum appears for drummers, a purple line.  However these open notes only apply to bass guitarists.

But it’s not like they didn’t add anything new for the lead guitarist.  There is now sustained notes where basically you play a long note followed by another note while still playing the first long note.  Perdy cool and some of them are hopo’ed. Though the tutorial says this only will be seen on Hard and Expert.

There’s also the new slider note stuff which is basically the same idea as how the “solo notes” work for Rock Band, when a solo sequence appears. And yes the solo buttons do work in GHWT but really no different than the normal buttons at the end of the neck.  Another “they read my mind” thing they did in GHWT was if you use the touch buttons and wiggle them on a long note, it acts like string bending on real guitar.. awesome. Makes me want to go get the new guitar.  Hopefully the newer guitar is compatible with Rock Band, and older GH titles. Also another thing they borrowed from RB is you can still earn star power when you’re using it.  In past GH’s if you have star power deployed any up coming star power phrases will just be normal notes.  Now you can earn while you burn!

Now for some of the bad points.  I’ve only played the first couple sets of “gigs” and about half the songs I don so far I already played in Rock Band 1/2.  The VERY first song, “Livin’ on a Prayer” starts out exactly the same as it does on Rock Band.

Also for some reason practice mode didn’t work the first time I tired it, but after restarting the game it works fine. Also while playing the songs, even familiar ones that are in RB, the game felt rather dull and unexiting.  You don’t hear the crowd cheering you on, there’s BARELY any sound effects when you earn star power nor when your deploy it.  Also there’s very little eye candy going on either.. which is probably good so you don’t get distracted and miss a note.  But still it feels really FLAT, and doesn’t sound any better than just playing an MP3 of the same song.  Also Rock Band has added a “crowd singalong” on most of the songs where you can hear the sing along with the song, which is really fucking awesome.  But so far im not getting that same awesome feeling as I have with past versions of this game.

As for the drums, im not sure exactly how this is going to work when the game has 5 colored note tracks, PLUS the kick bass pedal, when my old RB drums only have 4 pads, and a kick pedal.  I can see it working with the new RB drums set with two symbols added on which cost extra, but not with my old rock band drum kit.

So you want to open yet another TS Club?

Honestly there’s too many of them.  There’s only a handful of popular shemale/TS clubs that are active. I’m not referring to groups, I’m talking about physical locations in SL that have a place to hang out, dance, have sex, and so on.  Places like Shemale Sex Palace/Garden, Sanctuary, Forced Fem University, and so on.

The biggest problem I have with most of these places is they have a dress code.  Places like Twisted Shemales I’ll NEVER go to again because of their stupid rules.  I can’t even go there with my penis hang out of my skirt with out getting shit from those people.  Just because my cock shows though my outfit doesn’t mean their establishment will LOSE money. In fact if they didn’t have a dress code, and I became a regular there, their business might actually improve more than it already has. If it has. They only allow their dancers to be nude, and that only AFTER they have tipped enough money to do so.  That just smells of money greed and is a turn off for anyone.

Seriously, if we are indeed at a place to meet transgendered then why do we have to hide our most prevalent attribute? Shouldn’t that be a choice of each individual and not some overbearing rule that some egotistical money-mongering (often) MALE club owner made? You might as well cut off your cock, and be some mundane female working at some generic strip club, which are far too common on the SL grid, so we NEED to be unique in this virtual world, not copy something that’s been done umpteen million times.

I don’t claim to know everything, and I don’t claim to know how to run a perfect club that will make a lot of money for the club owners and workers.  But I do know what I like about some clubs, and hate about other clubs.

Here’s a list of my own pet-peevs about clubs and other hangouts.

