From Project Open Letter

Dear Linden Lab:

In the past eighteen months, Second Life has expanded, growing from a small community of early adopters to a platform supporting millions of users. Linden Lab has created a world that inspires a deep level of passion in its users and provides unprecedented opportunities to share creatively, socially, and financially.

With explosive levels of growth often come unexpected problems. In keeping with your company's policy and rich history of resident involvement, we the undersigned would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns that we feel have gone unanswered for too long.

There are some consistent, ongoing problems that are getting worse under heavy load, not better, and are not simply irritants but problems that are causing financial loss in some cases, which is unacceptable. Here is a brief list of the main concerns:

* Inventory loss - this is a devastating problem that is worsening. We have no ability to protect our own inventories through backups, and are trusting you to protect that data. This is the highest priority. Sensible inventory limits (on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well. Regardless, this cannot continue - we will not accept financial loss as a feature of Second Life. It is your responsibility as service provider to ensure our data is not lost, and you are failing us.

* Problems with Find and Friends List - we continue to see search outages on a far too regular basis. It is bad enough trying to get anywhere without being able to use search, but many users are also paying money for classified ads. Our friends lists just do not work reliably any longer, after years without an issue with them. If America Online/MSN/Yahoo can provide presence information for hundreds of millions of users, surely there is a way to make our friends lists work again.

* Grid stability and performance - teleports fail quite regularly, especially under heavy load. Attachments end up in places they did not start out in, and sim performance varies wildly. None of this makes for a very pleasant experience for users. Long promised improvement to physics and scripting would help dramatically to reduce these problems, but there are a lot of other scalability issues as well. It often feels like the grid is coming apart at the seams. The promised use of limiting logins of non-verified accounts during peak load has been severely lacking. This would be an effective interim solution to load issues, but Linden Lab seems unwilling to use it.

* Build tool problems - the importance of build tools that actually work as promised cannot be overstated enough - we rely on them to create content. Prim drift, disappearing prims, imprecise placement, problems with linking and other issues with the tools need to be addressed. Too much time is being spent trying to work around the problems.

* Transaction problems - inventory deliveries are failing with an alarming (and annoying) frequency, leaving merchants with the burden of replacing missing content and having to try to confim the transaction in the first place. We trust that our L$ balances are accurate, but given recent problems, that is a cause for concern as well, and one we place our full trust in you to ensure its accuracy.

We remain fully supportive of Second Life and are more than willing to continue doing our part to help, but our confidence is steadily being eroded due to a general lack of communication and the apparent failure to successfully address the many issues detailed above. What we are asking for is that these problems are addressed immediately, ahead of new features, and that we are able to see tangible improvements. We accept that this will not happen overnight but it also cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely either.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Too much fun...

Well, apparently I won "Who's Song Is It Anyway?" :-) Yeah, so I had to go "blue" to do it, but hey, when your topic is "The 'My Attachment Doesn't Work' Blues", there's really not anywhere else to go :-)

All 4 of us musicians went three times, I would've gone 4, but I chickened out on one of the topics (two holes are better than one), and Charles took it. Man, that guy's a riot. His first topic was Neil Armstrong, but he couldn't use any moon references. He took it and made a song up about how good Neil looks in a thong :-)

So I guess this is going to be an every week thing. Next week, I have a RL thing going on, so I can't make it, but it looks like Sundays in the future are going to be booked (yay!). I also should mention that that was one of the biggest crowds I've played for, at one point going over 50 people! (ooooohhh...)

Yesterday's regular no-going "blue" show at Crazy Sharks went great too. I once again was able to keep my pants on for Polka Dot Undies (it sounds like such a triumph...and it is).

Yesterday I mentioned I've been seeing some really great new musicians in SL lately. Now I want to talk about something in SL Live Music that bugs me a little: Karaoke. It's not live music. There...I said it . Now I've heard some fantastic voices at these shows, and some of them are among the most popular SL musicians around. Yes, the human voice is an instrument, etc...but it's still not live music. I've heard some other SL musicians playing with a backing track or two, and I'm honestly not sure where I stand on that. If it's to enhance a song, like to have a backing drum track or something, I'm all for it. But, yesterday I saw something in SL that floored me: Karaoke guitar. There was a performer, playing, note for note, lead guitar licks over instrumental versions of rock songs. Hmmm....This person was a fantastic guitarist, and sounded just like the performers he was covering, but, hmmm.....that's really all I can say about that is hmmm.....

