Reflections: Ten Years Ago ...

By Bixyl Shuftan

I forget the exact date, but it was one weekend a decade ago that the decision was made by it's editor to close the newsletter I worked for at the time, the Second Life Newspaper.

It had not been the best of times. Second Life's Golden Age was behind us. This was partially due to the hype from the 2006-08 years having faded as stories in real life media about the possibilities of what could be done here such as the Relay for Life became replaced by tales of marriages broken by virtual adultery and "flying penis" griefing attacks. So fewer people were signing up. The global economy was still sluggish after the 2008 crash, and it was reflected in Second Life with fewer people having plenty of money to spend. The number of private sims down began a long slow decline, and it was harder to make good money.

For the Second Life Newspaper, we had our own troubles. One of our sponsors had suddenly up and went under in a very public collapse that angered many of his customers and some of it went our way due to his sponsorship. There were also fewer reporters on the staff. The owner of SLN, JamesT Juno, had left Second Life for personal reasons. Editor Dana Vanomer was in charge, but was also being dragged down by real life matters. Fortunately, the paper had a short-term contingency plan for times she wasn't available for a day or two. The "office manager" of the newsletter, me, would post articles when she couldn't. So we continued on.

But eventually, Dana came to a realization. So it was one weekend in early April 2010 that we met for an "emergency meeting." I had hoped it was a new sponsor. But instead, she told us the newsletter would be closing in three months. I was, stunned. For over two years, most of my time here in Second Life, I'd spent my time as a reporter, and it had become my online identity. And now, we were faced with it coming to an end. Gemma Cleanslate was the most outspoken of us, saying there had to be a way to keep things running. But the way Dana saw it, it was James' paper, and she had no right to give it to anyone else.

And after that, some of the team dropped out. The rest of us continued to do what we'd been doing, reporting the news about Second Life. But we talked to one another. And four of us came to a conclusion: start a new paper, a new newsletter. And the very day Second Life Newspaper folded, the Second Life Newser would begin.

If it was in my power, I would have taken the chance in an instant to be the owner of the old Second Life Newspaper. But after a rough start, we continued to do well under the new name. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here. Life, virtual and real, is full of change. But life goes on. Sometimes it means saying goodbye to something, or someone, you've cherished. But still, life goes on. It always has.

Ten years later, Gemma Cleanslate and I have been part of the Second Life Newser, having worked with some fantastic writers over time, Grey Lupindo, Shelly Sands, DrFran Babcock, and many others. Numerous sponsors have backed us over the years. Times have changed, both in virtual reality and real life. But our mission remains the same: reporting the news big and small about the people, places, and events across Second Life. And we have every intention of keeping it up.

Bixyl Shuftan

Creative Fiction: The Morph Machine

By Becky Shamen

We have told before of the joys of changing avs. In Second Life, there is no limit on how many avs and alts you can keep in your closet. In real life we have perhaps the greatest morphing festival ever created, called Halloween. For one day per year, society puts on the blindfold and allows us to be any freakin' thing and/or gender that tickles our imagination. You could say, Halloween is a worm-hole, between SL and real life. However, in reality when we change, we are only changing a costume, like an outfit of clothing. In Second life, if you present yourself as an anthropomorphic fox, the pun telling, mild mannered reporter and editor of a major newspaper, you are in fact, body and soul, right down to your DNA, exactly THAT, and probably the guy we call chief.

If a little of SL can leak into real life, can we, safely, predict that the day will come, when science finds a way to change our real life bodies into any freakin' thing we want? Predictions are rarely 100% accurate. There's too much free will involved. We can improve accuracy by lining up a series of related, true facts and extrapolating what comes next. When we look at an arrangement of standing dominoes, lined up around the floor, we ALL know what's next. In the "real" world, I have been in the position to learn of technologies, already tested, that are decades in advance of what most people are aware of. Let us see if we can line up bits and pieces, of known technologies, to see if a machine could be made to turn you into a real life fox <(insert av here).

