This is a really interesting concept. Simple, clean, efficient way to read all your favorite news in a single mouseover. Alltop aggregates the last 5 entries of all interesting blogs/news outlets for a single subject. In the case that is of interest to me it’s called http://virtual.alltop.com.

A few things makes it different. It comes with all interesting feeds, mostly selected by AllTop.Com staff themselves. Then you can remove the feeds that are no interest to you. With what remains, a simple mouseover lets you overview the news quite nicely. Click it and you get the news directly from the blogger’s mouth.
Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist of AllTop.Com, and avid Twiteroo, my feed is now on this website. It now replaced my default page on my SL dedicated machine.

Yes, bloggers won round one. Not a huge victory but we got the much needed clarifications. As someone with a lifelong tradition of activism, having gone on several strikes (especially student ones), small victories are big victories when it comes to support our troops. Yes, we may not be happy about the content of those clarifications, but that’s what we asked for, and we got it. We can only congratulate ourselves, we did the impossible: make the Lindens listen to us. Now, forward to the next step in the battle.
As much as I’m a Linden fangirl, I’m also a very active SL socialite. I can see popular support for Linden Lab declining, following a few of their legal decisions in the last year.

I am still not going to comply to that policy until I get a letter from the Lindens. I’m not that much affected by the policy itself. But I still feel much for bloggers that must make their domain name comply.

One of the best roundup about the case IMOHO is by lurvely Cuddlefish Jacek Antonelli, speaking about it here. Many bloggers are rightfully angry about the Linden’s vague threat of banhammer for those who would ultimately not comply. As Jacek stated tho, they cannot substitute to the law.

I think to add to the ambient climate of anger is that since about 2 months, the grid is down not only everyday, but several times a day. We now have 3 waves of peak concurrency a day instead of 1, and the poor asset servers are suffering much strain.
Lindens, I ♥♥♥ you guys. But you seriously need to get your game together, get better legal counseling and maybe stabilize this grid we ♥♥♥ so much. You may be calling yourself a gaming company, but as Phil said, you guys are building a country. You are no ordinary service provider, despite what some thinks about it.

We create this world. We populate it. We are no ordinary customers, we are residents. More than that, we are citizens. We support you for making this world possible. But remember who makes you grow, and don’t bite the hands that feeds you. That means, us all.

One of the most panicking idea about the new Linden Labs guidelines is that thousands of bloggers may now have to remove infringing contents from their blog. But if you own a Wordpress self-hosted blog (maybe even a Wordpress.Com blog), NO NOT PANIC! Ubernyms is a very slick way of mass rewriting your blog without sweat.

Legal things better left to lawyers as far as I’m concerned, this article is NOT about HOW to make your blog compliant to the new policy. IANAL and I have no idea yet of all the legal implications. This article will focus on the technical aspect of installing Ubernyms and not on the legal aspects. For that you will have to read Linden Lab’s policies throughly, personally I don’t even know how it will affect bloggers. LL ain’t very good at communicating important decisions like that anyways, but that is another subject completely.

NOTE: Ubernyms may not be compatible with all Wordpress plugins. I heard it conflicted with other plugins. I CANNOT offer support for any aspect of it, as I do not develop Ubernyms. Consider this a primer to the matter, no more.

STEP 1 : Installing Ubernyms

This is the most tricky part, since the installation can be different on one host or another. So I cannot explain all of it, but will try to give it a shot.

Basically installation consists of:

1. Download Ubernyms for the right version of Wordpress
2. Put that .ZIP file into your /wp-content/plugins directory and unzip it on the server OR unzip the file locally and put the folder and all of it’s content in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory through FTP
3. Activate the plugin in your Plugins section of your Wordpress blog administration panel
4. INSTALL SignpostMarv Ubernym patch that fixes a bug with the HTML characters and UTF-8/accented characters. Go there and download the ubernyms-2.7.php.txt file and rename it to ubernyms.php. Then upload it via FTP in the Ubernyms plugin directory, and overwrite the old one.

