Hey! I'm happy to announce the release of N° 9 Revision 550.

Wait... what!?
​
Yep, this is happening after literally just shipping revision 530, and it has nothing to do with bugs or fixes. Let me try to explain this.

I made five types of revision 530, one for Ami Trouble, Caelan Hancroft, Grey Mars, VariousArtists and for myself. These 530s are particularly robust types, and custom made for each creator to blend with their various collars perfectly. 530 is like concluding a big chapter, it is a fantastic shipping version. I really enjoyed making it, although I usually don't work like that at all. It took some self-control.

...but boy did it start to itch in my fingers when I was working so conservatively, just going for robustness above everything else. Holy shit.

Don't get me wrong. If you asked me, 530 is the best revision of collar I probably ever created. It's the ultimate people pleaser. It just works. It's kind of like an iPhone or something! Kind of the same like last year, that does exactly what it should and that exceptionally well.

When I worked with larger teams and not only together with my trusty engineer and best Montgomery Scotto, I used to say: "Don't worry mates, we will test it in production!" That gives me the good feels. Those were the days of open source. The good old days. The golden days! When you had no phracks to give and every other patch was a creative experiment. Jugend forscht, meine Freunde!

Alas, these times are over, Wendy has to be a professional Wendy these days, but does she really? Is that what the Second Life community expects of her? To be a professional? A level headed person? Someone who will never write melodramatic, longwinded posts unwrapping the inside of her emotional state to the outside, while upsetting all those creatures that dwell beneath the woodwork?

No, we don't. Someone has to be annoying, overly emotional, and melodramatic. Yes. It is not always the most grateful of roles to play, but it is my holy duty indeed to add the borderline and bi-polar to the Second Life grid. We need more tears, more drama and more insane.

Guys, this is important.

And how more self-defeating could I be than shipping two major release versions of product in a row? Not only is it an absurd amount of work, it also devours the entirety of my time, gives me no breaks, takes my sleep, and makes me feel like swollen-raw doormat. Mmmmn.

Perfect!

Now, let's take a look at revision 550. What could possibly be still important that isn't already in revision 530?

Right, so creating RLV powered outfits is now more simple than it ever was. You make an outfit with your SL viewer, and then drag and drop that outfit folder into #RLV/> Outfits. Unfortunately that leaves us with our BASE AVATAR during outfit change. Not only does that look ugly af, it's also un-smooth and takes longer to add than we knew it from Peanut Collar. So why not do it like we did in Peanut Collar?

We have new variables like BoM layer ranking, and we want to use actual outfits folders. Keep in mind that the outfits in my previous collars was really a feature that existed before SL even had outfits. We basically did then what the SL viewer later included as real outfits.

Remember Sumi Perl? She had the spark of this idea and created the first logic for the outfits feature. Sumi Perl. Kawaii hacker of legend.

​The other thing is Strip. It annoys me thoroughly that Strip shows stuff like my mesh head, body parts and my AO. Why would anyone want to strip that? Wot kind of roleplay is dis!? Well. I could think of something. But let's not go there. Let me present the solution instead!

In 550 we have a new directory #RLV/> Stash where you can put all your stuff inside that is part of your outfits, and that you don't want to have stripped away during either outfit change, or through the Strip menu. Makes sense? If not, let me get into some more details.

When you unpack your mesh head, body, your hair, your Animation Overrider of whatever brand, you end up with folders in your inventory. Then when you create an outfit with your SL viewer, there are links to the items in these folders that update automatically even when you move those unpacked folders somewhere else. And this is what we do here, we move these folders into #RLV/> Stash.

This way we can let the Strip feature ignore the contents of these folders, while at the same time, we can lock the entire directory and all of its sub-directories during outfit change. We end up with a much faster, much smoother experience.

I'm sure some of you will wonder now if it really could be "so simple", and believe me, it is not that simple. We could end up with a memory situation or race conditions because the pacing is way different now, this logic has a different heartbeat so to say, and while I'm most confident that it is stable and well, that's not something I can perfect when testing on my own or with a small group of testers.

Features like that have to live and flourish with users, and can then eventually be tweaked and adjusted until they are perfect.

Adding poses to your collar is such a personal thing, I figured I would make this a bit more convenient for customers of the premium version. That doesn't mean full version users have a hard time at all. They have to take their collar off, drop poses inside, and it's done. However, it comes with the inconvenience of having to take the collar off, which isn't a problem in full versions, but can be a problem in premium version N° 9's that have been welded, and for those customers I have a brand new, beautiful thing that you are going to love.

No, not the Discord Server. The Fire Flower Deluxe I'm talking about here is a new HUD that ships with Premium versions.