Electronic signatures *:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*

I have seen a rough scematic for an electrical circuit that can detect a unique electronic signature for any sampled substance. It is one of the strangest circuits I've seen, because one of the components is a tunable glass prism. The recieving sensor of the circuit is a flat wound antenna, upon which objects to be tested are placed. By adjusting the dials, to get the strongest signal, the read out will give you the unique electronic signature of the test subject. It can even distinguish between individual people. The test subject needn't even be present, to be tested. It has been shown to be just as accurate, by substituting a photograph of the subject. Regardless of the distance, between subject and photograph, the circuit gives a real time reading on the subject. With a photograph of an astronaut, even if he were on the back side of the moon, outside of radio contact, you could monitor his life signs, faster than the speed of light. Whatever it is, that creates this electronic signature, seems to exist everywhere in the universe. It is not limited by time and space.

Manipulating DNA

DNA is a collection of protein molecules, duplicated, in every cell of your body. These clusters of molecules are so tiny, you can't see them without a microscope, yet so powerful they can gather and organize millions of their kind into a walking, talking being. The electronic signature of these proteins is what distinguishes one of your cells from one of mine, or any other creature's. In the decades since DNA was discovered, scientists have been mapping out these proteins and learning ways to manipulate them. By cutting and splicing sections, they can create whole new creatures, some useful and some monsters. Playing God, you say? Yes, but are we not asked to be one with our Father? Lately, I've seen where they are learning to manipulate DNA with sounds or frequencies. If a single cell radiates enough of a signal to allign itself with billions of others, what would happen if that cell were bombarded by a signal, the strength of billions of cells, of a different DNA mix? Would the amino acids, from which DNA is made, sympathetically attune themselves, by rearranging their place in line? I have not heard of any experiments in this direction, but if it were tested and proven, it would make possible a whole new kind of machine

The Morph Machine

Fast forward to the year 2033. Our friend, let's call him Aaron, doesn't like his lot in life. He wishes he had a better paying job and more friends that liked him. He goes to his neighborhood adult bar and sees all the cute, buxum bunnies, kitty cats and foxes, dancing on stage, being admired by all and raking in the big bucks. He knows they weren't always this way. They had gotten a morph job, overseas or in Colorado, and were now dreams come true. Aaron has read about these clinics, but they cost too much for his meager budget, so were little more than a fantasy. 

Then, one day, his old uncle passes away and leaves him some money. It's not a fortune, but it's more than enough for a morph job. Aaron goes to the local morph clinic and looks through their photo catalogue. He picks out a tall, buxom female bunny and asks, "Does it come in purple?" "Of course sir, we can fine tune it to your exact specs," comes the technician's reply. Information gathered, the tech takes Aaron to another room and shows him the machine. He inserts a photo, in a slot, turns a few knobs and pushes a few buttons, then motions Aaron to a door, leading to the morphing chamber. 

In the center of the room there is an operating table. The walls of the room are covered with parabolic dish antennas. As the tech secures Aaron on the table he explains that the changes aren't instant. Some will show up in days, others, like long ears, fur, fluffy tail and bone structure, will take longer to grow in. The one thing that will stay the same is the synaptic connections in the brain and it's memories. The tech goes to the control room and throws the switch. Aaron hears a soft hum and soon falls asleep. About an hour later, the tech wakes Aaron up and informs him that tests show the morphing was a success and that he could go home now. 

At home, Aaron goes straight to the mirror and looks at himself and sees the same old body. But not for long. Within a few days, he notices the color of his skin is changing, a soft downy fur is growing all over and his ears and breasts are sensitive. Over the next few months, he notices all the other employees are much friendlier and want to chat at the water cooler and break room. They always ask if he had picked out a new name yet. Even before the changes were complete, people began calling him Miss. 

Within nine months, the transformation was such that it was time to go to the court house and have the paperwork done, to make it official that he was now a female rabbit, named Miss Rosie Martin. She started working evenings as a dancer and soon quit her old job. Eventually, she opened her own nightclub, where all the dancers and clients called her "Mom".

And, she lived happily ever after,

Becky "Sha" Shamen

Minecraft Angels Village: An Ending and a Beginning

By Bixyl Shuftan

Since I last wrote on Minecraft, the activity continued in Angel's Village's server. Jasmine continued to work on improving her chicken cooker at her place of Havenshire, and then went on to work on other projects. She built an object sorter, a "silkstone" maker, an obsidian generator that worked on redstone dust, and more. One of her newest, an "enderman spawner" in the nether. She had corralled them so in one region they spawned only in one place, and players could easily hack away at them from spots they couldn't reach, getting lots of experience orbs. Trouble was, there were more orbs than could be easily absorbed at times. So a player could easily be swinging blind at the enders in front, and not notice another player stepping in front of him/her. The result could easily be one player back to her bedroom, without her gear.


