A Crossroad of Destiny

Published at July 29, 2008 in First Life. 2 Comments

As of a few days ago, I have come to a realization that I must face a certain life-changing decision.

Either I take a left turn, and be what people expect me to be, but not be free to do whatever I wish, or I take a right turn, and “head for daylight”, in which I can do everything i’d like to do and not follow any expectations.

If I take a left turn, I will continue what i’ve done up ’till now, being who i’m expected to be [in the present and in the future].

If I take a right turn, i’ll be free to do as I wish, but I may disappoint some people in my life and possible have our connection “broken”.

So to speak, if I take a left turn my true want of what i’d like to be will not “shine” due to lack of daylight, but if I take a right turn it will shine but may cause some people i’ve known to stay on the right side, as they may not be able to accept the/”survive” in daylight.

I know some of you will understand my crisis here, and some will not. If you do understand, please talk in “clues” as I did without uncovering any details.

(My avatar is partially in the dark, which expresses my current status: in the dark, but willing to step out of the darkness and head to daylight.)

“The Scenario”: What could happen by experts’ evaluations, shown incredibly well

Published at July 6, 2008 in First Life and Reviews. 0 Comments

If I could visit the producer of the show, who made everything shown in the show like it actually happened, by mixing previous and current incidents’ video clips, i’d praise him/her so much, and maybe even kiss him/her. This show is as scary as hell because although it’s all documentary-fiction, it’s based on what could happen according to experts’ evaluations and thoughts of the matter.

Wait, what’s “The Scenario”?

Continue reading ‘“The Scenario”: What could happen by experts’ evaluations, shown incredibly well’

Avatar: The Last Airbender Finale - Broadcasts July 19th

Published at June 23, 2008 in First Life. 1 Comment

So, while viewing YouTube I came to find a trailer of the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender. As some of you may know, Avatar: The Last Airbender (Avatar: The Legend of Aang in some countries) is an animated anime-like show about Aang, the newest avatar, and his friends trying to save the world from the “fire nation”. Quoting from Wikipedia: (You can read the series’ premise by clicking on the tiny “1″ just after this text»1 )

Avatar: The Last Airbender (also known as Avatar: The Legend of Aang in several countries) is a multi award-winning American animated television series that airs on the Nickelodeontelevision network and on Nicktoons Network. The show is set in an Asian-influenced world[1] ofmartial arts and elemental manipulation; the series follows the adventures of Aang and his friends, who try to save the world from war with the Fire Nation.[2] The show’s protagonist Aang is trapped in an iceberg when he is found by two members of the Southern Water Tribe, Kataraand Sokka.[3] After being freed from the iceberg, Katara and Sokka join Aang on a long journey across the globe; their ultimate goal is to help Aang acquire the skills to defeat the Fire Lord, and end the war.[4] In the series’ terminology, each episode is referred to as a “chapter”, and each season as a “book.”.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is popular with both audiences and critics,[6] garnering 4.4 million viewers on its best-rated showing and receiving high ratings in the Nicktoons lineup, even outside its 6–11-year-old demographic.[4][7] The series’ success prompted Nickelodeon to order second[8] and third[9] seasons.

So, as I was saying, I came upon the official trailer for episodes 12 through 21 of season 3, “Fire”. I had already watched episodes 12 through 15 on a website providing leaked episodes, so only 16 through 21 matter to me. The trailer is highly filled with action, interesting “clue” scenes (Like the one showing someone, known as “Azula”, throwing her hair brush on the mirror. It’s a “clue” because her mother is seen in the reflection, and she is known to either be dead or far gone), and surprising scenes. (One example is in about the middle of the episode, when a girl, known as “Katara”, stops the rain in place. She’s a waterbender, so she can control the flow of water, but up till now we (the fans) had no idea she can do something as big as that.) The finale will consist of 4 linked episodes, meaning it will be a 2-hour long movie. But, as much as i’d like to see it already, I don’t want the series to end. :-( I hope they make one more “fun” season, just for the heck of it. Three seasons aren’t enough. ;-) When the DVD comes out and all three get to the nearest Blockbuster, i’ll rent ‘em season-by-season to rip them all to my PC. I want to have all 61 episodes on-hand after the series ends. ;-) (Then I could stream them from my PC to my PlayStation 3 and with its upscaling engine, I could watch it in full HD 1080p! :-D )