Anyways.

Psst! Hey, you! Yeah, you! In the funny hat! Wanna go to a music show? C'mere....I'll tell ya how! First, wait until 615 or so Second Life Time tomorrow (or Pacific Daylight Time for you non SL'ers...if you're one of them, go download Second Life first), then come back here. Click on this link that says Sterling Vineyards...see? They run a classy joint tho, so make sure you get there early...k? Music starts at 630 SLT, and plan on staying til the end...otherwise I might have to come hunt ya down, capisce?

Now, while you're waiting for tomorrow to come, why don't you leave a few heckles? :-)

Yeah, I know :-)

The Dreams show went great. It seems I'm getting talked in to doing polka dot undies a little too easily lately, and the old "But it's a PG sim..." excuse doesn't work as well as it used to :-) Oh well. I know they've got a picture of me at Crazy Sharks, so I think I'm safe today...

The Lily Pad show was fun too. Only 9 people showed up (gotta love Friday's at 6 SLT), but we had a great time...

Before I played the Lily Pad though, I played a last minute show at Prankster's. I got to ring in 420 SLT on 4/20/07, which is like the hippie New Year, cept instead of toasting with champagne, hippies smoke joints :-) I couldn't join them however, as I was busy playing a show, and I certainly don't smoke joints! Bong Hits FTW ;-)

We all had a great time, and I was able to keep my pants on for a change, too! :-)

I've been seeing some newer musicians in SL, and wow...there's still a lot of times I want to just up and smash my guitar :-)

But - before I do that, I have some shows scheduled :-)

This afternoon I'm playing at Crazy Sharks at 2 SLT, which is always a good time...as long as the Bunny leaves me alone...

Then tomorrow, at 11 SLT, I'm back at Crazy Sharks along with Mel Cheeky, Charles Coleman, and Dan Octavia. We're playing "Who's Song is it Anyway?", obviously based on the British improv comedy show. The audience gives random song theme suggestions to the host (the aforementioned Bunny, actually), she spins the Wheel of Fortune to find out which musician gets stuck with making up a song on that theme. Should be lots of fun, specially since I don't write songs, I do covers :-O I'm really looking forward to it though, there will be lots of laughs, that's guaranteed :-)

Heckle away!

Now that's more like it :-)

Well, Saturday's show at the Rock went well, cept for the sim crash ;-) I tend to view sim crashes as a badge of honor...means I had a lot of people :-) It actually wasn't me that had all the people, it was the performer before me...she had already crashed the sim once before I got there, and after I started playing there were still 70 people in the sim, and it just couldn't take it anymore. I was smooth enough to log back in during the dramatic pause in Dear Prudence, and got back to the stage in between songs. This time tho, unlike when I went through as restart at The Point, a good chunk of the people came back. I think I saw around 40, so that's great for me.

Primtionary Saturday night went well too...not as big of a crowd as Wednesday, but we had a good mix of experienced builders and newbies to go through the words. I think I converted a new addict too, cuz we can never have too many Primtionary addicts :-)

Last night at Sterling Vineyards was fun as always. I know I say it every week, but I love playing there if only to look around between songs...it's so purty! :-) Apparently I was Ruthed to some people, but that's OK...long as the voice came thru :-)

So, tonight I'm at the Dreams Community Fair at 6 SLT. It's a weeks long event, and it's all to benefit the American Stroke Association. They have a full amusement park, there's gonna be a "Dunk a Linden" game in a few days...the next couple weeks are filled every day with something to do there, and like I said, it's all for a good cause. Come on down tonight to see me, but make sure to check out the schedule at the TP point and come back often.

Thanks as always for your support, and your heckles...

