Confessions of a Part-Time Mermaid

2012-01-22T20:36:00.001-08:00

Five years in SL! I haven't been on as much lately as I used to, but I'm still hanging in there as long as the store covers my membership and tier.

Banned

2011-01-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

I just discovered that the neighboring property on two sides of my land has put up ban lines. This wouldn't be too bad, except that the neighbor on the other two sides has an eviction bot running. I'm feeling a bit trapped now. And those ban lines are ugly.

Another year already?

2011-01-22T20:53:00.000-08:00

So now I'm four years old (that's 24 in SL years). Not necessarily a real old-timer, but I've been around the sims a time or two.

I admit, I don't get online as much as I used to. Maybe it's changes in RL priorities, maybe it's advancing age :-(, maybe a bit of the original SecondLife magic has gone. Maybe all of the above.

Part of it is that I've been playing around with my own world in OpenSim, writing a graphic novel which is not yet ready for prime time. I'll let you know when I finally get it finished and get up the nerve to have it officially hosted on the Web somewhere. Some of the developments at Lindon Labs the past couple of years make me think that it is a good idea to have a backup world to play in. I may get more familiar with the OS Grid when I get a chance, maybe even put in some effort to help debug OS to where it's not quite as buggy as it is currently.

So onward into the next year. Let's hope my fifth rezday witnesses improvements, both to all of my various lives, and to Second Life as a whole!

2010-08-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've been using the Emerald viewer for some time, and liked it; except for the fact that it didn't load textures correctly in my private OpenSim. But developments (and rumors) in the past couple of weeks started me questioning whether I should find a different viewer to use.

This last controversy involving what appears to be a vindictive denial-of-service attack hidden in Emerald's sign-on page decided me, once it had been verified to my satisfaction. I've uninstalled Emerald from my system, and am now experimenting with the Imprudence viewer, which does seem to load textures properly in OpenSim.

Castles in the Air

2010-04-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've blogged here. With one thing or another, I haven't been doing much in SL lately. I did manage to make some tops for mers who are tired of the usual shell bras (besides the fact that they chafe so), and I've been redoing the landscaping at my home high above Arianti. I decided to go for the uprooted "Halajula Mountain" look (what? You haven't seen Avatar?) I've even added a waterfall plunging into the void:

Now if I can just find some dragons to hover around the cliffs, I'll be all set. I wonder what Grendel's Children has these days?

Another Rezday. Yay.

2010-01-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

My third rezday was yesterday. Which makes me 18 in SL years :-).

Like most everyone else, RL has commanded most of my attention lately, and I've let SL, and particularly my store, gather pixel dust*. So forgive me if my enthusiasm isn't what it should be. Hopefully, I'll be able to get more involved once again soon. I have ideas for a few new products for the store, and there are new mers to meet.

----------------------
* Pixel dust is what allows you to fly in SL.

Xiting XStreet

2009-11-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

I'm joining many other SL merchants such as Ordinal Malaprop and Cheyenne Palisades in removing my products from XStreet because of their new listing fees, not to mention what many feel is the misguided philosophy behind them.

I haven't made enough sales on XStreet to justify a L$10/month "listing fee" for each item. My tails come in a selection of colors, each of which is a separate item, and each of which would cost me L$10 a month to display. And although I myself don't have any freebies listed, I am disgusted at the attempt to eliminate the "clutter" of freebies by charging a L$99 listing fee. There are many quality freebies out there that are definitely not "clutter".

Of course, everything is still available inworld at Mermaid's Dream.

Blake Sea Ferry Scheduling Conflicts

2009-11-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when two ferry boats try to occupy the same dock at the same time.

I should have had my fins on!

Ghosts of the Blake Sea

2009-09-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Blake Sea is haunted!

That's the only explanation I can come up with for the avs that are always there, in the same spot, no matter what time of the day or night it is. The three or four I've checked don't have anything -- or at least very little -- in their profiles.

What's even more mysterious are the green dots on the map (at least on my map), again never moving, that don't have anyone at that location.

Haunted, I tell you!

Montbard Ferries

2009-09-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

While out swimming in the Blake Sea, I discovered the Montbard Ferry Services, a small fleet of ferry boats plying the waters between Montbard, Windlass, and Half Hitch. If you want a relaxing cruise, go to the dock at Husky's Beachhouse and Marina in Montbard. Ferries run every 30 minutes to Half Hitch.

Do you want to date my avatar?

2009-08-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Wrath Paine posted a wonderful music video by The Guild. The Guild, in case you haven't stumbled upon them yet, is a series of sitcom episodes about online gamers and their foibles both inworld and in real life. Check them out: you'll recognize a lot of people you know, and probably yourself as well.

Goodbye Mertopia

2009-08-12T11:34:00.001-07:00

I got a notice today that Mertopia (Blake sim) is going away, and the sim will become rental property. Mertopia was the home of the Secrets of Atlantis group: although not very active, I hope they find another home soon.

Calling All Prims

2009-07-14T04:08:00.000-07:00

Out of curiosity, I looked through the release notes for the new 1.27 server release currently being installed on the grid. One item in the notes caught my eye:

LSL HTTP-In
Allows prims to become mini web-servers. Objects acquire a url, and then process http requests for that url.
For details, see: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_http_server

There is already a function in the LSL scripts to request data from external Internet addresses: llHTTPRequest(). What this new functionality does is the opposite -- it allows an Internet site, anywhere in the World to send data to a prim in Second Life.

This is probably old news to those who are more diligent at keeping track of the latest developments in SL than I am. In any case, it raises some very interesting possibilities.

An external Internet site can send data or commands to an SL object at any time, without having to be "polled" periodically by the object for updates. An object can respond to Real Life events, or be controlled by an external program!

In combination with llHTTPRequest(), it allows any prim in SL to communicate with any other prim. (Yes, I know there are other ways to do this already: for example you can use llShout() when in the same Region.)

Since the URL addresses assigned by the new llRequestURL() function are temporary, any communications with an SL object will have to be mediated by an external site with a known URL address that would listen for messages from the object with the current URL address, and then use the latest address to redirect HTTP requests to that address. You could also *yuck* update the current URL address by hand.

