Artificial Boy

Kids5B exhibit Our Stories - Why We Became Child Avatars by Taiven Janick and Sage Kostenbaum and contributors, Alton Icarus (72, 98, 24). My story is there, as is David’s, and Sokmunky’s, and many others. There were some kids there who I hadn’t met yet, but I read them all anyway. The stories are sometimes both amusing, describing the well of creative energy tapped simply by changing shape, and sad, bringing up real life child abuse. Many are emotionally powerful. One story was so awesome, and accurate, and touching, and said it all so perfectly, I IMed the author and made a new friend. I don’t want to say who it is without permission. Visit the exhibit to read for yourself.

Not your ordinary toolbelt! Read the rest…

Response to Open Forum: What Was *Your* First Hour In SL Like?. Hamlet Au asks, “I wonder, however, if all this is looking at the problem backwards. Forget figuring out why 90% of those who came, left. Instead, isn’t it more important to run a resilience study, and locate the commonalities between the 10% who stayed, and build on that? So I put the question to readers: if you’re an active Resident, what happened in your first hour in Second Life that kept you here?”
Answer:

Join Date 4/4/2006

My first hour
Trying to make my avatar look like a child.

My second hour
A Linden-made sign in Waterhead had a notecard full of landmarks. One of them was captioned “who wants free ice cream?” Indeed!

…Trying to fly across the ocean towards the red beacon, and realizing that the dark blue regions were impassable.

…Arriving at the ice cream shop and eating an ice cream cone by myself.

My third hour
…Feeling lonely and brainstorming where to find like-minded people. The best i could think of was adoption agencies. I searched for one and found one, but it was empty. The second one I found was populated, and I stayed there for more than a week.

Epilogue
The ice cream place is gone now. I took my first set of foster parents there, when arranging to meet them for the first time. It was empty for that visit, too.
The adoption agency is long gone now, too.
*sniffle*

Update:
I contributed to SL4B. I made some decorations for the bridges and roads in all of the regions, and helped a tiny bit with Camp Duck Itch. I wasn’t planning on contributing much this year but I planned to see if the SLC build needed any help as the deadline grew closer (thats what i do). But, there’s no point in staying in the builders group now.
[18:13] Second Life: You have left the group ‘SL Birthday Exhibitors’.

Updated with more links:

Ruslan Laryukov - Second-Class Citizens

I find it regrettable that LL has decided to snub three of its more significant and loyal constituencies by excluding them from SL5B: kid avis, gor and bdsm. -Ruslan

JIRA - MISC-1231 -Missing Cultures & Communities from SL5B

The following communities are said to be missing from what was described as: ‘Celebrating the cultural diversity of Second Life’: ‘Who do you hang around with in Second Life? What are your communities’ traditions and signature characteristics? Are you proud of your sexy blue fur? Your excruciatingly detailed tea ceremony? Your murky environments? Your sculptures? The help you’ve given to others?’ -Vint Falken

Rai Fargis - The “SL5B” PR Desaster

Dusan Writer - Lock Up Your Kids, Tie Up Your Kajira, It’s Time to Celebrate

So, sure, you can come aboard, and you can lock up your private island and keep the weirdos out - OR, you can come aboard and realize that this is the flowering of something different. If you want safe and sanitized go to There.com or sponsor some furniture in the Sims - but you’d better realize that this IS the Wild West, and it’s that way for a reason - because THIS is the frontier, this is where the great ideas are arising, this is where the creative classes, the prosumers and the hackers, the griefers and the savants are mashing up the future, and if you want some sort of hint of how the future’s going to unfold you’d better at least suck it up and have a look around. -Dusan Writer

Ordinal Malaprop - A Restriction of the Youth

The recent clarification that Child-Like Avatars will be permitted attend, but not exhibit, makes the situation even more ridiculous. Clearly the Prurient will take this as confirmation that the Laboratory is quite happy to promote all of the things in their imaginings, and it will simultaneously serve to confirm to the Childrenish concerned that they are not considered worthwhile, and in the category of the Second Class in Second Life. -Ordinal Malaprop

firstlifeisfullofcrap - The Fake Children

And every culture is being given the opportunity to showcase what they’ve done, what they will do, and what their vision is for tomorrow. Without limitation. Without sanitization. Without scrubbing. Without censorship. Except one. And I don’t think that’s right -Crap Mariner

danielregenbogen - Update on SL5B

SLC - Still More (A clarification)

Robin Linden has indicated that child avatars are allowed and welcome as attendees - this is simply affecting whether child avatars can be contributors.

SLC - More on SL5B

…This decision was made thanks to people like United States Representative Mark Kirk who are on a misguided quest to keep real life kids off an adult only service by penalizing a company already making steps to keep real life kids off the system… -Marianne McCann

Massively - Calling all cultures? Not any more

…Linden Lab (according to staff) is apparently afraid of the whole of Second Life being shut down at a legal level if it should show any implicit support of — well, an activity that mental health professionals tell us we should be trying to find ways to do more of…Childlike play, and reliving our respective youths in positive and nourishing ways… -Tateru Nino

danielregenbogen - LL discriminates against the kids!

…This mail was forwarded to and answered by Robin Linden, who wrote me that kid avatars would be welcome as guests but not allowed to contribute to the showcase - because that wouldn’t be in the best interest of the event and Linden Lab. What a poor and cowardly decision! I don’t expect much more, but I answered her with this mail:… -Daniel Regenbogen

Jacek - [Rant] Intolerance

…Rampant violence? That’s fine. Hopscotch? My god, we have to put a stop to that!…-Jacek

According to a post in SLForums, child-shaped avatars are not the only self-identified community excluded from the event. [This has since been denied by Everett Linden in a comment on the Massively article]

Prompted by Botgirl.

Avatars be kind to your players!

I … think maybe I confused it a bit.

Source: http://www.myheritage.com/face-recognition Suggestion by Crap Mariner.

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I have two posts in my drafts. They have been there since January. They are the OpenLifeGrid and DeepGrid counterparts of my posts, Adz Childs Born On OSGrid, Adz Childs Born On Central Grid, and Adz Local born on Localhost. I will now delete the drafts.

I have been waiting and waiting for experiments with these grids to complete successfully so I can finally release an overall summary. Today I have decided to just give up and release the summary. If some miracle happens and I am able to finally connect to these remaining two alternate grids, I will post and update. But someone would have to talk me into it again — I’ve stopped trying to connect as of today.

I also have some Launcher Icons I created in GIMP, based on the respective grid logos. I will now release those. Read the rest…

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Dusan Writer of Dusan Writer’s Metaverse discusses the absurdity of Linden Lab’s age verification policy in his post, Linden’s Age Verification Hypocrisy. While Writer is mostly criticizing the 3rd-party solution LL began to Beta-test in December 2007, and the contradictory policies that surround it, this post makes an interesting setting for me to note that the current alternative to this horrible solution is even worse. Read the rest…

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Debbie McCormick, et al, of the Behavioral Studies Department, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University is doing a survey about “people’s attitudes toward law and order in Second Life”. Here are my answers to the free-form questions and some of the multiple choice questions. If you know me, you probably already know my answers to the yes/no questions, so I won’t include them here. I have also omitted any questions that pertain to my real life demographic membership. Read the rest…

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Today Adz Local was born on localhost. Well, not localhost really…but a computer on my LAN. Read the rest…