So, without further waiting, here’s the trailer! I think you’ll find it to be more of a trailer like for real action movies, as I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRY2s25PvQ

P.S.: Did you notice the funny ending? It’s a joke made by the creators. ;-)

  1. Avatar: The Last Airbender takes place in a fantasy world, home to humans, fantastic animals, and supernatural spirits. Human civilization is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, theEarth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Each nation has its own natural element, on which it bases its society. The Water Tribes base their society on water, the Earth Kingdom on earth, the Air Nomads on air, and the Fire Nation on fire. Within each nation exists an order called “Benders”, who have the ability to manipulate the element of their nation. The show’s creators assigned each Bending art its own style of martial arts; each Bending art inherited the advantages and weaknesses of the martial arts it was assigned. The Bending types areWaterbending, Earthbending, Firebending, and Airbending.[20]

    Each generation yields one person who is capable of Bending all four elements. This being is referred to as the Avatar, the spirit of the planet manifested in human form. When an Avatar dies, they are reincarnated into the next nation in the Avatar Cycle. The Avatar Cycle parallels the seasons: winter for The Water Tribes, spring for the Earth Kingdom, summer for the Fire Nation, and autumn for the Air Nomads.[21] Legend holds the Avatar must master each bending art in order, starting with their native element. This can sometimes be compromised when the situation requires it, as Aang demonstrates in the show. For the Avatar, learning to bend the element opposite their native element can be extremely difficult. This is because opposing Bending arts are based on opposing fighting styles and disciplines. Firebending andWaterbending are opposites, as are Earthbending and Airbending.[22]

    The Avatar possesses a unique power called the Avatar State. It empowers the Avatar with the knowledge and abilities of all past Avatars, and is used as a defense mechanism.[23] When an Avatar enters the Avatar state, their eyes and tattoos begin to glow. If an Avatar is killed in the Avatar State, the reincarnation cycle will be broken, and the Avatar cycle will end.[23]

    Through the ages, countless incarnations of Avatar have served to keep the four nations in harmony, and maintain world order.[20] The Avatar serves as the bridge between the physical world and the Spirit World, allowing him or her to solve problems that normal benders cannot.[24] [↩]

Flickr’s Welcome Text - Torley-style!

Published at June 22, 2008 in First Life. 2 Comments

Haha, Torley1 -style! :D 

  1. Torley Linden [↩]

Safari 4: Can it beat Firefox 3? I believe it can.

Published at June 22, 2008 in First Life and Reviews. 2 Comments

Saving a web application to .exe

After I read an article on Engadget I got curious about Safari 4, and began searching the web for a “leaked” developer preview release for Windows. I thought “Why would Apple make a release for Windows? It’s designed to ship with Snow Leopard first.”, but I still did a Google search. 5 seconds later, I was downloading the build. :lol: It took me 93 minutes to download by torrent, but it was worth it. Why? Here’s why.

Continue reading ‘Safari 4: Can it beat Firefox 3? I believe it can.’

Second Life Wikia UI 2.58 r2

Published at June 19, 2008 in Second Life and Second Life Wikia. 0 Comments

Hi! These posts will be regarding user interface updates on Second Life Wikia. They include bug fixes, new features, better design and functionality and overall changes. They’re completely web-based, so no need to update your browser in some way.

New features:

  • Service status now appears above all articles in the “MediaWiki:Sitenotice” part of the page.
  • Hovering over the service status or content rating now shows more info in a tooltip.
  • Site-wide permissions can now be changed with “Extension:Protectsite”. (Administrators ONLY.)
Changes:
  • “Content Rating” and “Service Status” cannot be hidden now without injecting cookies. (AKA the “[dismiss]” button is now gone.)
Bug fixes:
  • “Content Rating” supervisor bot is now more sensitive to M-rated content to reduce occurrences.
  • “Infinite” can now be used again when blocking a user. (Previously MediaWiki threw up an error saying the time field had invalid info)

 

Code red! Code red!