*Rubs hands in gleeful anticipation* Now, how to apply this to mer products? RL hurricane warnings, maybe?

The Shadow Knows

2009-06-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

There has been a virtual (pun intended) explosion of SL-based viewers lately; it seems everybody has nifty -- and not-so-nifty -- ideas on how to improve Linden Labs' open-source code. The Hippo Viewer, for example, has become the "standard" viewer for the OpenSim world.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has been playing with shadows. Dynamic shadows can be enabled in SL 1.23 -- if you have a high-end graphics card. As anyone who has played with ray tracing knows *raises hand*, shadow casting usually involves a lot of CPU processing time.

But Gwyn has found another SL viewer, by Kirstenlee Cinquetti, that sounds exciting:

[ . . . ] there is simply none of the SL viewers I’ve tried that have the same raw performance than her viewer. And thanks to Hyang Zhao’s work, I can test some of the latest versions of Kirstens Viewer on my poor underpowered Macs too.
It’s always a pleasure to install it, specially on the poor MacBook (not Pro), which gets some 5 or 6 FPS out of the latest batches coming out of LL, as well as on all derivative viewers. Kirstens Viewer just runs flawlessly over 15 FPS out of it — sometimes more, on empty sims. Of course I can’t turn most things on — even Basic Shaders will crash the MacBook, US$10 Intel cards are simply not up to it — but I can get pretty reasonable results. Enough for work; enough for demonstrations.

On my early-2007 iMac, however, things are quite different. You should take into account that Linden Lab works very hard to get a reasonable 15 FPS on almost all computers from the past 3 years — and except for the ones with too low cards, that’s what you should expect to get with “reasonable” settings. I definitely get that on the iMac — with Snowglobe, even with the Atmospheric Shaders on. This is actually quite reasonable.

Kirstens Viewer has allegedly a partial redesign of the whole rendering engine and the texture pipeline. Although I don’t see such a huge difference about texture downloads — LL has done enough improvements on their side as well — Kirstenlee has also incorporated the new lighting engine. Yes, the very same that allows unlimited lights in a scene, and uses new hardware-based tricks on the graphics card to give a boost in performance. The results? Even on old, outdated, obsolete graphics cards you should see an improvement — both in much nicer rendering (the new lighting system is astonishingly good), and in additional raw performance. For me, it means a boost of at least 50%, and when you have so few FPS, 50% does really make a difference (on a top-of-the-line graphics card you might see little difference — except on much nicer rendering).

I’m actually eager to see if Kirstenlee is willing to put her code in Snowglobe Now that would be something!

But I’ve left the most astonishing feat of the latest version of the Kirstens Viewer (S-17-2 build 198 as I write) for the end: shadows work… even on computers/graphics cards where they shouldn’t!

I downloaded the Kirsten Viewer and tried it out briefly this evening. When I followed the directions in Gwyn's blog to enable dynamic shadows:

Make sure you have a DirectX 10 compatible card (eg. nVidia 8 series or newer)
Make sure Atmospheric Shaders is on
Open the Advanced menu (if you don’t have it yet, press Ctrl+Alt+D)
Go to Debug Settings…
Type renderuseFBO
Change value to TRUE
Type renderdeferred
Change value to TRUE
Welcome to the world of dynamic shadows.

shadows suddenly appeared.

The CTRL-SHIFT-1 diagnostic window shows a pretty steady framerate around 15 FPS. Of course, this is in Arianti, which is a quiet sim with very little lag most of the time. I went to the Hollywood sim and got between 6 and 8 FPS. Turning off RenderDeferred in the Debug Settings to disable shadows let the frame rate go back up to 10-15 FPS.

Shadows will add an extra dimension of reality to our virtual existance. Let's hope that Kirsten's improvements make it into other viewers, especially future "official" SL clients.

Well, this just takes the cake -- er, pie...

2009-06-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

The new SL Release 1.23.4 may have fixed a lot of bugs, but for some reason, LL decided to shuffle the contents of the pie menu, for no good reason whatsoever. Why is this important? For one thing, users have grown used to entries in the pie menu being in certain places, and this will cause all sorts of mistakes as people click on the wrong entries by force of habit. Every manual and help machima will be out of date and will have to be redone if they are to avoid confusion (Torley is probably bursting into tears as he looks over the dozens -- if not hundreds -- of tutorial videos he's done).

But the biggest complaints are from designers and builders who suddenly have to drill down through extra layers of menu whenever they want to edit an object while it's being worn. Several have already said they consider it a show-stopper; there are a number of jura entries requesting a return to the old pie menu structure: particularly VWR-12946 and VWR-13320. 12946 has a couple of xml files that restore the old pie menu structure; these replace the installed files in the ...\SecondLifeReleaseCandidate\skins\default\xui\en-us\ program files directory. Be sure to rename the old files rather than deleting them in case you have to go back. And add your vote to the jura entries!

New Mermaid's Dream store

2009-06-19T16:11:00.001-07:00

I've opened a new Mermaid's Dream store in the Bluewarren Mall, to replace the one at Thera which had to close because they closed down the mer shops there. There seems to be more traffic there than at Thera, so hopefully it will be worth the L$275/week rent.

Meercat Manor

2009-06-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

I ran across a mention in New World Notes of a viewer that can copy your builds out of SL and into other grids, such as OpenSim. It's called the Meercat Viewer, and is open source (free!). It only works with objects that you have full perms for, which is understandable. I'm going to give it a try; I have several things I'd like to move over to my private OpenSim world without having to reinvent the wheel each time.

A Whole New World

2009-05-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

The past few days, I've been experimenting with OpenSimulator, the open-source sim server that is compatable with the SL client. I hadn't paid much attention to it, thinking that I would need a dedicated server machine, but found out that you can host the server on the same machine as your client (of course, having a fast computer with lots of memory helps). Of course, having the server on a dedicated machine would have advantages.

Installing and configuring OpenSim isn't for the fainthearted technophobe, but there are some good tutorials on setting it up.

OpenSim comes with SQLite for database storage, but I decided to install MySQL which is better able to handle larger number of assets without a lot of lag. Here again, there is a tutorial for installing it and integrating it with OpenSim.