• Forcing a dress code (except perhaps ban male noobs with boners)
• Not letting everyone use dance poles (for tips), if they are not in their group.
• Owners who regard other establishments as their competition, and behave offensively towards them.
• Owners who force their “employees” to be loyal to the establishment, and threaten to fire/ban them when they are on their own time vising other places.
• Having a posted sign price list for when your dancers will strip nude. Be more original please! Let your dancers develop their own style of seduction and teasing, rather than copy what everyone else does.
• If you have escorts, let the escorts set their own prices, and don’t make them pay a cut to you of their earnings. They pay you though sign rentals.
• Don’t take huge cuts from tip jars
• Don’t make it cumbersome to get to the club area; having to walk though a huge mall sucks!
• Don’t nickel and dime patrons for joining groups, or having access to “special rooms”
• Don’t give out “VIP” group roles to every noob that walks into the club. They aren’t important people.
• Keep the public free sex areas a good distance away from the club/lounge area. Keep the lame cybersex chat out of range from the people who are just relaxing.
• Don’t be absent all the time from your establishment.  If the owners can’t be hosts to greet everyone and deal with griefers and other problems; HIRE someone to do so.
• Host events from time to time, otherwise your place just ends up a ghost town, or worse a place where people are anti-social and resort to IMs, resulting in an area full of people just standing around quietly like statues which attracts people to your place who lack any social skills.
• Don’t build over elaborate buildings that take forever to rez. Some places can be so elaborate that it seems claustrophobic to walk around in.  Simpler is always better, like large boxed areas work fine.
• Don’t use crap items in your establishment.  Like dance poles that use “belly dancer” animation that everyone already has seen for the past 5 years in SL. Get some decent stuff for what you can afford
• Do not try elaborate schemes and ideas for your establishment to make money.  Just start simple and build up from there.  Too much will discourage patrons, and any potential employees.
• K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
• DO NOT MAKE ALTS TO INFLATE YOUR TRAFFIC NUMBERS.  I’m SICK and tired of people gaming the system using a dozen alts camping up in a sky box 700m in the sky to increase their traffic count.
• That said, don’t resort to money camping either to raise your traffic.  It’s cheating and fucks up the economy when vendors are lured to believe you have good traffic numbers for them to rent a spot in your over sized shopping mall.
• If you are going to have a shopping mall, and you’re a new establishment, don’t make it over sized. Start small and let it grow as the demand goes up (if at all).
• If you do have a shopping area, take the effort to find some unique vendors. I’m tired of seeing the same vendors in every mall I pass by offering the same old stuff.
• Try not to be mean too noobs because they are noobs.  Give them the benefit of the doubt they aren’t morons, and help the as best as you can.  If they still can’t figure out the simplest of things, then they are morons and should be treated as such.
• Just because a user has no payment info on file doesn’t mean they are broke, same with noobs. But even if they admit they have no money is no reason to act like an asshole towards them since they can STILL be potential customers and a source of money for your establishment later on.
• As long as they are nice don’t be a douche-bag towards noobs, and moneyless avis. If they don’t like you and your establishment they will never come back when they DO have money.
• I hate club owners who bitch at their workers for not being AT their establishment when there might be people there hanging around. Why don’t YOU (the owners) entertain your guests for once?

Same Sex Marragies

Okay it’s time to get a little political tonight.

I’m getting really sick and tired of these homophobic retards behaving like ants when someone stomps on their trail. Beliving that schools and churches will be made to teach kids that boys can marry boys to 2nd Grade kids. Proposition 8 in California is supposed to define what marriage is in the state’s constitution. That’s going way overboard trying to amend the state’s constitution. Which is something that typical conservative christian republicans wouldn’t normally do, since they don’t like the idea of in make more laws, making more government, making the government control private individuals. But this is exactly what Prop 8 does. It’s practically hypocritical.

What exactly is being defined here? Are they trying to define “Marriage” or “Traditional Marriage?” There’s a huge difference with this, and all these political ads toss these two terms as if they are the same thing. They aren’t. Plus depending on how the proposition is worded, it’s like to create loopholes if they don’t define both terms.

What should be done is both sides should create a proposition that defines that each term means. Define “Marriage” as a union between two people, same sex or not, doesn’t matter.  Then in the same document define “Traditional Marriage” as a union between a man and a woman.  After that goes into effect then the homophobic churches can CHOOSE to adopt “Traditional Marriage” for their church (therefor denying same-sex marriages, which they already do anyway) and allow everybody else adopt the simple definition of “Marriage” and allow people to marry who they want, then everyone will be happy.  Problem solved.

Though I would recommend adding to the definition “Humans” to avoid anyone trying to marry a pig or a sheep, or something overly perverted.

But this whole homophobic agenda starts thousands of years ago when King Leviticus started laying out the law as if he was god. Actually if you read that part of the bible Leviticus is being told by Moses; not God. So this is all 3rd hand information when Leviticus says this to us in the Bible.  Is Leviticus even considered a profit, was he ever considered to be someone who spoke to god (both ways) as a profit does?  He was just a king at the time, laying down the law for what he thought was sacred land of Jerusalem.  He was simply laying down the law to have clean Jerusalem to please God.  He doesn’t say this applies to the whole world. However, guess what?  Most of us don’t live in Jerusalem and Leviticus has been dead for a couple thousands years.

A lot of the laws that Leviticus made usually involved death as a penalty or the sacrifice of an animal the sinner has.  Considering how everyone back then had live stock (and most 3rd world countries villages are like this too) this is a considerable sacrifice.  The animal sacrificing, but it sounds more like a BBQ, since the smell of the cooking flesh is supposed to appeal God. Like God needs to huff BBQ smoke with no BBQ sauce and seasonings?  Bleah.  None of this pleases God, he could care less since he’s non-corporal he can’t smell anything, this stuff pleases Leviticus and his underlings.

A lot of Leviticus sounds more like ancient south American (Aztechs, Myans), or druid/pagan rituals killing goats, and painting the blood of the dead goat on the alter, really crazy shit like this.  How can people now a-days focus so much on Leviticus 18:22, and 20:13 which are SINGLE sentences compared to the full text of chapters 18, and 20.  Leviticus lists out a bunch of “do nots” yet most modern people seem to ignore all of these so-called rules, yet still STICK to these two sentences in the book of Leviticus about men having sex.  People still like to fuck animals, even Leviticus thinks that’s bad, but people still do it.  Having sex with a married woman is bad, having sex with a woman on her period is bad, and if you do this you will no longer be a member of this land and you will be kicked out, or killed.