Published at June 19, 2008 in Second Life and Second Life Wikia. 1 Comment

On June 17th in the evening, 2 military groups began attacking Second Life Wikia by constantly replacing articles with gibberish. The vandals attacked about 10 articles, from 10 different IP ranges. As with every vandal I saw, 9 changes popped-up. I reverted those, and blocked him/her. Then another pops up, another ~9 changes, more reversions, more blocking, more people, more spam, more revert, people, spam, revert, PEOPLE, SPAM, REVERT.

As I struggled to keep the wiki clean of those, I couldn’t ban them all, as they were using different IP ranges. So, I kept on fighting, until another administrator noticed what happened, contacted the Wikia team and had them enable an extension to protect the entire site. He activated it and set it to allow edits, page creations and account creations only by registered users and system operators, and moves and uploads only by system operators. The block was for 6 hours.

Afterwards, I reactivated the block, this time only taking out anonymous users’ permissions for 24 hours. After that, the issue seems to have cooled down.

If you’re wondering how were the edits, and how annoying it was to handle, go here and look at the times, IPs, target pages and click “(diff)” to see a differentiating page between the good revision and bad revision.

P.S.: The (-??,???) numbers state how many characters (Unicode) were erased. The lower it gets, the “redder” it becomes.

Update completed!

Published at June 17, 2008 in The blog. 0 Comments

I’ve just updated to WordPress 2.5.1 from my previous version, 2.2.1. Along with the update, i’ve installed WPtouch to expand the features available for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The expanded set of features is a grid view of my photos on Flickr, an archive view by tag or month and a fancier links viewer. If you attempt to click on any of the pages in the menu bar on normal browsers, you will see only the introduction text. However, the archives view is available for people who’re not using a iPhone or iPod Touch to view the site here. (Surprisingly, the compatible Archives page is the first link, while the iPhone and iPod Touch-only page is the last link.)

Along with this update, more will come! My only clue: keep your eyes locked on the search field! ;-)

No Build, No Scripts, No Push. Wait, No Children?

Published at June 2, 2008 in Second Life. 0 Comments

Although this doesn’t concern my grid (though it may if Linden do TSL5B), I feel the pain, anger and frustration of those residents who were suddenly surprised they can’t come and party with the rest. Adults on the main grid who have kid-like avatars were awfully offended by this, and I understand why. However, after Linden saw the community is fighting back, they pulled the “Oopsie! You didn’t see what we mean! *Gay-like palm flip forward* *wink & fake smile*” trick and had Everett Linden say the words:

Child avatars are welcome at the celebration. However, we do respectfully decline the submissions we received to create exhibits for the event. Goreans, role-players, and members of the multitude of international communities are all welcome, and I hope you come. The SL Birthday on Linden land is PG.  

Huh? You want kid avatars to come but you don’t want them to participate in creating the event’s builds? How does that make sense more than before? I guess all you want is some fancy castles, houses, and decoration houses without balloons, lollipops, candy, kiddy shows, and all that stuff. But, as the community fights back, some fight wisely with some smart interpretation:

But Linden Lab, it seems, doesn’t want its Residents anymore. It doesn’t want a free, open, creative world. It wants a sanitized, media-friendly world, that universities and big corps won’t think twice about making major investments in. LL’s message for Residents now is: Thanks for making us so popular, but go away now. You’re embarrassing us in front of the cool kids.  