With a bit of head-banging and googling, I was finally able to bring up the server. So I made a copy of the shortcut for the SL client, and added command line options specifying the local OpenSim server IP address and port: "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -loginuri http://127.0.0.1:9000/ -loginpage http://127.0.0.1:9000/?method=login. I clicked on the shortcut, and found myself standing on a small round island in the middle of the default sim.

When you arrive in OpenSim, you are in the "T" pose, which is a bit annoying. However, as soon as you move, the walk animation kicks in and everything is OK from that point. Assuming that the noobie "duck walk" is OK.

After doing some random terrain building, I decided to experiment further and created a second sim on the server, next to the first one. This worked just fine, especially once I found out that the coordinates are sim-oriented (i.e. (1000,1001) is the sim next to (1000,1000) instead of (1000,1256) like I first assumed). So now I had two whole sims to play with.

I don't know how many sims I can support on my long-suffering Compaq without it melting its CPU down into a puddle of silicon, but two should be enough for my personal empire for the time being.

One of the big problems with OpenSim at the current time is that there isn't much in their library in terms of objects, textures, animations, and the like. You basically have to build everything up from scratch, and about all you can get out of SL is copies of modifiable scripts (by copy/paste into a text document on your computer and then in the opposite direction into a new script in OS), and textures for which you have full perms. I cloned Mare by going into Appearance and writing down all of the slider numbers, then applying them to my new avatar in the OpenSim world. This was a bit tedious, and I don't look right without my prim hair :-(

The contents of a sim can be exported to what is called an OAR file. Googling around, I found a very limited number of these available, some with trees and buildings in them. I was able to load these into one of my sims and get copies of the trees for my own inventory. Confusingly, OAR files normally have the extension .tar.gz, which indicates that they are actually Unix-style compressed files; this extension convention will probably be changed in the future. Caution: loading an OAR file wipes the previous contents of the sim, so be sure to save it into an OAR file of your own before importing another one if you want to save it!

If you don't mind spending 29 € (US$25 or so), there is a utility/modified client called Second Inventory which allows you to download items out of your inventory (only the ones for which you have full permissions) to your hard drive, and then upload them into OS. I don't have that yet, because I'm just experimenting right now and am too ~~cheap~~ frugal to spend any money on this.

If you get lonely or don't want to handle the care and feeding of hosting your own server, there are several public OpenSim grids on the Internet to explore -- here's a list. If you have your server on a machine that is visible to the rest of the Net, you can add your sims to one of the grids and "go public". I haven't explored any of them myself yet, but I will before too much longer.

OpenSimulator is still considered alpha software, which means that it's a work in progress, and I've run into several bugs and gotchas already; but nothing that is a real show-stopper in terms of playing around with it. I plan on reporting any problems I find, if they already haven't been reported: things have been and should go on improving rapidly.

There is a feeling of power in having your own private virtual world!

Tails To Be Sold Told

2009-05-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've added any products, but I finally finished (if any of my projects can ever be said to be "finished") a new line of mer tails and put them in a vendor in my shops and on Xstreet. Called Nereid, they come in a variety of colors and include hip and dorsal fins. I've got 12 different color schemes (so far). Apparently, I seem to have hit some kind of limit on the number of images Blogger will let me upload for this post, so I can only show the first five:

Black/Blue
Black/Gold
Black/Red
Black/Green
Blue/Aqua

Blue/Gold

Blue/Green

Green/Gold

Lavender/Gold

Purple/Gold

Red/Gold

Silver/Gold

The Neighbors are Having a Ball

2009-05-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

Or, more correctly, a couple hundred of them. I discovered the mess when I went for a swim this evening and found several errant spheres rolling around the sea floor under my dock. I pushed them back over the boundary of my property and retired for the night, shaking my head...

May I Have Permission?

2009-04-24T04:05:00.001-07:00

A customer told me that she was having problems with the Mermaid's Dream AO: it was giving her a script error saying that "the texture is not transferable". I added permissions on the two button textures in the AO, and the problem seems to have gone away.

Getting all of the permissions right on products for sale is an arcane art; I need to go to the Minoan Empire and make the proper sacrifices to the gods, I guess.

Idle Hands...

2009-04-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

I spent some time making a few changes to my skybox home the other day. It's still a work in progress.

Fine Print

2009-04-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of Mermaid's Dream customers have complained to me that the Fish Rezzer and/or the Fish Bracelet sometimes don't work. I finally figured out that -- duh -- they can't rez the fish if you don't have build privilege in the parcel. I *cheerfully* refunded their money, and have added a warning on the vendor signs.

It seems like one way out of this quandry would be for SL to allow rezzing of temp objects, even if build of permanent objects is disallowed; but there is probably a good reason why that wouldn't work. *sigh*

Free Market

2009-03-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

At the advice of a friend, I finally got around to doing something I should have done a long time ago: put my Mermaid's Dream products up for sale on Xstreet (formerly SlExchange). You can find my things by going to Marketplace in Xstreet and viewing Merchants, then digging down to Mare Novi.

I have the "Dream Mer" tails, the latest version of the Mermaid's Dream AO, and some of the gadgets from my vendors. I should make pages for the other things just laying around the store, like the "mernature" and the poseballs. Maybe they'll get more customers online then just waiting for people to wander into the store.

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

2009-03-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

I ran into a friend sailing her new Flying Fizz 3.0, and after crewing for a few minutes in it, I just had to have one. It seems to sail even more realistically and faster than the Flying Tako(!), which can make it more challenging to navigate. They're for sail -- er, sale -- at the Starboards Yacht Club in Hollywood.

There are several levels of operation, though; so if you just want to sail around, you can put it in "Fun Mode" and not worry about the sail settings and the like. Other levels give you control over the sail trim and tautness, to get the maximum performance out of the boat in races. Your crew, if you have one, doesn't just sit there, but can take an active role in manning the rigging and hanging over the side to help counterbalance the boat when it's well heeled over.

The colors and textures are fully configurable, so I can see I'm going to be spending some time fiddling with the paint job.

Cost is L$1,250, which was a bit more than I expected -- but well worth it!

