full to bursting

From the simple days of 2009...

 

What are we like! Inventories, we all have them, like nipples, except with those we are limited to just two, and even though we’re limited to a single inventory, there seems no limit on contents.

SL inventory’s are prone to going awry, as in, becoming full to bursting, like mine is right now. Luckily nipples don’t go awry, or at least mine haven’t yet anyway.

My inventory has just over 35,000 items in it, which to me is a HUGE number, and a HUGE number of stuff, and as I call my inventory my wardrobe, some days I’m terrified of opening it lest I get buried in an avalanche of stuff Mostly clothing, probably unsurprising, clothing of one kind of anything, mesh clothing of course, as is the thing these days, but I’ve also kept quite a few prim bits and bobs and outfits, even though I never wear them now.

I can’t seem to bring myself to abandon them, as it seems the only way to remove them is to basically bin them. Which is a shame and wasteful. In RL I’d be taking them to a clothing bank or charity shop, but here, everything pretty much has been made non-transferable so even if I wanted to give them away, I couldn’t. This I think is a huge mistake people have made over the years. Why shouldn’t we be able to pass them on? I understand perhaps not reselling them, perhaps, but simply passing them on to someone who might want them seems a more user-friendly way of dealing with unwanted clothes and other stuff.

And I do have plenty of other stuff too, as I used to do a lot of building I have loads of building materials, and furniture too, some of which admittedly I’ve never used, some used only once, some often but probably won’t use again. But, I never know, maybe I might.

Prim, sculpt and mesh, all making a trawl through my inventory quite a challenge. Fortunately I have over the years had the foresight to at least to some degree order things into folders and sub-folders, and even in some cases rename items, though this hasn’t been the case with everything. Some stuff is simply listed alphabetically, a list growing ever-longer, stretching into an infinite nowhere.

Perhaps 35,000 isn’t so huge to some people but to me I am constantly frustrated at myself for my inability to part with stuff I’ve spent years accumulating. But I have too, cos it is driving me bonkers. I want to rationalize, downsize, though not my height as I’m already quite small, in RL and SL. Not of the SL version of what they call ‘Petites’, as in tiny avatars more the size of fairies in the bottom of your garden kind of size, just small as in human and avatar terms.

I keep having clear-outs, spring cleans, even when it isn’t spring, but then I find I’ve acquired yet more stuff, mostly I should say, freebies, or winning stuff, lucky chairs, or incredibly cheap being that I’ve not much in the way of lindens, and rely on meagre sales of my artwork, which is most definitely meagre.

I’m due another wardrobe blitz and will get around to it, eventually, perhaps this will prompt me to do so. Or maybe it might not.

 .... to the full to bursting days of 2023

© Anan Eebus 

 

 

remain seated

 

I'm fascinated by signs in Second Life. They turn up all over the place, sometimes in unlikely places, often telling you the obvious, and like this one, “Remain Seated”, which I would have thought you’re more likely to see on the train itself rather than where I found it, beside the railway tracks.

Where are you supposed to sit? On the tracks? On the sleeper or the rail? And would that really be a good idea, being that when the train comes, well, splat! How frequent are the trains on this track anyway? You could sit there waiting but then you might be waiting hours, or even days, weeks. It would be like inworld camping without the remuneration at the end.

If you were on the train and weren’t looking out of the window at the time of passing the sign then how would you know to remain seated? You’d have to rely on the driver or conductor giving a customer message over the intercom. I wouldn’t hold out for that though, as of all the trains I been on in SL, and I’ve been on a few, I’ve never heard anyone say anything, not even to remain seated, or even “tickets please!”, which would be awkward if they did because I never have a ticket, which means they’d probably throw me off the train while it was moving, whether I was seated or not. Ouch!

They’d think I was a hobo. I wonder where the word comes from, ‘hobo’. I checked and found all kinds of theories, but no one really knows for certain. One idea is it being short for “homeward bound” which sounds sort of plausible but I’m not totally convinced. Other ideas are even flakier. Mine is that it’s come from something like ‘homeless bohemian’, as in someone who lives kind of outside normal society by maybe choosing to have to no home. I’m not sure if this is a new idea or not, but I did come up with on my own.

Anyway, I’m not one, a hobo, so it really doesn’t matter. But I will keep chasing signs for the more intriguing and mysterious ones.

 

to sit or not to sit

 

Oh my word! I haven’t posted anything for ages, I just noticed. Much apologies to the very few readers I actually have, I’ve been busy, and with heatwaves on top of work, studies, health, other stuff I just completely didn’t realise what time had gone by. So, here is one about sitting. I do like sitting.

