Some very special treats have floated by as I idle away my unemployed days.
Farewell, Pathfinder Linden! I enjoyed happy hours rummaging through your bookshelves, playing your harpsichord, dredging through the copy-mod-transferable sheet music, personal RL photos and CD cases you thoughtfully left strewn on the floor of your in-world office. Although rumored to be aloof, Pathfinder did appear to be a critical thinker, successful advocate of educational applications for Second Life, and contributor in the RL healthcare field. It would’ve been prudent for Linden Lab to keep him on staff, rather than eliminating his job.
Perhaps Not-so-full-of-Crap Mariner’s Vinnie Linden could be a SL eulogy for Pathfinder? Fly-in-the-ointment with that theory is the timing discrepancy. “Ode to Vinnie” was released in 2008.
On the Viewer War frontlines, many have noted the passing of young Master 5050, noted by NexisONLINE Status blog and at SLUniverse General Discussion. Advisory to all native and non-native speakers of the English language: the Notorious 5050 has risen and blogs again. I personally hearken more to Mr. Poenta’s campaign to “avenge the banning of the innocents”.
To end on an equally somber note, I was saddened to read of the demise of Luna viewer, discontinued on Agni and no longer running anywhere else as of March 22. Nexis ONLINE experienced no end of complications, ranging from Linden Lab’s viewer policies to the negative impact of copybot activity on Nexis’s SLX-type product FlexMarket.
Massacre at Braunworth: Slaughter of the Newbies
Memento mori. I dedicate this post to the deities of the internet and transformation. Horus and Hermes, Legba and Shiva, you are having quite a field day in our little corner of virtual reality. T.S. Eliot always says it best, excerpted from The Four Quartets:
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass…
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