STEP 2 : Configuring Ubernyms

Once installed, Ubernyms is delicious cake. And you must eat it.

1. Go into the Plugins section, and click on Ubernyms Configuration
2. Leave the upper configuration as is, it is usually defaulting a decent configuration
3. What is of utter interest for this case is the Replace Text option. Take a free slot under “Add new acronyms” and select Replace Text.
4. Enter a term in the Text field, and the replacement term in Definition

For example, let’s say that you want to replace the acronym “SL” for “SL ™”, you would have to put “SL” in the Text field and “SL â„¢” in the Description field (you should use the HTML code for the trademark sign in this case). SignpostMarv issued a patch fixing a problem with this, thanks to him for the leet patchage!

This plugin can replace any expression in your entire blog in a second, not only for replacements, you can link to internal or external URLs, replace acronyms by full length expressions, and so on. It’s the blogger’s best friend, you can take my word on that.

Hope this will calm down some lovely people I know that got very stressed up with their blog infringing on Linden Labs trademarks, thinking it would be required to correct every article posted by hand. This plugin removes much of the job. It still needs to be proven if it is really necessary. <3

My sweet friend Ana Lutetia was working a lot on her new blog lately, so she finally got her own domain name and started the real deal. Congrats to you, Ana.

I would like to add that Ana worked on an insanely good weblinks and SLURL lists pointing to a huge amount of very useful resources. Be sure to scour it and enjoy.

SecondLife URL List: http://analutetia.com/links/

SecondLife SLURL List: http://analutetia.com/slurl-in-world-stores-locations/

Oh no, not again. Sights.

Lovely Roxette Wise tagged me with yet-another-blog-meme, this time about books. Okay since I’m a good sport, let’s do this:

The Book Meme

1. Pick up the nearest book. (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people!

(Goes and fetch the closest book…) Oh fuck. Which is a very old edition of Linux Unleashed. From 1995. Ugh. You really asked for it, this promises to be very dull. It came with Slackware 2.2.0 BTW. Yes, I’m that old.

So on page 123…

Notational Conventions Used to Describe Linux Commands

There is a set of accepted notational conventions used to describe, in a concise and consistent way, the correct syntax for any given Linux command. This specifies what options or parameters you must use, what options or parameters you can use or not use, and so on. Sometimes this set of conventions is used to give a complete and exhaustive listing of a command’s syntax, showing every possible command and parameter.

There, that’s even 4 sentences if we count the title.

Now the victims. Ugh. Sorry guys. I’m not tagging anyone this time, this brings too much hate. *grins*

I previously posted the Boudoir Rouge Hitlist on a standard post, making it harder to find, so i just created the Boudoir Rouge page, containing technical information about the Boudoir Rouge art project, along with the infamous Boudoir Rouge Hitlist. I will also strike the hitlist off previous post and mark as outdated with a redirect to the new page. The official Boudoir Rouge Hitlist is up to date only on the new official project page.

Boudoir Rouge project page:

http://codebastardredgrave.com/boudoir-rouge/

Today Shockwave Plasma asked me if I had a personal logo, like the one that belongs to Tateru Nino. Tho I surely don’t have the cult following Tateru has, Shockwave surely thinks I’m hawt shit for asking me such a thing. Apart my standard signature, I don’t have a distinctive mark that can represent me.

I surely don’t have the time right now to design a logo for my personal use. Tho, it would be surely lovely to have something unique I could appose to my work or use around for fun, like a graffiti tag. So I had this idea that it could be a really fun to do a little contest, and ask for you lovely people to design a logo for myself.