The wind is freshening, and I hear the Blake Sea calling...

Battle Cry

2009-03-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different:

Reverie

2009-03-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Half asleep I hear a voice
Is it only in my mind
Or is it someone calling me someone I failed and left behind

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

Face to face I greet the cast
Set in silence we begin
Companions in an empty room I taste their victory and sin

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

A tale of beauty and the beast
I defend my soul from those who would accuse me
I share the famine and the feast
I have been the world and felt it turning seen the jester yearning to amuse me

Like a circus on parade
Seldom close enough to see
I wander through an angry crowd and wonder what became of me

To work it out I let them in
All the good guys and the bad guys that I've been
All the devils that disturbed me and the angels that defeated them... somehow
Come together in me now

- Paul Williams
Phantom's Theme (Beauty and the Beast)

Birth Of A New Sea

2009-01-25T22:34:00.000-08:00

The Blake Sea has finally appeared east of Nautilus, surrounded by the relocated Second Life Sailing Federation sims. It is truly a vast area of connected, sailable waters that I look forward to pointing my bow (well, that of my boat, anyway) toward. Here's hoping the waters are mer-friendly!

I don't know yet how the new void sim limits on prims and avatars will affect any regattas or other activities in the area. Let's hope that the SLSF can continue its activities in their new location.

It's My Second Rezday

2009-01-22T21:44:00.001-08:00

I figure that's 12 in SL years.

Yo-Yoing Through The Metaverse

2009-01-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or does it seem that SL has been having more than its share of problems lately? Here are the Grid Status blog entry titles for just the past week:

[RESOLVED] InWorld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 08:01 pm PST
[RESOLVED] In world Services Unreliable
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 07:30 pm PST
Logins Intermittent.
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 03:51 pm PST
Second Life Wiki Maintenance
Posted by Status Desk on January 18th, 2009 at 01:00 am PST
[RESOLVED] Possible Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 17th, 2009 at 05:23 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 16th, 2009 at 05:15 pm PST
[Resolved] Logins Currently Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am PST
[Resolved] Inworld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 15th, 2009 at 01:46 pm PST
[Update 01/15 10:02] Rolling restart to deploy 1.25.3, Thu Jan 15 and Tue-Wed Jan 20-21
Posted by ReleaseTeam on January 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am PST
Scheduled Pjira Maintenance
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 03:54 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues - Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 03:05 pm PST
[Resolved] Updating Back-end Servers
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 10:17 am PST
Intermittent support portal malfunction
Posted by Status Desk on January 14th, 2009 at 07:40 am PST
[RESOLVED] Partial Inventory Maintenance Scheduled for Tuesday 01/13/09
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:57 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:39 pm PST
[RESOLVED] blog.secondlife.com unavailable
Posted by Status Desk on January 12th, 2009 at 08:32 pm PST
XML-RPC service was degraded
Posted by Status Desk on January 12th, 2009 at 05:46 am PST
[RESOVLED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am PST

Even ignoring the scheduled maintenance entries, this seems to be a lot more problems than we've had in the recent past. Yes, they are marked RESOLVED, but you have to wonder if they really are, when the grid goes wonky again just half an hour later.

Why Shouldn't a Mermaid Have a Sailboat?

2008-12-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

I own a Flying Tako, which as most people who sail in SL know, is an amazing little craft that sails fairly realistically. But I'd been having to change to human when sailing because of the pose.

With the Blake Sea and the sailing sims to open east of Nautilus, a short swim/sail from Mermaid's Dream, I decided to do something about that. It didn't take long to fire up Poser and make a mer equivalent of the Tako pose, which I then replaced the original pose with in the boat.

Always looking for more things to put up for ~~sail~~ sale in the store, I made up a vendor sign and slapped a L$50 price tag on it.

I'll probably be spending more time on the water now.

Flaming Newbies!

2008-12-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

While swimming behind the store, I noticed a red line that hadn't been there before. A closer inspection showed a rocket-powered newbie figure fetched up against my back wall.

Was he part of a rocket zombie newbie invasion?

His root prim wasn't on my land, so the autoreturn couldn't get rid of him. I fixed that by jumping on his head and bumping him around for a while, with the hope that I could get him to fly south for the winter. I couldn't push him far enough, but I finally was able to get him enough over the land boundary that I could send him back to his launch pad.

Moving Notice

2008-12-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

No, not our main store, but the branch that was in Elounda. The mer colony there has joined the Minoan Empire and is moving north into the Island of Thera sim. Work is proceeding on the sea floor landscaping, and it promises to be an exciting place! Here's a landmark: Mermaid's Dream, Island of Thera (76, 39, 2)

Protest Regatta Machinima

2008-11-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

I found this Machinima of the Openspace Protest Sailing Regatta by MarkTwain White, courtesy of Vint Falken's blog.

The People Have Spoken

2008-11-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not referring to yesterday's U.S. presidential election, but LL's amendments in M Linden's Letter to Second Life Residents to its recent Openspace pricing changes. The widespread consternation and protests expressed in user blogs and inworld seem to have gotten our concerns made known to the SL gods.

Here's the new setup according to M Linden:

Here is how we are amending the price change:

1. We are going to retain the Openspaces product at its original price point and its original intended use (forest, water, etc.). We will have technical limitations to help regulate their use, initially avatar and prim limit restrictions, eventually event, classified and script limits. Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.

2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals. For existing Openspace owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month. We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Homestead product. The discount amount will be the same as Private Regions, roughly 30%.

* July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month

This was exactly the solution that I had hoped for, and one that I think is fair to all concerned.

The cannons can still roar at Beek Haven!

Openspace Protest Fleet

2008-11-03T06:51:00.000-08:00

To protest the insane price rise for Openspace sims, a multitude of ships representing Second Life sailors gathered at Hollywood to stage a mass fleet sail. As you can see from the map above, the turnout was immensely successful. It clearly demonstrated the level of concern that this controversy has raised in the SL population.

I joined the crew of the Mer Cruiser to represent the mer population of Beek Haven, as well as the other seas that we all like to swim in. Sea dwellers as well as sailors have much to lose if our open waters vanish.

