We've been working towards new Christmas trees for ages, and now have a tree with candles controlled centrally and glass baubles that break. I think they're a lot of fun, and spent quite a lot of time today crashing into them and giggling.

My friend Nomasha gave me a copy of his new build which is a Gibson guitar that really rocks, and I went to show it to Craig Altman, along with a sample Nemesis tree. In the course of our discussion, he told me that the height detector I had relied on to tell me what my SL height was, underestimates heights by about 8-10 inches.

It accounts for some very strange things I have noticed when my avatar comes close to things which have RL proportions. Even though I have done my best to make my avatar RL height and not enormous SL height, those things still look small next to me. It turns out that is because although I thought I was five feet nine inches, close to my RL height of five foot eight and a half inches, I have been in actual fact six feet five inches all this time.

Craig has made a height detector for his own use, which is accurate. I checked the result from both by making my height in a prim, and discovered he was exactly right. The standard free height detector is inaccurate to a head's height. This may not seem like a big deal, but I am working on a project at the moment, that relies on translating real life to SL, and that needs accurate estimates of avatar heights. If the results I am getting from the height detector aren't to be relied upon, that's an important thing to know.

I talked with Falk Bergman, who is trying out the new beta SL viewer, which apparently allows one to walk and talk, although it seemed to have a tendancy to orbit him unexpectedly towards the moon too. "Another set of creators put out of business," joked Oclee. I suppose he's right that there will be no market for orbiters once the viewer caters for that need. Maybe the orbiter people need to start making moon boots and gravitation devices that keep you locked to the ground.

I spent quite an inordinate amount of time playing with my Moopf skates, and I'm putting a picture of them with shiny enabled, because I felt I had misled those of you who have shiny turned on, about the appearance of the skates, when I included a picture yesterday. Actually I like them without shiny on too. I think there would be a market for boots that look like the basic shoe form ... I really like the shape and design of them, and so does everyone I have met in them.

Earlier today, Moopf gave me a sneak preview of his new Steamer skates limited edition. As a long time fan of both his ice skates and steampunk design, I was delighted with them ... then he told me I couldn't show anyone until 11am SLT. These will be going into his vendors from 12 SLT. Last week I made the journey over to his shop in Nepessing, not realising that all the vendors all over the grid would be updated to dispense the new limited edition skates in addition to the standard versions.

I have been dying to show you all, because I absolutely love these skates. I liked the Blingz that Moopf released last week, but the Steamers are definitely my sort of skate, and will be on sale from today until next Saturday. Now all I have to do is work out what to wear with them ....

Over at SL Universe, Cristiano Midnight posts a shocking insight into libSL, and the motives and rationale behind the recent CopyBot scandal.

I have been neutral -- or maybe ambivalent is a better word -- towards libSL until now. I can see the practical advantages of reverse engineering so that applications can be developed that will take advantage of the way SL works. I have had more than one client ask for the capability to run non-player characters, and it is libSL that is making such things possible.

On the other hand, I can see how much harm can be done by a few geeks doing stuff because they can, without considering the implications and the consequences for other citizens of Second Life. I have heard the arguments that these things are possible and it is better to know and be aware of them than not. But my own feeling is that people who are too lazy to make their own content are hardly likely to be able to make their own CopyBot.

Many of the exploit loopholes have been closed because they were highlighted by libSL -- but many of them woudln't have existed without libSL. Or at least, would have remained buried without libSL.

However, I have always felt that greater control would be an advantage. I don't have a lot of faith that LL are watching what is happening, because they have so often been caught looking the other way when things have been discussed in the forums or in world, and they seem to have a corporate allergy to management of anything.

This wanton disregard for the feelings and livelihoods of the people they have affected, if the transcript is accurate, leads me to feel that if libSL is a good idea in theory, then the practice leaves something to be desired.

Moopf Murray had an uncomfortable day yesterday, when many people who ought to have known better IMd him accusing him of selling the CopyBot, because the people selling it in the store that was picketed yesterday had used one of his vendors.

For those who don't understand that explanation, a vendor will always show the creator of the vendor as the creator, because he made the vendor. So even if you go along and buy a vendor from Creator Man and fill it full of your stuff, it will still show Creator Man as the creator of the object because he made the vendor.

That other citizens should make this mistake and abuse the vendor maker roundly for selling the CopyBot is one thing. But now he has received a warning from LL for selling the CopyBot. It seems that they don't understand the concept that a vendor creator has no control over the contents of their vendors, and is not responsible for what their clients, who buy empty vendors, might put in them.

It is simply unbelievable that a warning has gone out to someone who is a creator too, and completely against the CopyBot and everything it stands for. This person is the most honest and upright person I know, and would no more rip off another creator than rip off his own left leg. Linden Lab should be collectively ashamed of themselves for sloppiness, stupidity and laziness. I hope they right this wrong and apologize --fast.