Oyster Bay

So Thursday's show at Oyster Bay felt (to me anyways) like the best show I've done in SL yet. Every song just clicked, my voice was dead on for each song, it was just all around great if I do say so myself :-) I started off a little off, Sympathy could've been better, and I goofed the words to Jack-a-Roe a bit (still kills me that the songs that I have the lyrics right in front of me for are the songs I always screw up), but once I started Sweet Sister, something clicked, and everything from then on was Just Exactly Perfect, to borrow a phrase.

Was nice to have a night off from playing last night, but I'm really looking forward to my debut at The Rock. I've played for them before, just not on the new sim, and not a scheduled show, either...the times I played at Willow Point, I was either opening (or standing in) for Charles Coleman (Something I do well....Oyster Bay even changed my group title to "Not Charles Coleman").

This afternoon's show at The Rock at Rocky Shores is at 4 SLT, and tonight at 7 SLT I'm filling in once again as host of Primtionary. Fly on in, build some stuff, have some fun!

:-)

3 in a row!

Well, the RFL gig went great. I had the biggest crowd I've had in a long time, and got lots of L donated to this very worthy cause. I even got to keep my pants on during Polka Dot Undies for a change...nobody was there that would've made me take em off ;-D. This also gave me the opportunity to threaten the crowd with taking them off if the tally didn't increase a large amount in 5 minutes. I ended up giving a large chunk of that donation, cuz I wanted to keep my pants on, but it was still a great time :-)

Hosting Primtionary was a great time as well...I have newfound respect for Yummie, and thanks that my performances are done with my voice, not by typing. Man, my hands hurt from typing so much!

So...this is gonna be a quick update. Don't forget to come see me at Oyster Bay Sculpture Garden and Aquarium Thursday 4/12 at 7 SLT. It's a later show than usual so a favorite heckler of mine can show up *for a change* ;-)

Heckle away!

Yay quick updates!

So I was only supposed to have one show tonight, right? Wrong, if you're Mel Cheeky ;-)

I went to catch the last 20 minutes of Dan Octavia's show at Harmony this afternoon, and Mel told me there was a rumor going around that I was following Dan...news to me. Turns out she started the rumor herself, the little sneak ;-O But, since I can't pass up a chance to play, I was easily talked into it, especially after Dan told the audience I was coming right up...heh.

So I played Harmony again this afternoon.... :-) Always a great time, and I still consider it a stage of honor, since so many of my SL music "heroes" play there. I played the usual stuff, and broke out Chuck Berry's Around and Around. Surprised me, since I wasn't planning on playing it til I worked out the kinks (hmm....mental note...need to do a Kinks song), and I had to Google the lyrics to make sure I had em right, but it ended up being OK.

So, after I Pied-Pipere'd the Harmony crowd to see Mel at the Blue Delta, I hopped on over to The Lily Pad (yeah, I know....sorry), set up, and started singing. To 1 person, and he was afk. To be fair, he was at Harmony as well, so he'd heard it all before :-). Ended up with about 15 people trickling in over the course of the hour, so I have no complaints.

Around and Around snuck into that set as well, as did the first verse of Turn On Your Lovelight. That was Grateful's fault. Seems we're trading GD song teases at our shows now...(in-jokes are so kewl), and last weekend he finally called one that I happen to know how to play all the way through. I've played it 3 times now, and only remembered the 2nd verse once. Eh...there was one tour that Bob Weir did a few years ago that had a huge "Applause" sign behind him that lit up whenever he forgot the words...if he's allowed to forget the words, I think I can be a bit forgetful too, and I can have some fun with it too.

Welp, that's it...Tomorrow night I'm at the Relay For Life gig at Gunbunnies II (can anyone tell me what happened to Gunbunnies I?) at 3 SLT. I have a sweet slot too, following Juel Resistance, and right before Maximillion Kleene, so the crowd should be a pretty good size.

And, as I mentioned last night, I'm filling in as host for Primtionary at 7 SLT. Primtionary is basically the SL version of pictionary. I give you a word, you have to build it, and the audience has to guess what you're building. Whoever guesses gets to build next. It's one of the things that kept me in SL before I started attending (and playing) live music shows, and I can't wait to sit in the big ole chair and see things from that angle. Come on down and have some fun!

Heckle away...I know you're there, I can hear you breathing :-)

Hey, look! He does update once in a while!