Some comments from other SL bloggers on the Openspace pricing controversy:

Linden Labs' announcement - Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

Hotspur O'Toole - On How The Price Hikes Endanger Themed Communities
Ordinal Malaprop - Shouting into the Void
Second Thoughts - Jack Bombs the Humper Bunkers
Vint Valken -Linden Lab has it’s business model ass backwards

Here is a picture taken at sunset in the Beek Haven sea, to symbolize what we all may lose if Open Sim owners are forced to abandon their lands. Let's hope that this will not be sunset on such marvelous areas such as Beek Haven, Antiquity, the Second Life Sailing Federation sims, and much of Caledon, as well as the other areas we have enjoyed so much.

Fit to a T

2008-10-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much in the way of tailoring yet, but I just had to make this T-shirt with one of my favorite quotes from Adam Savage of Mythbusters. It seemed so appropriate for SL.

A Piraat's Life For Me

2008-10-12T01:37:00.000-07:00

I've been swimming around a set of eight sims (with more planned) dedicated to Pirate RP, anchored by Beek Haven. The sims all have wonderful Dutch names.

From their web site:

This be a guide to activites in Beek Haven and the Beek water sims - Second Life's ONLY multi-sim Pirate Role-Play. This be 24/7 Pirate & Mermaid RP - no exceptions. Even if ye be here to just shop or camp - ye gotta be a mermaid or dress like a pirate or wench from the Golden Age of Pirates. Wearing an eye-patch and a t-shirt with a Jolly Roger don't cut it. There be freebie clothes by the doors of the Keep as well as in a few shops ... Or ye can loosen yer coin bags and buy some proper attire!!

There always seems to be some activity here, especially when the regular sea battles are held.

Best of all, Beek Haven is mer-friendly! There are some underwater areas for merfolk and I've run into several of us already.

Be warned, this is a mature sim, and they make no bones about it: toplessness is not only tolerated but encouraged. Arrrr! ;-)

The Mermaid's Dream Empire grows

2008-09-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

I've opened another store in Elounda Bay, just outside of the Drunken Clam. I don't know how much traffic goes through there or if the store will be worth the rent, but I'm willing to give it a few weeks to see how it works out.

If you want to visit, and see the other fine mer stores there as well, it's at Elounda (235, 104, 8). From the entry point, swim South, through the first shop area and the Drunken Clam, to the second shop area. The store is upstairs on the left side.

School's Out

2008-09-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

My latest project is a fish rezzer. My original idea is to have a bracelet that surrounds the wearer with his/her own private school of fish. Instead of the usual "pet" that just circles around you mindlessly, these fish will swim independantly but try to keep themselves near the rezzer even if it moves.

I'm using the old trick of rezzing temp objects (in this case, fish) to keep the overall prim count at a minimum. Temp objects, as you probably already know, onliy last for about a minute before evaporating. So at the rate of a new fish every 10 seconds, there will always be five or six fish swimming around.

The fish are animated sculpties: I used Blender to make a fish shape, then copied that to two other shapes, one with the tail to the left and the other one to the right. The fish's script changes the sculptie between these to make the tail swish. It actually works pretty well, although the built-in function delays mean that I can only twitch the tails about once a second.

For some reason (probably cranial denseness), I always have trouble getting objects to move right, particularly when they're physical. For a long time, I couldn't get the fish to do anything but float around aimlessly in a drunken tumble. Or fall to the ground and flop around sadly. But by banging on things persistantly (I am nothing if not ~~stubborn~~ persistant), I finally got them to swim more or less properly.

Now I just need to make some good textures. For development, I cheated and used an abalone shell texture which actually looks OK. But I can see hours of trial and error coloring scales and getting eyes and fins in the right places.

Hey, it keeps me from swimming around the docks, trying to pick up sailors.

22,000

2008-08-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

As of July, there were approximately 22,000 active sims in SL. At 65,536 sq. m each, they cover an area of 1,442 square kilometers, or about 557 square miles: about the same size as the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. This would make us the 182nd largest country in the world, between Guadeloupe and the Faroe Islands.

Where Do You Rez?

2008-08-13T12:33:00.001-07:00

The latest meme going around is to post your usual rez point when you sign into Second Life.. Mine is at my skybox domicile in Arianti.

So, where do you rez?

I Decided To Change the Name of This Blog Again...

2008-08-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

... to match the tag I've been wearing lately. Hey, it's my blog, I can do that!

Gather Moments While You May

2008-07-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Real Life being what it is, my Human often finds it difficult to give me as much in-world time as I would like. It really interferes with all of the projects that I have in mind to do -- not to mention just exploring and lazing around. OK, so the exploring and lazing around are also interfering with all of the projects that I have in mind to do. But there are priorities in life -- Second or First -- after all...

The Island of Lost Textures

2008-07-07T16:28:00.001-07:00

Exploring around the other day, I found this pile of rubble:
Next stop: the Isle of Ruth...

I just love the Caledon sims

2008-06-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Crap All Over The Place

2008-06-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Crap Mariner announced on his blog that he was going to blow up his NPIRL (Not Possible In Real Life) build in Rezzable today, so my friend Cynthia went over to watch and grabbed a few snapshots for me to post for her. CM entertained the watching throng by turning the entire floating build physical, resulting in mass destruction on a scale most of us don't get to see every day in SL.

Thar she blows!

The admiring throng

Aftermath

Well, it was something to do on a Friday afternoon, I guess...

Feathered Friend

2008-06-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

I decided to splurge and buy a little hummingbird for my "estate". I saw them at Elorian Garden on Bellagio sim, and tracked them back to Vinnie Baxter's Animania. A little pricy at L$325 for the Basic version, but I just had to have one in my garden! There are several varieties. The birds follow you around (within a certain area), which is just darling.

Animania has a lot of other fauna for sale as well; dragonflies, bats, birds, fish and even little fairy shoulder pets.

OK, now how do I tell this bird to leave me alone?

Invaded by Tikis

2008-05-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

My brother Minto dug into some old boxes in the storeroom and found several things he had made for a defunct island project. Being the ~~greedy money-grubbing~~ entrepreneurial type that I am, I decided to put them up for sale in the store. I added some floor area on the west end, which wasn't being used, for the Tropical Department.