It can do a whole bunch of things. Firstly it can open your collar's main menu just like the normal Fire Flower HUD can do it. It can also filter and translate other protocols, such as the Virtual Disgrace protocol for the blindfold or gags. And now it can also hijack your Pose menu. From now on you don't have to add poses any longer to your collar. You just drop them into your Fire Flower Deluxe HUD.

The Fire Flower Deluxe will transform into a box when you put it on the floor. Just click it, drop your poses inside, or take any of them out, and pick it back up. That's all you need to do to add poses. Utility poses such as locking your high heels, or doing puppy crawl, are also included with Fire Flower Deluxe. This is a big quality of life improvement for everyone who chose the premium version, but there is more.

Ever noticed that N° 9 looks like perfume? That's because it's precious. ♥
​
Besides the new Fire Flower Deluxe, Premium version customers get something truly special with 550, a script called Personal Fragrance.

Personal Fragrance can be added to any unscripted necklace, choker, collar, piercing, whatever you can come up with, to transform this item into a fully scripted premium version of N° 9. That's right. You can now turn anything into a new N° 9. You are no longer limited to collars that had some sort of scripting already installed. The only requirement for this to work is that the item is modifiable. Nice, right?

This isn't just big value added to the premium version, it also relieves mesh artists from the ungrateful job of having to script their meshes. I'm not talking about creators who specialized on fetish items, or those who vend collars as a substantial part of their business, but those artists who are getting requests from their customers to add collar scripts to this and that. Adding scripts is not as simple as it sounds, things might go wrong, people will want after sales support, and since the schism now also want different types of collar scripts.

Buying the boxed version of premium N° 9 lets customers do with it pretty much what they want, including installing it where they want, with the only requirements being that the un-scripted mesh is modifiable, and that you can only wear one item with N° 9 scripts at a time.

Some might ask themselves: "Well, if that works, then why can't the same be done with creator kits? Shouldn't that be the same thing?"

The answer to that is, NO, this is not the same thing at all.

The N° 9 feature is set is something that Garvin Twine and I create, and that is unique to our products. I'm not talking about the open source elements that I still maintain despite myself. I'm talking about the features that make our product different to other products.

Unless you are living under a rock you should have noticed that there more types of collars now, which is a good thing, that is how it should have been all along, because it gives customers a greater choice and stimulates healthy competition. I want to compete with you.

​Now without trying to sound arrogant. I'm still the leader of the pack, and what I invent is often taken and adapted by others. No matter if that's a blindfold with visual effects, or a strip feature, or even the way I name the auth roles in my collars, these standards are set by us.

​But you need to understand that I don't strive to be the "leader of the pack". This might as well be you, dear engineer who is reading this right now. Maybe you took some idea that originated from me and refined it to something better, and this is a good thing. That's how we become better as a whole. Not by shoving collar business in a box down everyone's throat OC style, and then pretending this is "freedom".

​This is not freedom. This is bullshit.

Make no mistake, things that have "freedom" in their name usually have some authoritarian and conservative flavor to them. If that's how you roll, less power to ya, the olden times are over. We want electric cars, get on a rocket to Mars, and collars that are unique and sexy-pants, not some run of the mill user-unfriendly motherload of a GNU that ruins the market and empowers business makers who give a flying about the kink and fetish subculture.

These are the times of nerdettes and nerds, my friends, and we want our TouchBound stuff, our Nanite Systems, we want Real Restraint (Marine Kelley still does make the best bondage sets), we want Meike Heston's Hug & Kiss HUDs, and Catznip and Alchemy SL Viewers.

And related to that we wish to choose our own gender, say what we want where we want (including this blog and my Discord), get a little (or totally) gay every once in a while, have multiple boyfriends (and girlfriends), and live the songs we love and the dreams we have.

​If what we wanted was to make our Second Life eternal, we have to celebrate its strengths, and not lament its short-comings. That means to allow the platform, its users and its content to become more diverse and unique, so these snowflakes can turn avalanche!

Right. I got carried away for a moment.

Revision 550 is available on G9, N9, R9, T9, H9 and S9 channels via your collar's Update function.

You can check your channel in your collar's About menu, where it says stuff like Revision N9-530-NOIR, R9-530-LUNA, N9-530-HOPE, etc..

​Teleport to the little or big temple, touch your Fire Flower, go to About, select Update and accept the inventory offer.

You can also get the new revision out of the box when purchasing either of the N° 9 core packages or a new N° 9 collar from me, but keep in mind that Fire Flower Deluxe and Personal Fragrance are only included with the non-transferable premium version.

When your collar is on the F9 (free) channel, you can swap it with a new freebie collar, or purchase a N° 9 full or premium version and upgrade it to revision 550 on channel N9 or R9. This time please understand that I don't want to argue with people who claim they bought something from me but indeed transacted with some other account or brand. I respond to dozens such queries after big releases when I really would deserve a break, and things usually don't go well. You are only my customer if you transacted with Wendy Starfall.