I spend a lot of time sitting inworld. In fact, I have loads of sitting selfies here, there and everywhere I go in SL, as some of my postings here already show. One could say I might be preoccupied, or obsessed, with sitting, but I’m not, honestly. It’s an occupation in itself though in SL, or a hobby, or an addiction; oh look, a seat, sit!

I’ve noticed it’s a habit of mine to try out as many different choices of sitting as possible. As someone’s gone to the trouble of providing sitting opportunities it would be churlish not to at least try them out. Even though it takes no effort at all to stand in SL, it always makes sense to me to sit, as I would likely do in RL, especially if I’m going to be somewhere any length of time. It’s kind of rude not to, I am a guest in these places/sims after all. It would be like going to someone’s house and not taking off your coat.

So many people log in and just stand around, often pointlessly, often never even moving, just standing letting the AO, animation overrider, do the work, even when there are maybe dozens of perching places.

I also do meditation inworld, usually sitting on mats or cushions, and sometimes I’ll do some yoga with my specially-designed yoga mat or on one provided where I happen to be. Despite it being virtual yoga, it can also be surprisingly relaxing; weird, I know.

SL is a funny old world, not just because of the weird and wonderful things you come across in it, but also how people behave. It can be fascinating for people-watching, or avi-watching, even watching those standing around doing nothing, sometimes.

One of the weirdest funny old world things I come across inworld is toilets. Despite being seats, I’m never tempted to sit on them and do wonder why anyone even bothers including them in their builds or designs. If anything is redundant in SL, it’s a toilet, it’s got to be pretty much the most redundant thing in SL compared to how much it’s needed in RL.

Well, that’s a strange place to end a blog on, toilets. Perhaps I’ll have something more interesting to write about next time, but I can’t promise anything being that I’m not massively active there at the moment, RL being what it is. Chat again soon and hope you enjoyed this little read, despite the toilet-talk.  

© Anan Eebus ~x

wherefore art thou

Where are they all?!

All those tens of thousands of people on SL inworld at any one time, where do they go? Frequently I’ll log on and see on the opening screen the numbers on how many avatars, or avis, are inworld right now which can be usually anything between 25,000 and 50,000 and sometimes even more, yet I barely see, meet, bump into a single one of them. Although, that’s an accidental lie, I do, a few, but literally only a few on my travels, in ones and twos, threes and fours here and there, sometimes tens of people, occasionally a few dozen at best, but that’s pretty unusual.

So, even if you add up these avis scattered across the plethora of sims that exist in SL there’s no way they can account for the tens of thousands, surely. It’s baffling, a conundrum, an enigma, a Mobius strip-shaped wrapped up in a Schrodinger’s cat sat a box wearing a hat.

But then, what I’m really wondering is, where are all the real people? Where are those who aren’t bots or zombies? I’m not talking actual zombies, by the way, that although being real people with real accounts, they don’t actually do anything other than stand or sit around, often just to camp for money or goods or whatever. I’m convinced their real-world owners are often not even at their computers, logging in only to go afk (away from keyboard).

Many of those I see around aren’t actually anyone at all but Bots, or SmartBots, but are nevertheless included in the numbers online because they are actual accounts. They are usually of one of two types of Personal Bot, ‘Standard Bots’ which function as such things as greeters, AI support, inviters, notice-senders; and then there are ‘Model Bots’ which are those used as mannequins, dance models, beautification, and usually moving in some way. These tend to do less than the Standard ones, but, in saying that with respect to both, they are actually real avis, it’s just that there’s no one behind the keyboard, no one at the wheel. Some can even be set to automatically log in and out like being on a timer. But, like I say, being actual accounts as such, they are included in the number inworld at any one time.

But these bots aren’t anyone you can have any meaningful interaction with, and that includes another relatively new thing I stumbled on the other day, another kind of bot in a way, “Smart-Mates”. There really is such a thing, I know, weird. They may sound a bit rude or naughty but nope, they aren’t, sorry to disappoint. They hang out with you, follow you, always want to be with you, which can be regarded either as welcome company, or, a bit creepy and clingy. Some have been lovingly called, ‘bodyguards’. Like the other kind of bots, they too are actual avatars with real SL accounts and also like them there’s no one at the wheel, so to speak, and you rent them as opposed to buying them. I think anyway, I am not totally clear on how it all works. How much control you have over them I’m not sure but might feel a bit like owning a blow-up doll.

Some days can really feel you’re wandering around an abandoned world where all the people have been stolen, kidnapped, abducted. So, where are they all? Or, have I got it wrong and in fact we the real people are actually outnumbered by the bots and zombies, and now, ‘smart-mates’?

© Anan Eebus