So far, there is a ramada, tables and chairs, surfboards (from a resale package that I dusted off), bamboo railings, and the inevitable tikis with a sculpty moai (Easter Island statue) to add variety.

Now if I can just find space for a volcano...

Empire Building

2008-05-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

The 512 sq. meter plot next to Mermaid's Dream finally went up for sale, so I jumped in and bought it before someone else could. I don't have any plans for it at the moment, but the extra prims will be welcome.

SL AI

2008-05-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

If you happen to see an av named Edd Hifeng, you will probably have met the first nonhuman intelligence in your life. Edd is run by artifical intelligence software at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. See the story at Yahoo News.

Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of "Second Life." He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like "Where are you from?" but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.

. . .

This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old — and the calculus required "under the hood" to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.

A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they're interacting with another person — the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers — has been elusive. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.

So say "hi" to Edd for me if you see him around.

A New Hardware Substrate for Me

2008-05-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

*RL mode*
Somehow, my thumb-fingered human managed to fry the motherboard in the computer that supports my SL activities, and so decided to bite the bullet and buy a new system, rather than trying to figure out all the new varities of processors, memory, motherboards, and all the other silicon-based organisms that are needed to fling the electrons around in the right directions. Result, a new Compaq Presario SR5450F with 2GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, and as an added bonus, a brand, spanking-new Nvidia GeForce 8600GT graphics card. The store threw together a package deal and slipped in a cheap HP printer and a 19" LCD monitor for US$20 more (after rebates).

Then came the two-day-minimum Herculean task of transferring all of the stuff and nonsense from the old hard drive(s) -- fortunately NOT zapped -- to the new system. Human and I are learning to dislike -- if not dispise -- Windows Vista. But for now that's the only choice.

Doubling the amount of RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB, a dual-core CPU, and the more powerful graphics card has made a BIG difference in my SL existance! So far, lag is nearly nonexistant and the frame rate is high enough that I don't walk into walls as much as I used to. I think I'm going to like this new environment.

Even with Vista.

Updated Mer AO available

2008-04-06T13:11:00.001-07:00

I've updated the Mermaid's Dream AO to work with Havok 4, and put in an updater in the store, as well as updating the version in the AO vendor. The updater will be useful when I have updates for other items as well.

While testing the new AO I noticed a bug (already reported in the SL™ JURA) where you slowly sink while hovering. This is a bit embarassing when you're talking to a friendly sailor and you ... slowly .. sink ... beneath ... the ... waves ... Hopefully they'll get this fixed soon.

Today Arianti, tomorrow Second Life®

2008-04-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

With the acquisition of some land on the west side of Mermaid's Dream, I can expand. I don't really need the space right now, but the added prim allowance is nice, and I have these ~~delusions~~ dreams of building a merfolk multinational corporation someday...

To Baldly Go...

2008-03-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

OMG, I look like Gollum!

This is what happens when the Asset Server has problems. No hair, no clothes, and a popup warning to hold off doing anything for a while. Thank Cthulhu that at least I was wearing the bikini the last time I logged off...

Icon; You Con't

2008-03-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

I hear a rumor (OK, there is a whole flood of blogposts) about the new Linden Labs trademark policy. *Puts back of hand to forehead in a near swoon* I just haven't had the time or inclination yet to figure out what it all means or what I have to do with this blog to keep the Trademark Police away from my door.

So until then, consider all references to "Lindon Labs", "Second Life", and related entities to be virtually trademarked here. Until I get around to putting in all of the ® (ALT + 0174) and ™ (ALT + 0153) and whatever other mystic signs we have to put in nowadays.

Land Rush

2008-03-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

I've been trying for a while now to expand the land that Mermaid's Dream is on. I proposed a land swap with a neighbor for another parcel I had, but he wants to keep his parcel. But today, two 512 sq. m. parcels on the other side came up for sale, so I decided I had better jump on the opportunity. I bought both parcels, and then put up the other two scattered 512 parcels that I had in Arianti up for sale, hopefully soon. I may have to eat the charge for a higher tier for a while. But now I can consolidate the land and have plenty of room for expansion.

Dancing in the Dark

2008-02-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

Lately, a couple of my customers have had problems with the mer couples dances. I've never been very satisfied with the scripts I wrote for synchronizing the two poseballs, but I haven't been able to find any better ways of doing it. As far as I have been able to find out, animations are run in the Client, which means that some people will see the dance as working OK, while others will see one or both of the dancers locked in the "waiting" pose.

*Bangs head against the wall*

Happy Rezday to Me!

2008-01-22T09:45:00.000-08:00

So I finally made it -- one year in Second Life! W00t!

March 6: a noob with style :-P

April 17 - Discovering Averia and Grendel's Children

June 12 - The horrible Turkey Infestation in Caledon

November 5 - Mermaid days (or is it daze?)

January 8 - A Profitable Venture

And now - no longer just an "alt", I wonder what the next year is going to bring; for me in SL and my human in RL? Both of us are anxious to find out.

Emancipation

2008-01-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

My human gave me an early rezday present -- my own Premium account! So now I can own my own land, instead of relying on the kindness of strangers.

So title to the land that Mermaid's Dream is located on will transfer to me soon. I was planning on buying the plot just to the west to expand the shop -- but someone is already building on it, so they probably won't be interested in selling. Oh, well. If I can find another 512 or 1024 lot in Arienti (there aren't any for sale right now), at least I can use it for prim count and expand the shop vertically.

I guess I'll have to change the title of this blog, since I'm no longer an "alt".

Flip this Shop

2008-01-09T10:26:00.002-08:00

I have some ideas for more products to sell in my shop, Mermaid's Dream. So I spend most of the day yesterday making additions and modifications, mostly to add a bit of floor space. I decided that the "boat dock" at the front wasn't very useful, so I widened it and moved the couples dance balls there. I also added another floor area at the back of the store, which meant relocating the waterfall. Pick and shovel time*.

