I reorganized my blog

I got to noticing that my post tagging (aka Labels in Blogger) had gotten undisciplined and out of control. Many tags made sense only to me or people who really know Second Life or virtual worlds. So I just went through an exhausting (mentally) process of re-labeling every one of my posts. Some 40+ tags were cut down to less than 20.

Now, my question is, does this help anyone reading this silly page? If you have any suggestions as to how I might label my articles, I'm open to them.

While most of what I write about is related to Second Life, there's a fair amount that's not.

My new label logic is as follows:

Arts & Culture - More about society, art, culture, politics
Bugs - Specific problems with SL
Fashion - Mostly SL fashion but occasionally RL
Free - Free stuff
Fun - Silly things
Legal - Copyrights, Terms of Service, etc.
Linden Lab - Anything the Lab does as policy or business
Privacy & Security - Griefing, spying, privacy, hacking
Second Life - Global SL issues or info
Sex - Mandatory label for one article (so far)
Tiny Empires - My favorite game in SL
Tutorials - How To's, explanations, etc.
Viewers - SL and other grid viewers
Virtual Commerce - SL Marketplace, inworld commerce, etc.
Virtual Worlds - Other worlds
Other - Stuff that doesn't fit above

Naturally, some articles have multiple tags but I've tried not to be too redundant. For example, articles tagged as Fashion will almost never have the Second Life tag too as that would make the SL tag useless.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and ideas on this. My brain is worn out from it.

Burning down the house!

It's hot in here!

So I just got an invite from a friend to Second Life house warming party and just had to show you a picture of it! Very clever. And yes he's the creator. Click it and the mini-house lights on fire and gives you a folder with the invite! Nice!

Wish I could show you the before (which is just the house by itself) but once you click it, there's no going back. :P

UPDATE: The creator says I can mention his name so I will. :) Yay for Ghosty Kips. Also since the item is copy, the original will still be in inventory after you drag it out.

New fashion line crashes Target website

I admit, I like shopping at Target. They carry Gillian & O'Malley bras (which I love) and Calypso St. Barth at great prices along with some, usually, cute seasonal clothing items. Plus, a lot of their home decor stuff fits my budget and style. Hey it's not Nordstrom's but it stretches the budget a lot.

So like a lot of people, I was intrigued by the news that Target was going to be carrying some Missoni items at Target prices. For those who don't know, Missoni is a high-end Italian design house whose clothing articles can easily jump into the thousands of dollars.

So being the online shopper doodle that I am, I went to Target's website and this is what I found! (OK the stuffed doggy is too cute by half.)

Anyway, Target's website has been crashed and offline for almost a day now and the news even made it to the NY Times. NY Times: Demand at Target for Fashion Line Crashes Web Site

Oh well. It's not like I really NEEDED new clothes is it??

P.S. And I owe Target another thanks for introducing Pomplamoose (the band) to the universe via those wonderful Christmas carol commercials!!!! If you haven't seen/heard their cover of the Angry Birds theme on video, you have not lived!!!

Pomplamoose -- official Youtube site

Namaste brinda Allen

I have traded a few posts with brinda over the years in both the official SL forums and in SLU. I had no idea she passed away until I read Lalo Telling's blog.

Two tributes to her spirit...

http://lalotelling.squarespace.com/likeitis/2011/8/11/namaste-brinda.html

https://walkingwithavatars.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/what-you-leave-behind/

Sniffles.

Anatomy of a Spam Viagra Purchase

I thought this was fascinating in light of an earlier blog post about what sort of email others saw in their SPAM folders. Plus, the original article's headline was too delicious to not repeat. :)

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26785/

My original blog post about SPAM here.

Help organize my blog!

I just noticed today that my arbitrary "tagging" of articles I've written has gotten out of hand. Tags or labels as Blogger calls them, are how content sort of gets organized. After getting rid of all the single occurrence labels, I noticed that some, like "second life" applied to almost everything I write about (although not all). You can see the results of my cleanup in the "cloud" listing of topics in the right-hand column.

So the question for all you who bother to read my ramblings, what sorts of labels would make more sense to you? How would YOU like to see my blog organized? Are there other labels you think would make more sense? I don't organize this thing into discrete page areas and ain't about to. So give me your thoughts on how I should use labels. Thanks!!!

Microsoft Guided Help - Amazing!

OK, I think I'm a fairly smart cookie -- or candy bar -- but sometimes I overlook the obvious.

Due to a horrific crash and an accumulated slowdown on my PC, my tech friend and I spent the better part of Sunday and Monday reinstalling Microsoft Windows XP and my software. Now I'm back up and running (mostly) with a few things left to do (like install all my Adobe stuff -- ughh). Anyway, after the install, I couldn't figure out what happened to my old favorite icon -- Show Desktop. It wasn't there. So I did a Google search for "missing show desktop icon". What pops up? This page from Microsoft.

Several solutions are offered including Windows Key + D (which I didn't know) plus an icky script thing which I'm too lazy to do. And what's this?? A "Fix this problem" button. I've never seen that before. Being a curious kitty, I clicked it and got the usual download request for something mysterious called GSA ACW packages.

Hmmm OK, I'll run it. Told you I'm a curious kitty. (Which is probably why my system was so junked up it needed reinstalling. My tech friend was like uggghhh.)

Anywho, next thing I know, I'm getting a guided tutorial on how to fix the problem including a moving cursor, dimmed Windows and highlights. What it did was tell me the icon was already installed and activated my Quick Launch bar (see I really do sometimes miss the obvious). Yay! It was very cool watching it do all this automagically while showing each step. So Microsoft, you have a winning approach with this one!

A different set of hooters!

OK, it's not Second Life, it's real life and much better. The live owl box cam! I watched #2 owlet, Pattison, hatch today. The whole thing is so cute and so like, uh, hmm, totally real nature. :) You have to watch as McGee (daddy owl) brings in rabbits & other critters for Molly and kids to eat!

Free video chat by Ustream

And yes, I know "barn owls screech, they don't hoot" but my title is still funneh. I think. Kinda.

Update template for my blog

Just curious as to what people think of the new look.

bit.ly problems

For the last two months I have been getting an error whenever I try to Tweet a shortened URL from bit.ly: "There was a problem posting your request. Please try again." Not only that, but it won't even let me delete my Twitter account to see if I can re-add it to get the tweet from bit.ly feature back to working.

If anyone has any ideas why this is happening or what I can do to fix it, I'd appreciate it. I use Firefox 3 on Windows XP Pro.