​Finally those of you who are on the G9 or S9 channels please read carefully:

Customers of Gift type collars have a special transferable version that is created after every release. When installing the update these collars will no longer be transferable, so please be sure to have gifted them before any updates are installed. This is another thing that results in much support effort (manual swaps) after every update release, and I'm deciding with Luna how we handle that in the future.

The S9 channel are the collars by Ahegao, Archaic and Cae. Updates for the Cae collars are acquired at the Temple of the Collar through the collar's About menu, and the updates for the Ahegao and Archaic collars are also acquired via the collar's Update function but at the Ahegao and Archaic main stores.

I will conclude this release post with an apology.

I haven't been quite fair in something I said in public recently. I said that I was feeling very alone in everything I do here, and while that might have been true at this moment because I was feeling sad and impulsive, it is also true that I have amazing friends at my side.

​Otto, Ami, Grey, Brutus, Ash and Sabina regularly check on me and ask me how I'm doing. You guys really care, and I wouldn't be doing this anymore if it wasn't for that love and care. How important Luna is to me I can't even describe in words. I'm sorry for what I have said.

​I love you all, and it is my greatest privilege to be your friend.

Finally this also counts for members of Fire Flower who may not always approach me directly, but who obviously are with me in all this. It's my privilege that you choose to be a member of this community. I will never take you guys for granted. I truly make this collar for you.

When you pick up your update, you will also receive a new Fire Flower sticker (that's now at v3.6), that enables you to see your Hourglass timer above the sticker on your HUD. That's so you can hide the timer hovertext above the collar (in the Title menu), but still see the time.

Honestly, I'm using Hourglass timer now more often than Siri. (Sorry Siri, it's complicated, I love you no less, pls don't skynet...)

Like in all of the patches I release, there are dozens of small changes and edits that go unnoticed, and maybe that's a good thing. Many things even just work, and it makes me happy when things go smooth. For example in 521 you can drag and drop poses into the collar, and they install on their own. Notice in the GIF below how the poses I drag into the collar don't even show up? They really install that fast, but don't worry, the collar also makes friendly noises and hovertext to let you know.

If you have been paying very close attention, you may have overheard me talking about "Project Icebreaker". That's our R&D name for exploring new ways for Second Life players in the kink & fetish niche to get in touch with each other more easily. It is still in its early stages, but the foundation for it in our collar (it's not only collar related) has been laid with BUILD 521.

This was probably the last time that I released a patch for the collar that is using my beloved open source core (what I sometimes call the "heart"), and if you love that aspect of the collar too, then you should grab revision 521 by all means, and hold it dear.

If you followed me these last months you might be surprised because this would be a big change of heart (no pun intended) because it means that I'd be staying much longer than I said I would, and despite myself would change something that I spent a lot of time on, and fought to keep. But by all the high sentimental and emotional value this "core" has to me, the next improvement to the collar would have to be swapping it out, because I can no longer improve it. At this point the open source core scripts are truly as good as they will ever get.

The decision would have other reasons than tech stuff as well, and if you have been around on Fire Flower Deluxe, it would all make a lot of sense to you. I don't want to get into all the details as to why or what, but I do want to mention that if I decided to take this step, I would want Otto to be my best Montgomery Scott, my chief engineer, and make it clear that this wouldn't be a Wendy Starfall solo mission.

I would want that the new core is coded by another engineer, so I can focus on architecture, design and specs without becoming weighed down by other tasks. I don't know if a lot of people who are reading this can relate to my problem because it is very specific, but there are many tasks that I have to do that interrupt other tasks that I'm doing, and that is happening a lot. I can multitask very well, but I have the experience and wisdom now to know that we can only improve if I share a part of this work with someone else who is just as competent.

​The N° 9 with the new engine would be released around the 10 year anniversary of when I first started to work on collar code.

To conclude this post, I want to say that I can't even begin to express how happy I am about our community on Discord.

​People are so kind and nice all the time, and so clever, it's my privilege to be a part of Fire Flower Deluxe.

​Just observing how everyone uses the N° 9, and how people find their own creative ways to make the collar work just the way they want it to is amazing. I'm learning new things all the time, and after such a long time I finally feel being a part of something again. Thank you!

I hope you have a fun with the new collar and N° 9 version. I made it for you. I wish you a happy May Day 2021. 😊💕​

POST MORTEM: I have just finished writing this blog post, and it is maybe not what most of you want or expect. It's weird and personal, so if that's not really your thing, please go ahead and read the Introduction page for the N° 9 instead where things are more Pro-Style™.

​Against all odds I repaired the broken open source heart of all our collars, including the one you might be wearing around your neck right now. This was always the more difficult approach. Fixing a broken thing is always much harder than building a new one, and then it might never be as good as new, but in this case, it is not only about a technical fix, it is about healing broken hearts.