Edited to add Moopf's name with his permission.

I was confused the other day when I dragged what appeared to be a Christmas ball from my Lost and Found folder, only to find it was a whole Christmas tree in pieces. I had been editing the tree on a sandbox when it was unfortunately returned to my inventory. "Curses!" I thought, "80 bits of tree in my Lost and Found!" Then I forgot about it, until it rezzed before my eyes.

But no, not 80 pieces of tree exactly. One big bit of tree coalesced from the individual prims returned from the parcel, but unlinked. I hadn't heard anything about this new feature until Darcy Remington happened to mention it in a post to the Brits and Pieces group email. Ahhhh ....

In case you have inadvertently deleted "object" from your Lost and Found and still have the chance of rescuing it to find your wand, car and pet dragon hiding within it "coalesced", I commend this forum discussion and this Linden knowledge base article to your attention.

In simple terms, if you have 50 items returned from a parcel they may be coalesced into one item and hiding behind a wall panel or something that you may discard. Check things in your Lost and Found very carefully.

Also: be aware that if things on a parcel are returned and coalesced into one item, they maintain their relative positions, so be careful where you rezz them or you will have portions of the coalesced item all over the place. And Hey! Lindens! I think a bit more publicity for shiny new features like this might be in order, so that people don't delete their possessions in ignorance.

There is a furore going on in the SL forums because libSL have produced a CopyBot which allows complete copying of prim objects with textures and animations, which makes the copier the creator of the object, and have seen fit to release this on the community.

The geeks of libSL react with surprise that anyone could think that this might be used for evil purposes, and helpfully suggest that a DMCA takedown notice will solve the problems it creates. libSL for those who haven't come across it before, is the Linden-supported project reverse engineering SL's code for the good of the community ... or so they would have us believe. In their words: libsecondlife is a open source software project to allow the creation of third-party Second Life applications. They have also been a haven for griefers and exploiters, and many of those have been banned.

As with previous copying devices, it doesn't seem to cross the feeble brains of these people that other people's livelihoods in RL might depend upon their SL income. Those people who are living the dream that is promoted in every article, of earning a RL income from SL creations, are now living a nightmare in which their source of income may soon be worthless.

We've had a beautiful cathedral sitting around in Nemesis waiting for Oclee to texture it for a while now. It was something that was started as part of a job, but not used.

Having turned the sim to snow, I thought it would be a great idea to turn the cathedral to ice, and so I suggested this to Oclee. He wasn't keen, it has to be said. Oclee is a very talented texture artist, and often creates a different texture for every surface he textures. I tend to be skilled in other directions, mainly being able to use standard textures in different ways.

So, having checked he had a copy of the Cathedral in his inventory, I started to change the texturing -- but boy, is it difficult at the moment!

I received a skates sign to place by the vendor in Nemesis yesterday, which includes the exciting news that new special edition Skoopf Icicles are on the horizon. I have my own pair of special limited edition Christmassy Rudolf Skoopf's, but these are going to be an extra special set - or seven sets, as Moopf promises a new set every Saturday and then a free pair of the extra special ones at the end of the sequence of six, for those who buy a pair of each.

Thanks for the notice, Moopf! I'll have to save up for those ... though I am attached to my little reindeer ones.

I have been working hard over the weekend and yesterday to get my Christmas trees set up in Nemesis. I love Christmas in SL, and I love making Christmas items.

I persuaded Oclee to set the sim to snow, and have set up an ice rink for people to use Moopf's icicles. Sorry, I know it is early, but I just love it. Cierrah, who lives in the corner of Nemesis hates snow and ice and is retreating to her cave, but I adore it ... possibly because we have had so little in real life for the past 20 years in my part of the UK.

I spent the whole of yesterday making the trees less of a draw on sim resources. Last year I put in candle scripts that listened on a channel, so that the owner could switch them on and off. This year I was told by my partner Oclee that even listens on a channel are a draw on sim resources, and so he has made me a special script which has only one listen in it, and links all the candles on a tree.

Kelly Linden has posted about changes which are planned for auto return in the next update. They seem nuts to me ....

Every parcel of land in SL has a prim limit on it. This is the number of basic building blocks you can use on your parcel to build or create objects from your inventory. For a small parcel of 512 square metres, the parcel limit is 117 in most places.

In the past you were also able to rez any number of temp-on-rez objects which didn't count towards your parcel limit. This changed a few updates ago, for a complicated calculation which allows a set number for a parcel, and a maximum of 500 no matter how big the parcel or how many prims are free on the parcel.

As owner of land, you have a few more choices. You can choose whether or not to allow building on your land, by people outside your group. You can choose whether or not to set autoreturn on the parcel. This automatically returns items built by people outside the group the land is set to.