The prizes:

• 1st prize: L$4000 cash, 1 MachinimaCam HUD, 1 Sakura Blossom Emitter, all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts), and a big valentine smooch from Codie
• 2nd prize: 1 MachinimaCam HUD, 1 Sakura Blossom Emitter, all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts)
• 3rd prize: all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts)

The rules:

• All entries to the contest must be posted as a link in the comments of this blog entry. No exception made.
• The logo must be a minimum of 1600×1200, for better scaling
• You can submit more than one work
• The 1st winner must provide the Photoshop and/or Illustrator files used for the logo.
• The 1st winner must concedes the full rights to his creation to me (CodeBastard Redgrave) since it is to be used as my personal logo. You retain the right to present your work as a porfolio item of course. I retain the right to modify it at my will.
• I do not engage in using the logo if you win. EDIT: To precise my intent, it’s just in case I feel no logo represents me. Very unlikely to happen but I’m of a careful nature.
• All works must be submitted before Feb 14th 2008 @ 12:00 AM Linden time
• Codie is the sole and only judge, will choose the 3 winners and will give out the prizes personally

Guidelines:

• Red is a must
• Monographic logos are better since they can be used in a single color or incorporated in other designs, but not mandatory
• The logo should be of a square ratio
• Bonus points if the logo looks good when embossed
• The logo can contain writing but should be as universal as possible
• If you are to use any of my previous work, please ask permission. Of course if you need inspiration, feel free to scour my flickr.

Have fun! I know I will checking out the entries. If nobody participates I will take that L$4000 and go blow it on something just to cure my sadness.

I am so honored that you guys chose me as the Avastar of the Year 2007. I was already honored of sitting in that list with some of the most extraordinary newcomers, including people I admire greatly including RightAsRain Rimbeault, Ana Lutetia and Nicholaz Beresford among others. I’m still a bit under the shock that you guys chose me.

Now I’m getting more feedbacks about how that could happen because honestly I couldn’t believe it. Many people sent me emails and letters to tell me they encouraged my candidacy for that title through their mailing-lists, forums, groups, blogs, even Flickr threads. You people just proven me you can be sweet to the core. That just flatters me to an unimaginable level that I could influence your Second Life, be it just a tiny little bit. For me it’s a world of difference. It means that sometime, somewhere, I have tried my best to be good to people around, that all my efforts to contribute to the community in a positive way have been acknowledge. And acknowledged by you people.

I want to thank each and everyone of you. If I could do it personally, I would. I want to thanks the Avastar for nominating me with all those marvelous people. I want to thanks everyone that voted on that poll and that supported me through that stressful but enlightening process. I want to thank all the candidates for being such good sports. I want to congratulate Ana Lutetia as a Second winner and RightAsRain Rimbeault as the Third winner.

This has been my honor and pleasure to serving this amazing community in my first year. I will try to make my second year even better. I ♥♥♥ you all to bits.

Sincerely,

Codie

(Myself and 2nd winner Ana Lutetia. Credits: All pictures by Ana Lutetia. Thank you for your permission to use them.)

Lots of things going on so I didn’t take time to blog much lately, sorry for depriving my faithful viewers of my almost daily delirium.

I think I made it with 1st place on that Avastar of the Year poll, tho the votes from the Avastar island aren’t counted so I don’t know who wins yet. This will be presented at the Award Ceremony January 16, 09:00 SLT, at The AvaStar (107, 219, 80). This would fall straight in the middle of my work day so I don’t even think I can attend. Which kinda sucks.

Apart that I’m working on a new photoshoot for a Bubblefish/Atomic Soda ad campain. Pictures looks awesome until now, I’m looking at two other shootings that needs to be done before the set is complete. I’m also working on their new logo which should be done soon.

I’m preparing a new artsy photo set to put exclusively in the new Code Red 3.0 building, which I will inaugurate soon if everything goes well. The new build is all made with 32×32 megaprims and is only using 75 prims, compared to the 400 needed for the previous build. It’s also much well organized and more clean, at least to my own taste. I will also re-manage the actual collection to keep only the best of the best for your viewing pleasure.

I’m of course working my ass off to finish the latest MachinimaCam version, for which I will need beta testers soon. I keep adding new stuff but I want this brew to be completely workable and bug fixed before releasing it. It is promising tho, since it allows amazing expansion compared to the previous version. Be sure I will keep you posted.

That’s it for now, of course, more to come.