:-)

Wow...I gotta update more often, cuz I forget where I played and how the shows went :-)

The Lily Pad. Hmm.....it was a great show, I had fun, but Friday night at 6SLT is *not* the time to have a show. Unless of course, the 9 other people having live shows decide that, then it'll be the time for me to have a show :-) I had an average of 4 people there the whole hour, including the hostess...s'OK tho. I'd play to an empty sim if I had to.

Oh, almost forgot...I had a little "experience" Friday night after Frogg's show too. I'm not gonna get into specifics, but I got an IM asking if I had a second (I didn't) and I apparently didn't respond courteously enough, and lost a shot at a show. Oh well. Sorry (name withheld to protect the extra courteous), but if you're gonna react to an innocent question from me the way you did....I don't think I want to play for you anyways. But I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to that person, cuz after I started getting lectured about how to speak courteously...well.....I wasn't very courteous. :-) OK...I think I've seen the word "courteous" enough these past few days to last me a loooong time.

Gimme Shelter Saturday morning went a lot better. I had a much better crowd, and as much as I say I'll play for an empty sim and still have fun (see above :-D), I'll take a full sim over an empty one anyday. It's a lot easier to play off of a crowd that actually exists :-)

Ahhh...Crazy Sharks....fantastic people, great audience (especially the evil Easter Bunny that tried (and almost succeeded) to stare me down (thank god I don't play while in Mouselook)), great time :-) I've been hopping on the "Keep Live Music Free" Soapbox at my shows a lot this past week, and it was great to see all the tips that went to the venue, and hearing from many of the venue owners that they have no intention of charging admission (those that weren't at the meeting, anyways)

Tonight I was back at my regular slot at Sterling Vineyards. My voice was a little rusty, since I'm running on a bout 3 hours' sleep from last night , and I prolly shouldn't have attempted the high notes in Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" (it's still in the early stages for me), since I watched the sim numbers drop from the mid 30's to under 20, but, other than that...I did great. Cryene runs a beautiful sim, it's a great setting, and she has as much fun at my shows as I do :-)

And speaking of that certain soapbox (as I was a minute ago):

At some point over the weekend, I received a copy of the chat log from the venue owners meeting last week from someone I promised to leave nameless (thanks again!). First off, I gotta admit I was wrong about the admission charge (150-200L instead of 1000), so I guess that's a little bit of a load off my mind, but it was interesting to watch the idea go from only charging for special events such as metajams (which I would happily pay to see...last year's was fantastic) to charging at each and every show.

Also interesting to me was the control factor that I mentioned in the last post. If I want to play for these venues that charge, I'm forbidden to play for venues that don't charge. I guess it makes sense, I mean...why would I pay to see someone play when I could see them for free in an hour, or a day? But I'd rather make the decision on where to play than leave that decision in the hands of someone else. I'm not going to name any names or venues, but I will say that those names and venues are readily available at a certain online SL magazine that starts with the letters TheAvast** (how's that for subtle?).

Anyways, this meeting was invite only, and only some of the venue owners in SL were invited. A lot of venue owners didn't know about it, as well as a large chunk of musicians. That problem was solved at Harmony yesterday afternoon, when Mel Cheeky hosted an open-to-all informative meeting on the subject. There were a few people there that didn't understand the "informative" part of "informative meeting" and thought we were all there to get the torches lit and storm a certain sim and lynch some club owners. That was never the point. The point was to let performers (and other venue owners that apparently weren't "kewl" enough to be invited) what's going on.

The meeting was dominated by a few people (as was the venue owners' meeting last week), and fairly hard to follow (just like a RL meeting!), but in the end...I think we (well, they) accomplished what was wanted: Get the news out in the open, let everyone interested know what's coming, and give people enough warning so we're not all blindsided in a few weeks, if the plan does in fact come to fruition.

OK, off the soapbox again (for now), and back to me :-)

Concerts, concerts, get your concert dates here!

Tuesday night, I'm back at The Lily Pad at 6SLT, Wednesday I'm playing a Relay For Life Benefit at 3 SLT at Gunbunnies II, and Thursday I'm back at Oyster Bay Sculpture Garden and Aquarium at 7 SLT.

