KIA-ORA!

Just for the few of you who have been wondering where and how I am...

Everything is ok with me, after a 38 hours long teleport I 've finally landed here in BananaLand and I am having a great time! Unfortunately I haven't been able to log into SL so far, so I guess Midd must be having the longest sleep he's ever had in ages.

So here's a quick report about my past days and weeks:

1. The love of my life is the best girl on Earth, and I am lucky to have found her.
2. Life on the southern hemisphere is cool, and I 'm thinking of having a swim in the pacific ocean and pretend it's summer anyway.
3. I 'm finding it very easy to cook italian food in a foreign land. Banana says I am good at it, but she is obviously biased.
4. Even if I am half the world away from home, it just feels like I 've always lived here. Nothing has changed since I left 8 months ago, and this is simply the best place in the world!
5. Born and raised in Soccer Land, I will try to learn something more about this painful recreational activity they call rugby and maybe even get to play it, once I am sure I am covered by health insurance.
6. Cricket, NO WAY!
7. I am happy.

To all of you dear friends, a warm ciao from Midd.
Hope to be able to talk to you soon!

(2007 pic of Me and Banana in our very Noob days)

" Hey Banana. Do you know that if you dig a big hole in the ground where you are in NZ, and walk thru the core of the Earth, you 'll end up just here in my lounge in Italy?It's called antipodes."

If you consider this a good pickup line, then you will probably like me as a person. .

But to be my partner for 3 years? I dunno. Ask Banana.

I love you baby. Ti amo tanto. Happy 3rd Anniversary!

Speech by ReadSpeaker

Well this is funny. I dunno when and why I happened to get myself a "Ferd's google translator", but I checked and I have one in my inventory. I never used it. Oh maybe I have, since the name of my avatar is on their website,with roughly all the names of the people who have received one as well. It gives the date of purchase and the coords too. I wonder if the translator itself has some sort of tracker script in it, I am not enough a techie to investigate but that's what my first thought was about it.
Is this against the ToS? I think yes. If every store owner did the same, we would have our avatar's name scattered everywhere on google search, a very pleasant thing for those who are concerned about their privacy in SL.

Ok, ok, I know nothing about marketing. But this HAS GOT to mean something anyway..
According to my Google Analytics I 've received 243 visits in 5 months from people who googled 'Second Life Mobile' and they all found out that there isn't a mobile application yet. (erm, there is a SL-lite chat-based App for Iphoners but it's semi-official and doesn't work well).

So, dear Lindens, when am I going to give these guys some good news?
I am waiting...:)

So it isn't a joke. No april fools day. Second Life 2.0 is now the official viewer, and no one likes it. I liked the new user interface a lot, except for the few bugs which have been resolved with the following updates. But I agree with those who miss the old layout of profiles, I am a profile sneaker and it's kinda shocking to have them sliding from the right of the screen, and get to read them as if they were a newspaper article. GRR!

Anyway, we still got viewer 1.23.5 to use but...for how long? this morning I got a message on the startup screen saying that installing NOW the 2.0 will not overwrite the old one, and I believe this is the first time this happens. Freedom of choice, but again for how long?

For sure there's one thing we are all sad about.



Since the first release of SL 2.0, we 've lost FreeTube. Some say it's just a coincidence, some say it's not, fact is this wonderful machine is not working anymore. Thanks a lot Soy Nakamori, it's been good till it lasted. Now we can play Youtube videos on a prim, but there is no frigging way to hide the Youtube interface and it won't look like a normal TV set for sure.

On the other hand, Facebook runs just smooth on a SL prim. Lol isn't that just masochistic?

**HUGS** to all!

Sad day today as the 1-month-long Twisted Hunt comes to an end at midnight.
To be honest, I haven't hunted at all, but it's been fun to wake up early (GMT+1) and log into SL for the usual daily dose of Twisted Hunt Group Chat. For those of you who have no idea what that means, just imagine yourself having your morning coffee with sleepy eyes and then get to read all sorts of swearing/bad words/yellings/F-words/P-words/A-words and so on including all possible twisted ideas that might come into the minds of the devoted Twisted Hunters while they incessantly ask for hints to the group moderators. It's an extreme experience (hmm, lol), but so funny you all should try it. You have a few hours left to complete the hunt, only 103 (or more I can't remember) boxes to find at 103 different stores, so good luck and be quick!

As a tribute to the Twisted Hunt, I thought I could go spend some of my hardly earnt L$ and buy samples of the average kind of kinky clothes/items for sale at most of the stores involved in the Hunt, just to make a funny book of photos of Midd in all his BDSM-RP-BONDAGE glory.

So I hope you like my Twisted avatar:).
(I don't, but the suffocating-venom-mask I bought is definitely blog-worthy, lol)



And yes I know the shoes aren't twisted at all. They just add to the fun!

Ciao:)

Pay a little attention to the two cars in the picture. (you can enlarge it all by clicking on it) One of the two is the actual picture of the RL car, the other one is..a fake. Fake as in 'pixelled fake'!
So, can you tell me which is which?



mhhmmm....hard to pick the right one I know.
A little hint: the pixelled car lacks the steering wheel and has some weird red coloured interiors. Easier now? yeah, but still incredible, it looks a lot better than the real one.

It's been made by my friend Gianfranco Foxclaw using a pretty expensive 3D modeling software called 3D Studio Max. He HAD to give me the 'missing steering wheel' hint to help me realise it REALLY was fake. He said he got tired of working on it, and he didn't want to spend more time on building the wheel and finding good textures for the seats, lol. I reckon it looks perfect anyway.
So this is just to show you a glimpse of what the future holds for us SecondLifers. The future is...mesh imports! even if it is still not clear whether the official Second Life 2.0 release will include a full mesh import functionality or not, the legend says it will allow some basic transfer beetween actual RL 3D software and the SL viewer build functions. It really is an old legend, lol, as NWN mentioned it quite a long while ago. In short, you build objects offline, the way you want and HOW you want, then click on the import button and..there you go, you have the object rezzing on your land in SL. There's rumours saying only premium accounts will be allowed the privilege, and this badly affects my enthusiasm about it(i am never ever gonna go premium) . Plus, I am not sure how much of the accuracy given by the professional made 3D object will be effectively noticeable once the transfer to SL is complete, but for sure it 's gonna look a lot better than this:




only downside...LAG! I am not an expert but Gianfranco says that driving a high-def thing like that in SL will keep you stuck in first gear with the engine going full revs, lol.

In order to know more I sent Midd directly to 955 Battery Street, San Francisco CA, but Philip Rosedale wouldn't let him in 'cause he is age verified under a fake RL name and LL headquarters are rated as adult...very adult, lol.

Special credits go to Banana Vella for helping me with this pic. ILU baby. (GIMP is a biatch!!!)

oh, and feel free to IM Gianfranco Foxclaw for custom textures and/or custom builds. He speaks some english, but I 'll be happy to help with the translation(free of charge, lol) in case it's needed.

Ciao!