There has been a Grotto below the store almost since the beginning, but it didn't have much in it except for coral. I decided to move the entrance into the shop proper, which meant rearranging the "breakwater" -- another dirty job, even if I work mostly underwater. This also allowed space for another section of shop floor above the Grotto entrance for future expansion. I have plans for the Grotto -- it will be a place for visitors to relax and meet. And it's also where I will put the more "mature" mer items, when (if) I invent them ;-)

Now I need to figure out how to save a few prims. I'm nowhere near my limit, but if I need to keep my options open for the future.

A mermaid's work is never done...

----------------------------------
* Have you ever seen a mermaid try to use a shovel?

They Paved Paradise And They Put Up A Parking Lot

2007-12-24T22:52:00.000-08:00

This used to be the site of Merlantis. So what happened? I have no idea. All I know is that I checked the map, and all of Eyeles sim, except for the mall in the center, was grey. And so was the sim itself; filled in with what appears to be about one million cubic meters of concrete.

A Bit of a Poser

2007-12-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

It was suggested by Morris Aabye that I need some poses/animations for mers in shallow water. I decided that some of them would also work on dry land (should anyone ever find themselves out of the water). So here's the first. It's a 15-second animation, with what I think is a nice tail flip.

Who says they're not making any more land?

2007-12-17T09:51:00.001-08:00

They finally connected Caledon with Winterfell! I just had to go see for myself, so I threw on a few rags and went to Cape Wrath.

There is still some development to be done here.

The view of Winterfell from the north shore of Cape Wrath.

It's winter in Caledon, as I found out to my discomfort. I really need to buy a nice winter coat!

The Tale Of The Tails

2007-11-16T19:28:00.001-08:00

I finally got done putting together vendors for my line of simple mermaid tails, and a mer AO.

The tails come in a variety of colors, but any of them can be tinted however the owner wants. Personally, I like the basic silver one the best: the problem with adding a shading color is that the color changes with lighting.

The AO is based on the ZHAO II, with three buttons added for Go to Surface, Hold Depth (which doesn't work while moving), and Dive to Bottom. The Surface button in particular is handy, saving me having to creep up on the surface without erupting out of the water.

I've been running across the "artifact" problem in Windlight, even at the store. It seems to get worse the longer you're signed on. I've reported it to LL, who assigned it the ID [rt.lindenlab.com #1028625]. Nobody else seems to be reporting this bug, so I'm wondering if it has something to do with my particular graphics card (ATI Radeon 9550 AGP). It's bad enough that I don't stay in Windlight for long; unfortunately, because I love the new water.

A Whole New World

2007-11-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

So LL has released Winlight in a beta viewer after several months of Banging On Things. All I can say is: Wow. Just... Wow. Go download it now; especially if you're a mer. The water is amazing!

I ran into one bug that I've already reported: some graphics artifacts show up at Mertopia (Blake sim). I suspect it may have something to do with all of the sculpties they have there, but I don't have the problem at the new Mermaid's Dream location*, which has a couple of sculptie rocks, and which is backed by the neighbor's huge wall made up of sculpties. So maybe it's something else particular to Mertopia. Hopefully they'll figure it out without too much trouble.

* Notice how I managed to slip in a plug for the store...

Moving Up

2007-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

I talked Minto into biting the tier bullet and buying some more land in Arianti; I supplied the Lindens for a 1024 plot, so he wasn't too hard to persuade. So I've moved Mermaid's Dream there, and am enjoying the luxury of the enlarged space and prims. I think I can make the shop look much more attractive and professional now.

Now I need to get ambitious and finish up the new products that I've been toying with for so long. I've come to prefer the tail(s) I designed, and pretty much wear one exclusively when I decide to put on fins.

Then there's the AO; based on the ZHAO II with a few value-added features. I would want the AO available to go along with the tails; for convenience, seeing how the tail outfits will be aimed mainly at new mers. And there is still a big market for mer dances and other animations, so that's another thing on my to-do list.

Mertopia

2007-11-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

There is now an entire sim dedicated to merfolk and other aquatic types! Mertopia was created in Blake by sim owner EmeraldEver Cline with help from Secrets of Atlantis Queen Luna Misfit, and is officially open as of Nov. 3 after two years of planning and hard work.

The top portion of Queen Luna's Palace is on the left in the picture above.

This will be a roleplaying sim for Secrets of Atlantis. It should be fun!

Avaria Kro Panorama

2007-11-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

No reason for this other than it's a fantastic build...

Be sure to click on the image for the full-size version.

Let's Face It

2007-11-01T07:56:00.001-07:00

This seems to be the thing to do in SL blogs these days. Oh, well -- I don't mind being compared to Heather Locklear. Or even J. K. Rowling, for that matter.

Where No Av Has Gone Before

2007-10-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

I was excited to discover that six new sims have been added adjacent to Arianti where Mermaid's Dream is located. These new water sims make a connection between the continents of Nautilus and Mãebaleia (and don't think it wasn't tricky to track down the continent names, since they don't seem to be listed together in one place, but are scattered throughout the Second Life Wiki*).

I had been hoping that something would eventually happen. These new sims now link together a sizable body of water -- perhaps more than 30 sims, depending on how obstructed some of the passages are -- that hopefully will remain clear for boating. So you may see Mermaid's Dream -- my Tako, that is, not the shop, or Blue Wizard, Minto's boat, moored at the dock from time to time.

--------------------------
* So I'll list them here for posterity. The current Second Life continents are:

Sansara - the original and largest of the mainland continents.
Heterocera the "atoll continent" to the north of Sansara
Jeogeot - the "Korean" continent south of Sansara
Islandia - two "island continents" adjacent to Sansara on the east; developed by Anshe Chung.
Mãebaleia - the southernmost of the three "eastern continents"
Nautilus - the middle of the three "eastern continents"
Corsica - the northernmost of the three "eastern continents"

Oh Will This Mad Whirlwind Existance Ever End

2007-10-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

OK, I admit it: I don't really have an excuse for not updating this blog for over a month. I'm sure every blogger (except maybe Natalia, Torley, Zoe...) goes through periods where the priorities lie elsewhere.

