Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Facebook killer jailed for life
Facebook killer jailed for life
A jealous husband was jailed for life after murdering his wife because she changed her status to "single" on Facebook, the social networking website.
Lorry driver Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he felt "humiliated and devastated" when Emma, his wife of 15 years, changed her online profile four days after he moved out of their home.
The day before the murder he rang his wife's parents and complained that the Facebook posting made him "look like a fool."
He then drove back to the marital home near Croydon, south London, in the early hours armed with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver.
Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol he attacked his wife as she lay in bed, beating her, tearing out clumps of her hair, and stabbing her repeatedly in the head, neck and arms.
When police officers arrived they found Forrester walking out of the house with a carton of fruit juice in his hand.
He held out his bloodied hands and said: "My wife's in there, I've killed her."
His wife's relatives wept as Forrester was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 14 years at the Old Bailey. He had pleaded guilty to murder at a previous hearing.
Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, said: "You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification. This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish."
In a statement to police after the murder, Forrester said: "Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out. She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.
"I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me."
Prosecutor Alex Lewis said the couple had a "volatile" marriage which deteriorated over Christmas and Mr Forrester moved out on Valentine's Day. He then began making telephone threats.
Forrester had previous convictions for theft and burglary dating back to the age of 15.
Mrs Forrester's sister, Liza Rothery, said it was a "brutal, callous attack on a defenceless woman."
A jealous husband was jailed for life after murdering his wife because she changed her status to "single" on Facebook, the social networking website.
Lorry driver Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he felt "humiliated and devastated" when Emma, his wife of 15 years, changed her online profile four days after he moved out of their home.
The day before the murder he rang his wife's parents and complained that the Facebook posting made him "look like a fool."
He then drove back to the marital home near Croydon, south London, in the early hours armed with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver.
Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol he attacked his wife as she lay in bed, beating her, tearing out clumps of her hair, and stabbing her repeatedly in the head, neck and arms.
When police officers arrived they found Forrester walking out of the house with a carton of fruit juice in his hand.
He held out his bloodied hands and said: "My wife's in there, I've killed her."
His wife's relatives wept as Forrester was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 14 years at the Old Bailey. He had pleaded guilty to murder at a previous hearing.
Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, said: "You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification. This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish."
In a statement to police after the murder, Forrester said: "Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out. She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.
"I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me."
Prosecutor Alex Lewis said the couple had a "volatile" marriage which deteriorated over Christmas and Mr Forrester moved out on Valentine's Day. He then began making telephone threats.
Forrester had previous convictions for theft and burglary dating back to the age of 15.
Mrs Forrester's sister, Liza Rothery, said it was a "brutal, callous attack on a defenceless woman."
Friday, December 19, 2008
Virtual Transgender Suit, avatar termination and other online world tales
Virtual Transgender Suit, avatar termination and other online world tales
See the pics and read more here: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/marc-owens-who-designed-the.php
...A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex.
A real life manifestation of that practice, the Virtual Transgender Suit replicates the aesthetics of the typical virtual female form and catapults them within a real world context. The piece was specifically designed for men to wear in the real world, creating a bridge between real (where cross-dressing is not really socially accepted) and virtual...
See the pics and read more here: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/marc-owens-who-designed-the.php
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Virtual Vacation, of sorts...
Hi Friends!
Let me thank everyone who has been reading this blog faithfully (or otherwise)...when I look at the traffic reports I am amazed at how many of you stopped in to check us out.
Even so, I'm going to be slowing down the number of entries into this blog. It's a fairly simple reason why...I'm spending more and more time with my Real Life now, and to be honest, if I haven't convinced you by now that Second Life Love can go real, I probably never will. It doesn't work for everyone, but it certainly CAN work and did work in our case.
Our baby is doing so well, sleeps like a charm, is giggling and grabbing for things already (at 7 weeks yesterday)! I swear she's trying to form words already too, but that might be mommy wishful thinking. If we're lucky, we might get the chance to have another one sometime in the next year or two. I love being a mom.