​I couldn't have done this difficult and emotionally laden task on my own, and needed someone in particular for this grueling quest.

​This makes roleplay more exciting, and if that isn't enough for you, you can use the N° 9 in Heartcore mode, which enables a power exchange dynamic that is as close to the real life thing as it possibly can be inside of SL, with focus on emotions, rather than on mouse-click restrictions, or things printing the same green text over and over to the chat. The new N° 9 collar encourages you to really interact.

You can have fun with cute features, such as a renamer, or chat rules for addressing your dominant, there are quality of life improvements, such as a tracker that will send an email to your dominant when you come online. Something so simple to think of it, but so useful if you know what it is like when waiting for your online crush while logged in for hours just to see when they are finally here...

​Setting force teleport rights is now as simple as checking a box. Features and access rights are properly displayed and explained in menus. You no longer have to rely on chat commands to find your way around, and you get a cute Fire Flower sticker for quick access.

​It gets kinda fluffy when I try to talk about the many things the N° 9 is, and especially what it can do, but I'm not trying to sell it to you.

​I just want that you like it.

The update is free until May Day this year, and when you are reading this early, you might even get to watch me standing at the Temple of the Collar, while I'm still installing it on some of the free collar classics, which I planned to do right after writing this post.

It's almost comical to watch this unfold, with everyone singing into my ears to stop giving everything away, stop harming myself by doing this, but honestly? I'm not doing this to harm myself, I share free things because I want to bring you some joy, hopefully to make you less angry, make you feel accepted in our community, and maybe even happy, although I know all to well myself how hard "happy" can be.

Nevertheless, I have to at least try to create some money to continue supporting the land, to be able rewarding my colleagues, and after working on this thing full-time all over again since well over a year, receiving some compensation for my effort and time would be nice.
​

Just know that this wasn't what motivated me. Having this gig for earning was never going to work out, and I always knew that.

That said there are ways to support me if you want to. I've been trying my best to come up with meaningful ways to acquire the N° 9.

The first and most obvious way would be to pick up one of the free collars, or one of the collars from my personal store. When I'm done writing, I will upgrade them all one by one. As I said if you are reading this early you can still watch me doing that. All of my collars for sale will ship with premium features pre-installed and unlocked.

The second way would be to pick up either the free updater, which will let you upgrade many of the collars you already have, or the full version bundle, which also includes a nice unisex collar with little hearts, magic leash, and tracker already unlocked. These packages also include a new, little sticker "HUD", that acts as a quick access button for your collar menu, and as a bridge for backward compatibility.
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If you want all of the features you can get, you can pick up the premium package, which includes a more powerful installer that will install and unlock the complete feature set on your collar, instead of just updating only what was already in there. These features are Heartcore, Little Hearts, Magic Leash, Tracker, Sobriquet (renamer), and Chatiquette (chat censoring). There is a also a beautiful Turian 24/7 lifestyle collar included with the premium installer, which has all of these feature already pre-installed.

Depending on what you need/want, there should be something nice for you, even if you are just horny and broke. ♥

The only exception to the "updates everything"-rule are collars from commercial brands with poor business ethics. I don't want to service the products of such brands, or add more value to content they were already exploiting. If my update installs on your collar, you can be absolutely sure that it all is well, both technically and ethically. This was never about money. Not for me. It has always been about love.

Before I finish this post, I want to say one more thing. That I had help from others. This is the most important part of the post for me.

After everything that happened, the open source cataclysm, the drama, the personal stuff I went through, this long term and emotionally laden project would have been impossible to finish without you: I would never have been able to finish this if I haven't had my friends.

​Cae has been such an important friend. Meeting her bounced me back to earthen ground, and talking to her was like medicine. The time we spent at the end of 2019 and early 2020, made me decide to quit drinking. I've been sober for 1 year and 14 days today. Thank you.

My friend Grey Mars is a gifted artist, and he meshed all these beautiful collars for me. Every time when I needed something he would drop whatever he did, and helped me, and I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for that. It's not that you made something for me that I can use in my project, it's that you were always there for me my friend. Thank you.

George the cat is my one friend who reminds me to be mindful and calm, and take care of myself, in a way that I actually take it seriously. Talking to you always helps me to have a less dramatic and calmer perspective on literally everything. Thank you.

Brutus. Oh, how I love you. Our love is so great, I may only be able to express it to you with this video because words cannot. Thank you.

​Thanks to Hyperdyne Systems I also had Ash. Ash for the beautiful motions, and for the music we don't dance to. Thank you.

The most unexpected help came from Rory and Luna, who always seemed to magically appear before I completely gave up hope to ever finish (or when Otto and I had wizard vs. sorceress battles of epic proportions, and were in process of destroying each other). You wouldn't believe how emotionally taxing software development can be. Having an empath like Rory lend one of his bunny ears, and a loyal puppy like Luna licking my fingertips when they were sore from all the rage typing, made me feel privileged, and cared for. Thank you.

