Jupiter Rowland @JupiterRowland

Yours truly pretending it's ten years ago, and I'm a brand-new avatar that needs to be decked out.

Yes, I have a Roth cosplay outfit. Down to being barefoot.

Since I'm wearing a BoM-enabled Roth2 v2 body, I could also have put on the standard Ruth/Roth clothes, but I'm not too fond of trousers stuck up my buttcrack.

Isn't that what we want to be?

So if there are any men's fashion tailors left out there, I have a request. Or a challenge. Or call it whatever you want.

And that's clothes rigged and fitted for Roth2 v2.

Does anyone have all the loose items from the Christmas firepit set from Clutterfly?

I'm not looking for the sales box. The sales box as available on all instances of Clutterfly itself is broken. It only contains one tree stump.

So now I'm particularly looking for these items:
Christmas stump with blanket #1
Christmas stump with blanket #12
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #1
Christmas Cuddle/Sex Log with blanket #2

The Tree Stump and the Fire Pit are the same in all firepit sets, so I don't need them.

As we all should know, OSW doesn't allow entries of sims that are closed to the Hypergrid.

IMHO, this should be expanded to sims which are technically connected to the Hypergrid, but only accessible to members of the grid they're on, thereby excluding Hypergrid visitors. For the effect is the same: Nobody from outside the grid gets in.

I'd also include sims which are technically accessible to Hypergrid visitors, but only open for members of a certain closed circle. Nothing wrong with sims only accepting members of a group, but I'd draw a line where even asking the sim owner won't get you an invitation to the group because that group is only for close friends of the sim owner.

I have a suggestion for OpenSimWorld which will also involve the beacon, namely to sort avatars on sims into three categories.


One, staff and residents. These are the avatars that represent the sim owners, residents on homesteads and everyone else who lives and/or works on a sim. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a notecard. The UUID of the owner of the beacon should automatically count as staff.

Staff and residents should count as activity so that you know that someone is on the sim, but not influence the popularity.


Two, bots and decorational avatars. These are the avatars that are mere decoration and that serve similar purposes as NPCs, but that aren't NPCs for whichever reasons. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a separate notecard.

Bots and decorational avatars should be treated the same as NPCs. They should neither count as activity nor influence the popularity. (Downside, admittedly: They could be used as flies on the wall to monitor sims.)


Three, visitors. These are the avatars that aren't on any notecard.

Only they will influence the popularity.


This will require new beacons. But this could be done in such a way that OSW will treat all avatars detected by old beacons like staff and residents. Activity will be shown, but it won't have any impact on your sim's popularity unless you replace your beacon. You want your popularity ranked, then get a new beacon. You can't be bothered to replace your beacon, then say buh-bye to your popularity.

The sim entries on OSW would require another change: The avatars graph would have to be split into two colours, one for staff and residents, one for visitors. This would show if staff is present (not whether it's AFK, though) if a sim isn't a homestead, and it'd also show whether staff and residents are correctly listed as such.

In order to enforce the correct use of the new beacon, each sim that's caught not listing staff, residents or bots as such will have its visitor count set to Inaccurate until it has proven to have fixed the issue.

Crazy day today. Two full fashion shows in five hours.

Greetings from Juno, she has been one of the models at the first fashion show at Artdestiny. Her first time as a model, and that was in front of more than 40 spectators. Six times out on the catwalk, four scheduled, another two spontaneously taken over from a model who had fallen ill as she told me.

So now we've recently had quite some drama about a crossplayer. Someone who uses at least one avatar whose gender isn't his own.

Being tricked into virtual sex and then ghosted if you were hoping for something permanent is one thing. The sudden discovery of avatars who are NOT the virtual representations of real-life people but completely unrelated to their users is another thing.

The biggest issue seems to be avatars with genders different from their users'. Or rather, people not knowing that this smouldering hot lady is a GIRL (Guy In Real Life). From this, demands arose that all cross-playing avatars shall inform people that they're cross-playing avatars. Some may even demand a total ban on cross-playing.

On the other hand, there are users whose avatars aren't them, and who want to keep their real lives as secret as possible. They also don't want to know anything about the users behind other avatars, especially not without asking first. OpenSim is a role-play to them, and real life breaks immersion.

Now, the question is: What'd be the best practice then?

Keeping it secret may end up in awkward situations with avatars that are virtual representations of their real-life users instead of fictional role-play characters. Blurting it out without being asked (female avatar arriving at a party: "Hi, I'm a cishet guy in real life!") leaves a lot of people with TMI (Too Much Information).

But there actually is a standard place for real-life information. And your real-life gender is exactly that, real-life information. That place is in your avatar profile.

No, not the "2nd life" page, the first page you see when you open your profile or someone else's. That page is exclusively for in-world information about your avatar.

The place for real-life information about you is on the "1st life" page. That and only that is also where a real-life photograph of you should go if you absolutely have to have one in our avatar profile. And that's the right place to tell people about your real-life gender.

A big advantage of this is that people who check your profile because they're interested in your avatar but not in your real life won't have real-life information about you slapped into their faces. The "1st life" page is not the first thing you see when looking at someone's profile.

Granted, this practice isn't perfect. There are people who find it inconvenient to have to navigate through a profile, and who demand all information they want to know be served to them on a silver platter, i.e. on the very first profile page. Others don't want to read profiles at all (or anything, in fact), they want male crossplayers with female avatars to tell them right away that they're guys in real life without themselves asking for it. The real-life information they want to know would be readily available to them, they just can't be bothered to look it up.

But I guess there are also people who don't want to see any real-life information in avatar profiles, who don't even want to accidentally stumble upon it by clicking on the wrong tab, because they don't want to know anything about the real-life people behind avatars, at least not more than necessary.

Stil, going this "official" way should be good enough for most people.

Does anyone know what happened to the con.tin.u.um grid?

It has been down for a week now. Okay, you may say, grids shut down, this just happens. But they usually announce their shutdown. Grids that shut down without an announcement are usually shoddy grids run by amateur hacks on old Windows laptops. con.tin.u.um was a fantastic grid run by people who knew what they were doing, not to mention with help by none less than Fred Beckhusen. Besides, they had just published a new issue of the Virtual-HG magazine, they had just upgraded Bastion (https://opensimworld.com/hop/82479), and they still had plans for the future.

Not only that, but I haven't seen a single sign of life from anyone behind it, much less an explanation as to why con.tin.u.um is down and whether it'll return. Marianna (https://opensimworld.com/user/Marianna) used to be here daily, but her last post was eight days ago.

Their website (https://www.virtual-hg.com/) is still up, but the last post is from August 28th.

In case you're wondering, OSgrid has been down for 8 hours now. There's no information currently about what's going on or when it'll be back up, at least not to my knowledge.

https://nitter.snopyta.org/osgrid/status/14290075692684001...