We, as a couple, are also going great...in fact...it's better and better all the time. My transition to the AU feels more normal now after almost a year...as it should. The pregnancy hormones are also finally tapering off, too. I figure if we survived these two things running simultaneously as we initiated our Real Life together, we can probably handle just about anything. Sometimes I think that the real challenge was each of us as individuals believing that the other really was in love! I think that was the motivation for this blog, actually. Trying to be sure that my brain was satiated with information proving that this kind of love is possible and can be real!
The happy ending is here:
We're getting married January 14th, 2009. Today, in fact, we're going out again to look for rings.
I won't forget you all...as I run into useful things to post, I certainly will. Hope you'll stop in occasionally and check on us. We're still be here, just a little less than daily now.
Wishing you love!
Randoym and Matchsticks
Let me thank everyone who has been reading this blog faithfully (or otherwise)...when I look at the traffic reports I am amazed at how many of you stopped in to check us out.
Even so, I'm going to be slowing down the number of entries into this blog. It's a fairly simple reason why...I'm spending more and more time with my Real Life now, and to be honest, if I haven't convinced you by now that Second Life Love can go real, I probably never will. It doesn't work for everyone, but it certainly CAN work and did work in our case.
Our baby is doing so well, sleeps like a charm, is giggling and grabbing for things already (at 7 weeks yesterday)! I swear she's trying to form words already too, but that might be mommy wishful thinking. If we're lucky, we might get the chance to have another one sometime in the next year or two. I love being a mom.
We, as a couple, are also going great...in fact...it's better and better all the time. My transition to the AU feels more normal now after almost a year...as it should. The pregnancy hormones are also finally tapering off, too. I figure if we survived these two things running simultaneously as we initiated our Real Life together, we can probably handle just about anything. Sometimes I think that the real challenge was each of us as individuals believing that the other really was in love! I think that was the motivation for this blog, actually. Trying to be sure that my brain was satiated with information proving that this kind of love is possible and can be real!
The happy ending is here:
We're getting married January 14th, 2009. Today, in fact, we're going out again to look for rings.
I won't forget you all...as I run into useful things to post, I certainly will. Hope you'll stop in occasionally and check on us. We're still be here, just a little less than daily now.
Wishing you love!
Randoym and Matchsticks
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
SL Metrics for October from Massively
Second Life October metrics: More falls
by Tateru Nino
by Tateru Nino
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out.
Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
The gains were:
User hours rose in October after their fall in September, rising 11% to 37 million user-hours for the month.
Private estates increased by only 3.6% in October, and Linden Mainland by 1.3%. The total at the end of the month was 2.013 billion square metres.
The losses:
PMLF (accounts with a positive monthly Linden Dollar flow) is down by 1.86% to 61,467, canceling out most of the gain this figure had in September. The figure is now on a par with July 2008.
User-to-user transactions are down 10.83%, more than wiping out the gains of September, but this figure does not appear to provide any useful measure of economic activity, and Linden Lab cautions us against inferring any such activity from it.
The amount of USD exchanged during October fell for the third month running, falling an additional 0.7% (US$66,000) to 9.05 million USD. Across the three months, that's a fall of 4.8% (US$459,000) from its peak in July 2008.
Premium accounts continue their accelerating decline. Another fall this month, this time 2.1% (1,751 accounts) bringing the new figure to 81,479. Linden Lab's new CEO, Mark Kingdon says that 'Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.'
October closed with the L$:USD exchange rate gaining fractionally from September's close, at L$266.3:US$1.
Basically while September was essentially a decline, October didn't seem to fare much better, except in user-hours.
Demographically there seems to be little change. Second Life is still firmly in the hands of Baby Boomers and Generation X as far as active users go, and younger users statistically remaining unengaged. The percentage of user-hours consumed by users under 25 fell during October to 14.96% (including Teen Second Life).
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