My point is that Leviticus was a douche-bag with a cause.  The claimed he was speaking on the behalf of God, but he was actually speaking to Moses who actually has spokes with God.  After all he was a King and everyone is forced to obey what a King says and wants.  If he says he speaks the word of God no one will argue that, unless they want to commit suicide.  But if anyone today claims they speak the word of God in the LITERAL sense (not just a preacher or bible thumper) they would be considered crazy, and locked in a padded cell.

Leviticus wanted his land to be clean and pure for God. And he laid out the laws that determine what makes the land pure and un-pure.  Leviticus is long dead, and rest of the world doesn’t LIVE in this “sacred land” that he ruled over.  Isn’t it a fucking war zone there now? So much for keeping the land clean.  So why should these rules apply to anyone else?

Also the bible it self is inherently flawed. It’s been translated into zillions of different languages over the past several hundred years.  Some versions omit some passages and other don’t.  God may be flawless but we certainly are, and the bible is flawed, since no human is perfect.  And it’s not hard to find the bullshit.

So vote no on Prop 8.

In fact vote NO on all the propositions in California since most of then want to get a zillion dollar BOND to pay for whatever project they want to fund, but economy has gone to shit.  The stock market is crashing all around the world, the value of the US Dollar is down the toilet, and Bonds are losing money too.  Seriously, I have a $100 savings bond from four years ago, and if you check online it’s now valued at about $65!  WTF?  These projects will FAIL because these bonds will NOT pay out enough (if at all) so vote no on them, and let them redo them then the economy recovers.

Rockband bullshit award

There is this secret achievement called “The Bladder of Steel Award” where you play the endless set list 2, with out failing a song or pausing the game for a break.  A friend of mine and I have been attempting to do this achievement for weeks now but something always fucks it up.  Usually it’s due to our mistakes, like one of us  would fail and I didn’t have enough overdrive to save him.  Hell one time I did have enough overdrive power to save, but since I was playing drums it did not LET ME use my overdrive in time to do so!  Arg!!

This last time wasn’t our fault. Once we got half-way into the song list, and right in the middle of a song, Xbox Live disconnect.  Well so what, right?  Well Rock Band 2 has a shit fit and stops the session. Okay sure this makes sense if I was playing my friend online, but we were playing LOCALLY on the same Xbox 360, logged in with our gamertags on MUs.  This shouldn’t have caused the game to even pause let alone to just STOP. No it didn’t even PAUSE the game it just ENDED it.  Normally when you get dumped off XBL you just get a little pop up message saying so, you ignore it and keep on playing.  But for some stupid bullshit reason Rock Band 2 has to stop everything.  XBL has been crapping out a LOT lately since the September 29th when they were offline all day for a big update. Now I’m constantly seeing this message that I’ve been disconnected from XBL. But still RB2 shouldn’t stop a local session because of that.

So here are some tips when trying to get this achievement.  Disconnect from Xbox Live, disconnect the Ethernet cable (or remove the wifi adapter). Play on Medium or Hard so you’ll never fail a song (Easy isn’t an option). Start it early in the day so it’s not past midnight by the time you’re finished, since it can take SEVEN hours to do.  Eat a meal about an hour before you start, since you’ll want to hit the bathroom before you play.  Or at least have one backup player to take over in case you do have to use the bathroom, and make sure he or she is decent at playing and doesn’t freak out over two-note chords. Also make a big pot of coffee, or get a lot of energy drinks.  Home brewed coffee is cheaper, and put it in a nice big thermos, and share with your friends!

Also, My RB2 wireless guitar came with a set of three Energiser batteries.  I’ve been using it every day for like 3 weeks now, and the battery indicator you see when you press the dashboard button still shows full four bars!  Will these batteries ever die?  I’m afraid they will die on me suddenly when trying to get this achievement!

Dropped Chrome

I switched back to Firefox which just functions a lot better.  Chrome had rock solid stability, but the actual functionality of it was annoying.  Every time I downloaded a video from Revsion3, it would add an extra “.avi” extension to the file that already HAS an “.avi” extension, and it would save the file where I didn’t want it.  Firefox has this ability to know that I want my video downloads to go into \my documents\my videos folder. And other files I DL in FF just go strait to \my documents.   Chrome would just dump everything into \My Documents which isn’t a folder I have shared for sharing media files with my Xbox 360, and the other computers in the house.

Also I fucking HATE the download manager.  For a web browser that prides it self in running with separate instances between tabs, if you forget you’re downloading stuff and you close out Chrome, you stop downloading, and you must START OVER.  When I close FireFox it dosen’t close the downloads window, which that runs as a totally separate instance.

Application support is fucking annoying.  If I launch a url that links to a spcific app, I have to go though a bunch of dialogs to get the application to launch.  With Firefox, it’s just one click and go.

I also get my bookmarks back on the left side of my screen. yay