This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.

The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.

I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:

Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.

Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect

Now I am bald and still stuck.

Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.

Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.

I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.

I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.

I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.

I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.

I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.

I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate

The bill passed in today’s parliament voting (96-56) and the result just another proof to the well known fact that Conservatives are idiots. With them having a majority in the Finnish Parliament, it was expected/feared that the law would pass. 47 MPs were busy knitting at home today and did not bother showing up.

Lex Nokia (as I have already ranted before) basically makes it legal to organisations that provide Internet services to search the metadata of any IP-based online activity, such as emails and web-surfing. How liberate and forward-looking indeed. Yawn!

The Centre Party and the National Coalition have been supportive of the bill all the way, while the opposition Social Democratic Party and the Left Alliance have opposed the law.

^^ Respect ^^ to Jyrki J.J. Kasvi from Green Party, who held the speech against the law today before the voting.

During the preparation process of the law, there were threats made that Nokia would leave Finland if the law didn’t pass under-Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Markku Wallin, told the daily Helsingin Sanomat.

Guess they can stay in here now. Currently I feel like leaving the country myself.

However, it is not over yet. A final vote on the bill is expected next week. So there is still at least some hope left…

This positive and hopeful artwork was drawn by my niece (6yrs) to remind me that somewhere out there the good guys are protecting us:

Tarvos & friends

Translation: Once upon a time there was Tarvos (=Starwars), who was Joda (=Yoda) and he fought against the evil and he had friends. Colour this picture.

I coloured Tarvos and his jolly mates as requested

I was also told that my five-year-old nephew asks in his evening prayers God to protect all the aliens and Star Wars characters both in our galaxy AND in outer space. Sounds like he got it all covered, so Tarvos and his mates should be safe wherever they may roam. Amen.