​There are others I want to thank, most importantly Eva and Ami, even if we didn't talk a lot when I was always busy, you had my back when I needed you. Finally there are all those of you who supported me with donations so we could safe our sim last year. Thank you.

​Today is November 25th, the international day for the elimination of violence against women, and I made a little something in hope to raise awareness about gender-based violence, but first I want to talk a bit about collars and consent.

​​We put collars on because they resemble our choice to be with our dominant. We submit by choice, not by force. Even when we engage in themes, such as total power exchange and consensual non-consent, where consent is given beforehand, we do that willingly.

​Just think about that for a moment.

How well we are able to manage consent in our extreme subculture. With all the whips, the chains, the spanking, the torture, the holy shit forced fantasy roleplays, and erotic humiliation - we are still able to maintain a healthy, safe and consent based environment.

Why can’t things be this way in the “normal” everyday world...

​Today I woke up to good news, the election has finally been called.

As most of you are well aware these last four years have been particularly hard for us, and with these election results we have a glimmer of hope for things to finally start improving.

I guess it will be another four to five weeks for things to settle down until we can say that this election is truly over, but let's celebrate peacefully while we wait for the system to let it all play out. We deserve to be happy right now so very much.

No matter where you are coming from, I think what we all really could use right now is a time of calm, and a time of peace and healing.

Part of the cure means that we have to keep sticking together.

I know, I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but if I have learned anything in these last four years, then it is that we must continue to find things that we have in common, and stop defining ourselves by whatever we disagree on, and what brings us apart.

Achieving unity is one of humanities greatest tasks, not only the task of the U.S. government or the Americans. We have to work together.

Polarization isn't something new, it's a dynamic that has been growing over the last ten to fifteen years all over the world, not only in the USA.

I hope that this polarization, the lack of empathy, and this awful disregard for truth has reached its climax during the Trump era, and that we are now moving past it.

You would think that a populist, nationalist dynamic would bring people together at least in their own country, but believe me when I'm telling you that this is not so, and never has been so in the history of man. It only brings us apart because the core ingredient of such a way of thinking is the lack of care for others than yourself.

I believe what happened with the OpenCollar group was a mirror to these dynamics. It was the same, and it was truly unbearable to watch my community becoming divided when we really all have so much in common.

People stopped seeing that we all shared the same interests at heart, many nice members of our community have been mislead through the polemic and disinformation coming from people involved with the OpenCollar group. People I have never spoken to attacked me every week, slander and hate against me and my team became the normality, and for a long time I didn't understand where all this was coming from or why it happened.

It really took me a while to realize that it was that same polarization, that same disregard for truth, the same "evil" that was bringing people apart everywhere.

I'm sure that our community was not the only one getting hurt by it.

Over 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

I'm sure that many of you are members in Fire Flower, or that you simply use my collars because you like them.

I am telling you, that I won't judge you by who you voted for.

Maybe we have a different political opinion, but we have other things in common, big things, and from there we shall build up.

Here is to unity, to healing and to new beginnings.

​Today I have unpublished all of my remaining open source code repositories.

This is happening because some individuals forked the code, and implemented "hardcore" style settings in a way that it would apply (and re-apply) them to the user's device without that user's express consent.

I have had problems of that kind in the past.

Several of the default or "stock" OpenCollars I created were modified by some people in a way that users perceived as having highly undesirable and malicious effects on their experience.

Often these collars would be renamed to something like "Red Roses" or "Flowers" to hide what it was. Users would attach the item unknowingly and were locked down, stripped in destructive ways, had their vision destroyed, and in the recent case have such "settings" re-applied from a web server even after resetting the scripts.

Reporting these problems in the past didn't seem to have any effect, and considering what happened with the OpenCollar group I am not really surprised.

All that can be done at this point is to get as much distance to this as one possibly can and hope to be outside of the blast radius.

That said, please stop associating me with OpenCollar.

It has been three years that we go separate ways, and I have done everything in my control to disambiguate my current product from my old product which they distribute as one "official OpenCollar 7".

Peanut collar had substantially improved security in this regard, and the new type I was working on even more so, but the open source code I had on GitHub was deliberately kept "white label", more approachable and more "hackable", so others could make proper use of it, instead of creating Peanut or OpenCollar clones.

I'm sad to inform you that with this, and despite of what I had said in recent comments, I have given up on creating open source LSL code for the Second Life® platform.

My personal experience has been that it largely caused negative effects like the ones described above.

The modifiability of the open source is never made use of to create something positive, and there is a misconception of open source being nothing else than cost-free content, a business in a box, that can be resold.

Open source means more than just the right to resell it for business. It is the sharing of knowledge that gives it so much value.