Jacek, you’re one heck of a genius. It’s like that new “Have your face on the new yogurt flavor’s ads!” campaign we had a while ago here in Israel. Tons of people came to audition, one auditioned and made it, yet after the shots they banished her out and payed her nothing. What’s the reason for most of those campaigns? “Hey, we promised you’ll be on the advertisement. We didn’t promise money, fame and glory. Shoo!” Or in other words, free advertising. Don’t you see how we made this world so popular, by just walking into it? Linden had the count of residents on the home page at all times to show the world “how big our customer count is”! Then, when we reached 1 million, the world exploded into the press, and all came in. Now, they don’t handle our abuse reports anymore1, they neglect the main databases, bring in “new furniture” before they take out the stinky trash (metaphor for bringing in new features before fixing old bugs), and now fail to even do that one yearly thing called a “birthday”. I don’t think SL will be happy when all his friends don’t come. He’ll start shouting at his parents with his tiny little voice “Did you invite them all??? Why didn’t anyone show up??? THIS IS THE WORST BIRTHDAY EVER!!! *cries loudly*”. I can’t wait for that kid to grow up, “get a grip on his life”, and have his parents die. (Or, in other words, I can’t wait for Second Life to get much better and have the bad part of Linden “die”, or in other words, get fired/laid off/be put out of the SL teams)Ok, too many metaphors and extra issues. Back to SL5B.So, basically, Linden want kids to come to the party, bring a present and say hi to the birthday boy but not have a piece of the cake.In conclusion, Linden, if you’re reading this, back down from your decision and allow all to be accepted into “frontstage” and backstage. Second Life is supposed to be about living your life the way you want to live it, without discrimination or abuse by others. So what, they think if they ban others from doing it they can instead? It’s like saying “Don’t swim in the pool!” and then running in a frenzy to it, jumping and diving with a belly flop so strong it splashes water at the rest of the people.Oh, and do vote for Vint’s JIRA issue concerning this, we’re at over 170 votes now! Woot!  :D .Oh, and one more thing: I’m hosting a party in OpenSim soon to celebrate SL5B. Details will be published soon. :D 

  1. I had a report once with a pesky neighbor, which added a platform on his side similar to mine to show it as an expansion. On it, he had his own products for sale. I sent a report to the Lindens, no reply in 1 week. Sent another, no reply once more. Teleported a Linden in charge of our grid, and guess what he said? “Figure it out with him on your own. Don’t involve us.”. Hey, aren’t you supposed to HELP me as a Liaison? Aren’t you “the frontline employees responsible for communicating and enabling the Second Life experience”? Aren’t you supposed to “help to maintain and shape Second Life’s unique online community by assisting Residents with problems both technical and social, orienting new arrivals, and channeling community concerns and feedback to Second Life’s Community Managers and developers”?? Because, the way I see it, you’re doing your job all wrong. [↩]

Time for a phone upgrade!

Published at May 10, 2008 in First Life. 0 Comments

So, after a while I had used a pretty low-featured Sony Ericsson phone (Hey, my previous phone burnt it’s circuits and by the time it “recovered”, I needed a new phone. It was too old :-P), I started looking for a newer phone. We got an awesome deal in which each would exchange his old Motorola phone (I could trade my old one in) and would pay nothing for a phone1 if he talked for 100NIS a month and over. However, when I upgraded my phone, the Orange representative saw on the computer my dad’s old Motorola V3 was registered on my account. So, instead of that “if I talk in 100 NIS or over”, it became “if I take in 50 NIS or over”! Yes! 50 NIS! 20 NIS off the phone’s price! :-D

So now, I have the excellent “Nokia E65″ with Symbian 9.1 which fits me pretty nicely. It has a graphics processor with the same power like in the original PlayStation, so, I can (theoretically) run PS1 games on it as well. :-D It has pretty awesome multi-tasking features, and a desktop mode with up to 6 program shortcuts and includes statuses regarding tasks, missed calls, messages, etc.. In addition, it is one of the only 3 phones by Nokia available in Israel which have WiFi. So, I have WiFi on my phone too! YIPEEE!! I also installed the adapted-to-Nokia-N95 game called “Snakes”, which has 42 levels set in PlayStation quality and superb sounds. (3D retro gaming! :-D ) The only thing I don’t like about it, is the fact it takes a while to load programs sometimes, and it takes a while to load the menu every time. But, it’s a sweet phone I got for free. (50 NIS monthly = 30 NIS complete warranty which includes replacement phone + 20 NIS UMTS internet basic package (100MB in Obox Live and 100MB in all other sites) )

The result? Smiley + Nokia E65 = <3. 

  1. If its cost is not above 70 NIS per month [↩]
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