Last night I attended Enjah Mysterio's opening for her Black Drawing exhibition. As she explains in the accompanying notecard, which is available from a dispenser on the left of the door, she made the drawings in response to a friend's terminal cancer, but the opening and exhibition is in memory of her son Steve, who died about a month ago.

This was the most moving of all the events I have attended in SL. The drawings are interesting and unusual, white pencil on black paper, and illustrate Enjah's beliefs about life and death in a most thought-provoking way. Friends and acquaintances arrived and studied the drawings, exchanged small talk, and renewed friendships, just as at a real opening at a gallery.

A friend drew attention to the new announcement about private islands on the Linden blog following the confusion of the last few days. It is written in an annoyingly condescending "you stupid people we are going to explain this in words of one syllable because you are clearly too ditzy to understand what we are saying" style which ignores the utter confusion caused by conflicting Linden statements. I hate it when people don't say SORRY, when they have reason to. This spins the whole problem into poor scared residents category, not badly thought-through and disseminated company policy.

In fact if you try to track back to what was said you may conclude that the people protesting about conflicting comments are stupid, because it has all gone. Eradicated. Lindens have rewritten history. The original blog postings and the Land FAQ have been edited to remove all trace of the original statements. I think this is really poor practice, especially when people are having trouble understanding what is going on. Someone needs to get the team together, and apply the Tao of Linden -- which includes OPENNESS and HONESTY -- to their dealings with their customers and not just with covering each other's backs.

However, they haven't done it THAT well. The comments on the blog, and some other blog postings have not been changed, and so the pixel trail hasn't entirely evaporated. Thus you can see on this page from October 16th that Ian Linden says:

"From a resident perspective, the key difference is that the new machines should offer higher, more consistent sim-side performance for heavily-loaded regions, especially when there are a large number of scripts running. LSL performance should be quite a bit higher, although we won't know by exactly how much until Class 5 has been running in production for a while. More generally, the new servers have some future-proofing features for us, and use less electricity than previous generations."

Then today's blog posting, from Patronising Linden:

"Another question we've been seeing is about the hardware the new private regions will be on. Honestly, we hate this question. The reason we hate it is that there is no data to support the idea that Class 5 hardware is going to work any better than the Class 4. The differences between the types of hardware aren't very large, and the reason for the change is something that probably won't have any noticeable effect from the resident perspective."

Hiro Queso draws the attention of friends and tenants to an announcement on his website, in which he announces his intention to leave the land rentals market.

I have known Hiro for some considerable part of my time in SL, and I was until fairly recently a long-time tenant. I have never heard any tenant say anything critical of Hiro and his services to his tenants. Many of them, like me, regard him as a friend, and as someone who is an unfailing support in SL.

He has built strong residential and commercial communities in SL and I am sad that he is withdrawing from the market. It should be a matter of concern that he has decided to withdraw, I am sure many people will be very sad to lose him as their landlord.

Over the weekend, rumours flew around the grid about price rises for land and tier fees. It appeared that Anshe Chung might be in the know, as she raised her tier fees. Other people speculated upon who might have been told and who might not, and why.

Linden Lab had taken the precaution of closing the Land Store over the weekend, and made an announcement on Monday morning on the blog to the effect that as from November 1, land prices would rise from $1250 per island sim to $1650 per island sim, and a steep tier fee rise from $195 per month to $295 per month.

We were informed that 150 sims were left at the old price of $1250 and that these would be sold on a first come, first served basis after 1pm on Wednesday November 1. These would be sold at the old price, with the old tier. The information available with the announcement confirmed that there were no plans to make people with old sims pay the new prices.

Oclee and I needed to buy a sim, and needed to decide whether to go for it at the old price, or revise prices for it. We decided to buy one at the old price, and so Oclee went to the Land Store at 1pm to buy a sim. He placed the order and was feeling pretty pleased with himself, when I noticed a posting to the Linden blog made at 1.12pm.

Jebediah Brown offers the Lindens the benefit of his advice on the Linden Answers forum, which includes a link to his webpage exercising his thoughts about the "problem" of camping.

Campers, for those who haven't stumbled over them, are people paid a pittance to stay in the same place in order to drive up the traffic results for a place. Mr Brown assumes that all the lag problems he has can be laid at the feet of campers, without the slightest evidence that this is so. I have recently had problems in sims where I was the only avatar and between 3 and 5 thousand prims were free. Even Numbakulla, which is designed to be as lag free as possible, has had problems with only one or two avatars in the sim.

I don't like camping chairs, I hate the very idea of people being paid to do nothing, tying them to a particular site in order to artificially raise the traffic figure for the parcel. But I hate Mr Brown's solutions even more. One of the things I applaud about Second Life is the egalitarian nature of its society, and I shall vociferously oppose anything which tries to drive a wedge between the haves and have nots in terms of land and premium accounts.