Also, Wednesday and Saturday at 7SLT I'm filling in as host for Primtionary. Heckles are welcome there as well, but keep in mind that I'll be paying you, as well as accepting tips, so the heckles might go both ways...

But, heckles are only one way here, so....get started!

:-)

Whew!

Well, Monday's show at Spunky BT's went great. I was kinda worried after the show on Sunday that the sim restart wasn't the reason nobody came back, but my worries were put to rest when I saw the crowd Monday. We all had lots of fun...cept, well...let's just say I gotta remember to take my socks off before I play and leave it at that :-)

Tuesday night I played at Prankster's Open Mic Nite. I had a half hour slot, kept to the usual stuff, threw in some extra GD since that's kinda the theme of the club, and got a great reception.

OK, soapbox time: KEEP LIVE MUSIC FREE IN SL!!!! There are some rumors going around the live music community that some clubs are thinking about charging residents to attend live music shows. Well, I can understand the reasons, for sure...owning an island in SL is an expensive undertaking, and it's great to recoup the costs. The parts of the rumors going around that are bothering me are the admission price some of them are allegedly thinking of charging ($L1000?...come on), and the (alleged) fact that if you want to play for these clubs, you can't play at any of the clubs that don't charge admission. Now, let me state that I have no proof of these statements, but I do trust the musicians I heard them from. I personally don't see myself even getting offered one of these deals, but I wouldn't take such an offer. One of the great things about SL is that you really don't need money (Lindens or otherwise) to have fun. My favorite thing to in SL is attend shows, and if they weren't free I wouldn't have started going. Dear readers (all two of you), one thing you can do to keep live music free is tip the club you're attending as well as the musicians that play there. The costs of owning and maintaining an island in SL are large, plus there's the cost of the stream so you can hear our beautiful music. The next show of mine you go to, don't tip me. Tip the club what you were going to tip me, then tip the club some more. Thanks!

/me steps down from the soapbox.

OK...got that off my chest :-) OK...shows, shows, shows, I got shows! Let's see...Friday the 6th, I debut at The Lily Pad at 6 SLT, Saturday the 7th I'm playing at Gimme Shelter at 10 AM SLT (thank god I'm 3 hours later) then at 2 SLT, I'm at Crazy Sharks. So far, I'm off Sunday (which is good, cuz I gotta work IRL), then back at Sterling Vineyards at 630 SLT on Monday.

Wow...looks like I'm getting to be a pro or something! :-)

Heckles welcome as always....

Whoops!

Yeah, I know...less than two weeks into the thing and I'm already slacking :-) Oh well...stuff happens ;-)

So...Monday's show at Sterling Vineyards was lots of fun...not too many people showed up, but those that did seemed to have a good time. I had Tuesday and Wednesday off, then I got a chance to go back to the Hummingbird Cafe's Open Mic night, which is where I made my SL debut. They run a real fun time there, for all their shows, but the Open Mic nights are usually something else. :-)

Friday, I played at the Point Arena in Rio for the first time. It would've been a great show, but of course, my luck....I have to be the sucker that has SL's bi-weekly rolling restart roll right through their set :-( So, for my first song, I had 35 people there (a fairly good crowd), then the restart happened, so we all left and came back a few minutes later. I spent the next 40 minutes playing to as few as 3 and as many as 11 people. Ah well :-) Grateful was there, so at least I had a cheering section :-)

OK, that's the past week :-) Friday night at Frogg and Jaycatt's show, I talked with Spunky Burrito a lil bit, and finished "with see you Monday!" I'm playing at Spunky BT's at 6 SLT Monday (last minute Edit: 7 SLT!)...we scheduled it weeks ago. Yesterday morning it hits me...I play Monday at 6 at Sterling Vineyards for my weekly slot! ACK! So I asked Grateful if we could switch, but he has RL plans. So I IMd Creyne this morning and told her how dumb I was :-) She gets back to me with (paraphrasing) "It's OK I did the same thing". She had set up with another musician to play Monday at 6 before getting me in the weekly slot, and just remembered herself :-) So, go figure, we both flaked about the same day, and it worked out perfectly :-)

Well, that about does it! Heckle away....