Despite the great reach I once had, I have failed to convey this, instead I have empowered phony "designer" brands to take over most of the related business segment, and malicious trolls who only make use of Second Life® to jerk off and make others miserable.

Reporting those also had no effect that I am aware of.

Certain groups that center around themes such as extreme misogyny and fetishized hate now have thousands of followers.

When I had reported some of those initially several years ago, and over the years, they were below 20 members on average. Something I would usually do when I saw another hateful group tag pop up over someone's head at the Temple of the Collar.

This is more than just an oversight on Linden Lab's side because they are being overstrained with the amount of Abuse Reports.

It is a complete and utter ineptitude of being able to distinguish in between what is abuse, and what is adult roleplay.

Linden Lab had a very long time to realize that a large part of their user base was on Second Life® for adult entertainment, and there was a chance to develop an understanding of what is play and what is abuse.

The only way to mend this situation now, is for us to create our own protected "bubbles", such as even Fire Flower, where we are willing to take heavy hits from people who disagree with our "political" attitude, calling us "libtards", "radical Marxists", and "Antifa terrorists" only because we position ourselves in a way that reflects an open mind, tolerance, acceptance and equality in race, gender and sexual orientation.

I will continue to contribute to open source programs that I use for image manipulation, code editing and other purposes, but obviously not under my Wendy Starfall handle.

Wendy Starfall has an expiration date. I'm trying my very best, pushing 24+ hour days, every day, so I get a classic, final and safe collar done. Not because I am so obsessed with this, but because I fear that my days on this platform are numbered, and creating collars even was a defining part of my life - I have done this for almost 10 years now, and I want to leave a positive legacy behind that brings joy to people, and not grief.

All open source code I have ever released on Second Life® has been released with full permissions (readable, modifiable, transferable) and I have no obligation to keep any of this code available for download in other places. Meaning who owns it, owns it already and maintaining backup copies is within those persons own responsibility. I have no obligation to function as some kind of download node for something users already owned and chose to delete.

Here is to another weekend with bad news.

I'm surprised there are still people following me at all at this point.

​Please understand that I'm running a very small non-profit project.

I value stability over growth and there are only so many users our band of misfits can serve. I rather have an existing happy user base instead of being wide open to some weird sabotage like it happened with our installers.

Right now it is best when we can work on new things and get everything ready, without distributing anymore installers and creator kits with the current version for the time being.

I realize this must feel totally alien to everyone who is used to regular business practices, because why take things down when they could be sold just fine as we work on new stuff, so again: I’m not trying to make a profit, and it makes no sense to distribute a software product when there is a new thing at the same spot in its shelf any day now.

That’s like when you buy a new MacBook and then look at the Apple store the next day and there is an upgraded version of it all of a sudden. Fuck.

Now I know that Apple usually swaps it for you when you ask, but as I said, we are a very small crew, and we simply don’t have the infrastructure and tools for something like that.

I don’t want to earn money to buy a yacht, I want to earn money to pay my rent, and I want to do that by being decent and within a groove that is healthy and fun for my crew.

There also needs to be something said about the retaliation to our messages regarding racism.

When I repeat hash-tags like #NormalizeEquality, remind people to register for voting (which is among the most critical tools to bring people one step closer to racial equality in America), or when I quote statements such as:

​And some people take this as, let me quote, "radical Marxist propaganda" - it's not me doing something wrong, it's those people living in an alternate reality where racial equality isn't a basic human right but "political propaganda".

If a person believes that another human being doesn't deserve the same rights as they do because of the color of their skin, then I am proud to be that person's enemy.

I could care less whether our apps and toys have fewer review stars, silence is not an option, but I think it is not right that people are given the tools to effectively retaliate in such a manner when they disagree with someone’s opinion.

The point that I was "weaponizing" my messaging system in some way is moot, because I had no malicious intent, and none of my messages were in some way aggressive or hurting anyone. Let me re-post what this message system is about:

I have been using my messaging system in one way or another since 2011. When all this started I urged people not to throw bricks and to wear protective masks at protests.

Meanwhile I don't believe that this was about people receiving a message once every other week, it was about the context of these messages, and those feeling offended were either disturbed in their fantasy roleplay in-game, in which case it is best to disable the messages, or they felt attacked by the context itself, which speaks for itself.

Apparently it was just fine for others to hijack my groups for political debates in the past, or park themselves with "MAGA" signs at my in-world sim. It also seems to be fine when "Reinhard Heydrich" visits Arcadia in a SS uniform, or men with tags above their character stating “Misogynist Gentleman”.

They can be asked to leave or kicked out or banned. But our content on the market gets hit in a way that is visible to the outside world in web searches.

We can moderate these trolls only in ways that have no real consequence for them, but they can retaliate in a manner that affects our businesses and reputation.

We keep doing genuine good, but end up having our reputation warped to look like radicals and spammers.