Jasmine and I had been alone with occasional visits from others, other friends of Nydia preferring her "Feed the Beast" and the Kitsunuki servers. But we soon had company. Kryxia and Valkyre signed up on Minecraft and joined. Kryxia made a nice longhouse near Havenshire with Jasmine's and my help. Valkyre once she had a little time to figure things out went on a 24 hour building spree, creating a *massive* tower. Taking a look at it, Jasmine had thought Nydia had made Valkyre a server op without telling her. That wasn't the case. Valkyre had done the big build simply through hard work.

Then Jasmine went to work on her biggest project: literally. Nydia's Village was surrounded with a  detailed wall. Jasmine planned to do even better by surrounding the place with castle walls and towers. So starting in one corner, the first structure went up, and bit by bit the walls extended away from it, with castle gates and battlements going up along the way. Jasmine did the planning and the bulk of the work with some help from Kryxia and I. We soon came across one problem: Jasmine's house was built into a hill that would be level or taller than the castle walls. So an excavation was called for, one done partly through server op powers of easy digging, and partially through blasting through TNT, "Jazzy wants big boom." Eventually most of the hill was replaced with flat land on level with most of Havenshire, and the walls continued to go up.

Soon, the walls were more or less done. Havenshire was surrounded by castle structures that could be walked through via gates or climbed from the inside via doors in the battlements and ladders upward. It was so big, only from the air could one see the whole thing. From the castle led roads to Valkyre's tower and Kryxia's longhouse. There was also a road heading north to the desert. To the east deep in a region of tundra was Nydia's ice castle. And further east of that was Skylark's home. The area north of Angel's was getting some truly great builds.

It was about this time that came two major events. One was the Dragon. If Minecraft has a way to win, it's beating the Dragon at "The End," accessible only through the nether. Getting there, there's only two ways out, die or defeat the Dragon. Nydia never had, and when she was on with Jasmine, Kryxia, and Valkyrie also there, they decided to team up to beat him. And they did. Jasmine got a dragons egg out of it, as well as able to say she had "beaten" Minecraft.

Going to the spot where they had gone to "The End," instead I was shown the credits, as well as something else. What is it? Well, I won't spoil the surprise. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

The other event, well, it seems all that has been created in Angles will soon be coming to an end. Nydia says the servers will soon be updated, an update that will essentially wipe the slate clean. Back to an unspoiled wilderness with no buildings, roads, machines, farms, or roads. Just the players, the wilds, and the monsters that come out at night.

Nydia says those whom were still active there will be made server ops, once this change occurs. Which means the option of playing the regular way, or being able to create as we please, flying across the land. And since the server's starting over anyway, Nydia's installing a modification called "Terra Firma Craft." It's a bit different from normal Minecraft in a number of ways. For one, you can't just knock down sections of tree trunk to get wood for a shelter. You need to collect small rocks on the ground, gather branches from trees, notch a rock to make an axe head, make a hatchet, *then* cut down the tree. There's also a thirst bar in addition to the hunger bar. But the hunger bar doesn't go down as fast. And the monsters at night are stronger. More information can be found in the Tera Firma Craft Wiki, in addition to the youtube Brandi Strussel sent me (Click Here).

Our friend Ranchan, or Amaya as she's sometimes called, has a server as well, the Kitsunuki one, of which the Angels world is one of several the players can free hop and take inventory from one to another. Her Angel's Village was duplicated there, as well as the Newser building (before the top floor was finished). The difference there seems to be mainly graphics. Nydia also has a server with a modified version of Minecraft called "Feed the Beast," but as of the writing of this article it is shut down due to bugs. Our friend Kit Repine has a FTB server as well. I've heard that one has a number of machines one can build. It also has a number of new materials, and plants. A short look at Kit's server also revealed new dangers. There's quicksand in places which can trap you if you're not careful. Some of the monsters are more powerful here too. There seems to be a number of different versions of FTB, so what works in one may not work in another.

So it looks like the Minecraft journeys of Jasmine and I will be taking a new turn. Will we build a new Castle Havenshire, or just take things one step at a time. We'll soon see.

Bixyl Shuftan