Go ahead and google my name. Look at what you find, and then ask yourself how messed up it is when stuff like that happens to a nobody like me, and how effective it is to clip a person's wings just because they were standing up for what they believed in.

Now, I don't need wings for standing up, but if things progress the way they do I may need my fists to defend myself. I'm harmless because I choose to be, just like every other peaceful protester and activist, but there are causes when we need to be loud, and when we can’t be heard we need to go out on the street to make ourselves be heard properly.

We are not powerless or weak only because we choose to broadcast our message in a non-harmful and peaceful manner - which is exactly what I did with my messages.

The last time I looked my name was still Wendy Starfall and not Ulrike Meinhof.

​I'm recently getting those opinions again from some people, telling me that they are too old now so they should have to worry about climate change. Wait... what?

I don't think "too old" should be a thing when someone can still go to vote?

As the younger generation we expect of the older generation to give us advice based on their greater life experience. That's how things worked in tribal societies for thousands of years. The elders were chill, kind and supportive.

Now take a look at social media, or talk to a random group of that older gen.

Many of them will be telling you stuff along these lines:

​Even when I know that none of the above is true, it is chipping away at my strength.

That's a normal reaction because those things are condescending, discouraging and destructive. But while I might be able to manage (the occasional melt-downs aside) most of the time others might be more vulnerable. It's our job to look out for each other. So!
​

• STOP discouraging us.

• STOP trying to make us feel powerless.

• STOP trying to put doubts into our heads that we aren't genuine in our activism.​ ​
• STOP telling us that we are spoiled and should give away our means to communicate (smartphones) if we truly cared about the environment.

All those of the older generations who feel differently:

We are not spoiled, little princesses. My generation and those coming after me will pay for the health-care and pensions of all those coming before me.

We don't mind doing that, we love you, we love our planet and we want to be able to lead happy and fulfilled lives - despite the heavy load that we have to carry when we fix things.

But support us in our effort, there is no reason to sabotage us when all we want is to protect life itself.

I wish you a nice weekend.

On July 25 the Japanese bulk carrier MV Wakashio struck a coral reef off the Indian Ocean island nation Mauritius.

An estimated 1,000 metric tonnes of oil were leaked and the small island nation is preparing for a worst case scenario.

Fridays For Future Mauritius are asking for help and link to a crowd funding page where people can donate money. The money will potentially be used for post-crisis expenses:
​

• Monitoring the impact of the oil spill on the marine life.
• Potential research and studies of the marine life affected by the oil spill.
• Fund conservation projects.
• Any legal actions that might be considered as well.

Greta Thunberg pointed out that the oil and shipping companies don’t care, so please consider donating some money. They are a small tropical island with very limited resources and could really use our help.
 
I’m listing some products and the corresponding value in MUR (Mauritian Rupees) so you can see how much you would be donating versus spending it on that other stuff.​

• McDonalds® Happy Meal = 2.79 USD / 110.83 MUR
• Latte Grande at Starbucks =  3.86 USD / 153.34 MUR
• “Gift of ...” Series Collar =  5.00 USD / 198.62 MUR
• Netflix for (1 month) = 12.99 USD / 516.03 MUR
• Playstation Plus (3 months) = 24.99 USD / 992.72 MUR
• Pornhub Premium (1 year) =  95.88 USD / 3808.82 MUR

​For me as an indy coder/artist 200 to 400 MUR sound reasonable.

Finally, here is the link to the crowd fund page, please make sure to skim their text:
https://www.crowdfund.mu/mauritius-oil-spill-cleaning-2020-mv-wakashio-306.html

No matter where you come from, how old you are, what you are voting, no matter if you are sick or healthy, poor or rich, this is a problem that we all have to face right now, and not “when covid is over”, or “next year”, or “in due time”.

When you do online searches you will find plenty of ways to help solving the climate problem. Some suggestions will be annoying, aggravating, others will make sense, most of it is going to require personal sacrifice and effort.

I have no intention to patronize anyone and claim that considering what’s at stake, and how comfortable we are in comparison to previous generations, or compared to people living in developing countries, that these sacrifices may not be such a great deal.

To us, to the people of the West, adjusting to climate change will feel like the end of the world before the world could even end, because it means having to change the way we are used to doing what even do.

We love to consume, we love to eat (too much), we love to be lazy and comfortable, and we love to be perma-entertained, and we absolutely hate change.

Countering climate change will take away much of our modern comforts, it will inevitably change our diet, and we will have to use our legs for walking much more.

However, I’m not going to write down a list of the things that we should or could do to fix our climate problem. I’m sure everyone who is still reading is already doing something, if not as much as they possibly can anyway. Everyone is sick of “5 things that you can do right now to lower your personal CO2 footprint”.

I want to tell you that we can fix this by allowing ourselves to be true to the noble and kind nature we have as human beings, and despite of the negative and acid things we do and did inside of our weird social constructs, we are all capable of compassion.

​Swearing at a person and threatening them "don't/do that or else" will never work on people like me. We are fighters, our reaction will always be FIGHT BACK and never "oh, we better stop doing everything we believe in".

Climate is not political, just as the wearing of masks or global pandemics are not political. Many, many people can no longer differentiate in between fact and opinion, and everything is getting politized. That must change soon for our all sakes.

This is no joke. If you can't be bothered with climate, then at least be bothered with decency, truth and civility. Those people who get so aggressive should try standing in front of a mirror and yell at themselves to see how ugly it makes them.

Facts can either be TRUE or FALSE, but proving that is not done by stating opinions, it's done by measuring, testing, comparing and compiling data. Scientists do that.

I saw people linking YouTube clips that were 100% fact free but claim to "tell the truth about XYZ". Stuff like that isn't just some fun, or could ever be made more legit by claiming it was "just for the purpose of entertainment" - it is dangerous because it makes people dumb who then repeat the dumbness and create other dumbs.

Nobody wants to be dumb, and nobody deserves to be dumb.

People with a lower education level often pick this infotainment stuff up as witty or clever intel. Obviously it makes you look more "insider" when you can bring up controversial "facts" at lunch break or at the pub, and it can be a pleasant experience when others become curious and amazed, but this is NO JOKE, we have a real climate emergency.

That said, I want to move on and get some stuff done. It's Sunday, alright, but I was sick for so many weeks, I'm excited to start working again on my collar toy.

Today I’m concluding the Artists Relief Event.

I’m happy to let you all know that it was a success!

I’ve been able to add another 6 days of running time, originally I thought I’d have to close at the 13th, but we stayed open until 1:30 AM my time, on the 19th.

I wish to thank everyone who visited and bought something, and all those who donated some money to keep us running. The selection we had was really nice.

Also special thanks to Cerberus Crossing for helping me to bring artists together.

The future is uncertain for me, as the real life gig I hoped for is not going to happen due to the circumstances with corona, but I’m trying to stay positive.

We are going to bring back the Virtual Disgrace(tm) items for now, while I prepare a large rebranding of some of my stuff, and a final update for the collars.

The collars sort of “settled”, after doing this for 10 years, I know what people like, what they don’t like, and which knobs they need to get it working to their needs.

If I can, I will still work on the new collar system. The truth is I’d love to do that already, but I know all to well that the Second Life® community in particular is highly sensitive to change, so if my goal was to make people happy, I will have to first give you all something that will never change from that moment on, something that you can rely on to stay as it is. ♥

​Even though there is less traffic from planes and cars, and less industrial production during the corona crisis, our CO2 emissions are the highest in human history.

At the same time the deforestation in the tropical forests is also on a record high, while illegal loggers and gold miners can get extra-busy due to facing less obstacles from forest protectors during the corona crisis.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, in simplified terms this is what keeps the heat of the sun from evaporating through our planet's atmosphere, and thing gets hot. Plants eat the CO2, and the biggest eater of CO2 we have is the Amazon rainforest.

That the CO2 levels aren't sinking even with less emissions globally doesn't come as a big surprise. That these gases stick around for hundreds of years is something we already know.

Seeing it like that, might put things better into perspective for people who were still skeptical about this, and it will take every, single one of us to come together if we want to have something like a future.

I would love to believe too that mother nature was able to catch a well deserved, long and healthy breath during the corona crisis, but that's a fantasy, so please check news sources, and take this to the heart:
​

• Please don't lose focus on the real problem.
• Our main problem is and remains global warming.
• There is no Planet B.

​A couple days ago I started a petition that suggests to relief Second Life® based artists of some fees. There are a lot of people who's real life business isn't earning a penny during global corona shutdowns, so those who have small shops and brands on Second Life®, have to rely on that as their sole income.

That's pretty tough, it's life wrecking for some people, and in this case they are people who create all the beautiful and fun content we have on Second Life®.

Having used Second Life® for over 10 years professionally, I know what it is like, and I'm very much inclined to lend these creators a hand and an arm.

The petition has been slammed on the official Second Life® forums. People reacted very hostile toward this idea, some went as far as to abuse report me, in an attempt to muzzle me and shut down my method of reaching the community.

I believe that the message of my petition has been received, but it takes more than that. There also has to be way for those creators to make money.

That said, I will be moving our own wares out of the way in Arcadia, and offer the empty space of this extremely popular and high traffic area, to artists in need, who need every help they can get, where each artist may put one product for sale and there will be no rent or commission to pay.

I will follow up this blog post with another one that will detail how to reach out to me, and about the rules I come up with for being eligible to showcase and vend wares in the autonomous social centre of Arcadia.

Together, we will get through this.