One good thing; My shop Mermaid's Dream has been ~~raking in the loot~~ earning a bit of cash. Who would have known that mer animations were in such demand? I've been playing around with other products; a line of simple mer tails, an Atlantean "scooter", and a wheelchair for those times when you absolutely have to go out onto dry land and don't want to drag your tail around (thanks to Morris Aabye, who was working on the idea and graciously let me steal it). I also redid the cave/grotto to be a little more interesting than the hemisphere I had before.

I now have a vendor up in Rua, thanks to the owner jemma Flora.

The problem with the wheelchair so far is that I keep falling over in it and end up flopping around on the floor. :-P

Supercalimaristicexpealedocious

2007-09-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

Got an IM to come see Cydonia Juran's giant squid av. I hear it's his first build; pretty impressive!

We all wanted a ride on his back, but couldn't figure out how to attach sit poseballs. AFAIR, it doesn't work on an attachment -- but I've seen riders on avs before, so I know it's possible.

Something Fishy is Going On Here

2007-09-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I wanted some wildlife in my pond to make things a little less static, so I did a lot of searching for fish. I'm not too impressed with the 2D ones that just orbit in a circle; I wanted fish that were more realistic.

I finally stumbled across Splash Aquatics. They have some what are called "coarse" fish -- carp, perch, and a couple of others. The sort of common fish that you might find in any lake or stream (at least, in the U.S. -- I don't know how common they are in other places). But these are animated, free-roaming, one-prim sculpties that look and move quite realistically. And best of all, they're only L$100 each! They also come with a feeder. Wear an attachment, or rez a feeder box, and you can drop food for the fish(es), who will swim over and eat it.

It's pretty easy to position the fish and set the area it roams in.

Here's a picture of a carp I stationed at Mermaid's Dream as a greeter and night watchman. Yes, I know carp are fresh-water fish and lindon water is supposedly salt (or so one would think) -- but don't tell the carp that.

Broadly Offensive Geography

2007-09-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

So the latest controversy in SL is what has become to be known as "Nipplegate": an artistic nude statue was put up at the Burning Life event on a PG sim, whereupon the organizers were asked by Iridium Lindon to move the statue to a Mature sim or remove the offending "detail" on the breasts. This was seen by many as unreasonable, seeing as how nudity in art is common and usually accepted in RL, even with under-18 humans present (which they shouldn't be in the SL grid). Vint Falken has had words to say about this.

My contribution to all of this is to point out that even some RL place names would violate this type of censorship.

Simpler body parts also litter the landscape. The Indians named New Hampshire's Uncanoonuc Mountains for a woman's breasts. French trappers did the same for the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Later settlers in Utah named Molly's Nipple and Fern's Nipple. Perhaps they were Scots immigrants recalling the Paps of Jura. There are further body parts out there too, of course.

So a warning to sim builders: don't reproduce any of the above topological features in SL or face the wrath of the Lindons!

Sometimes You Feel Like You're On A Bus To Nowhere

2007-08-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Caledon Regency

2007-08-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Took a walk around the new Regency sim in Caledon. It looks like a good addition to the country.

All That Jazz

2007-08-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

Master V and I were finally inworld at the same time, so we TP'd over to Juke Joint Blues in Plush Lambda. It's the first time I'd been there, and I liked the jazz and easygoing atmosphere.

By the way, what is it with all those "Plush" sims? They seem to form an unofficial "continent" in the Far North. And furthermore, what about those sims to the northwest of that, named after various drugs? Did someone say "broadly offensive"? I guess not.

Bad Grid Day

2007-07-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

The past couple of days have been a little rocky on the Grid. Login problems, and once you get on, sims offline and TP delays and hangups. I did manage to get in a little sailing today in the Nantucket complex (Santa Barbara was offline, so the route to Hollywood was cut off).

For lack of anything better to do, I sat on a seagull.

Access Denied

2007-07-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Second Life is inaccessable this morning. *sigh* I guess I'll have to hang out in RL for a while while the Lindons bang on things.

Mermaid Landscaping

2007-07-16T08:23:00.001-07:00

The ground area under my friend Minto's home wasn't being used, so I convinced him that a part-time mermaid needs a pond of her own. He had previously made me a small pool up at what he humourously calls his "castle", but it was pretty small. So he very kindly relandscaped his land to put in a sizable pond for me to swim in, and moved my "shack" down to poolside. Now if I can find some friendly fish to ~~eat~~ frolic with...

The Skyship Docks at Grendel's Children

2007-07-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Checking out Mr. Incredible's Deltoids

2007-07-01T09:05:00.001-07:00

So why don't you dump Elastigirl and come rescue this cute kitten?

The Crowded Skys of Caledon

2007-06-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

Wrong? Why, Nothing's Wrong...

2007-06-15T20:55:00.001-07:00

The latest update seems to have spawned some mysterious avatar twitches around SL. When I logged on this morning, I noticed that my av seemed to be a bit confused:

Other people I talked to mentioned mysterious eye twitches as well. And a newly-created bug in the "open mouth" emote animation makes one look like a fish. It's effecting so many products and animations that a JIRA report has been started on it: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-318

Green Eyes!

2007-06-09T07:42:00.001-07:00

Considering a new eye color.

In Support of SLiberty

2007-06-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

The blog, The News from Bardhaven, has an entry questioning the statement by Lindon Labs that many activities, including those containing "broadly offensive content" will be banned from Second Life. I also question this development, and posted the following reply to the post:

I am not a citizen of Caledon, but I want to add my voice to yours in questioning this latest statement from Lindon Labs.

SL is not RL. The participants here do not face the same dangers as in the Other World. One can always refuse to participate, teleport to some other location, or log out of any Second Life situation. There are existing channels for dealing with harassment and violations of the existing TOS. To impose draconian limits on activities by consenting adults in Second Life is therefore entirely unnecessary.

The attitude that this statement by Lindon Labs appears to represent is an unfortunate reflection of the growing intolerance and discrimination lately occurring in Real Life, particularly in the USA. Until now, Second Life has been a haven from this; a place where we have a chance to shape our own realities and experiences -- whatever they may be. It would be a tragedy to lose that which has made Second Life so precious to us.

For me, at least, there is no attraction in a bland, G-rated playground with little scope for creativity, closely fenced by regulation, where infractions are gleefully reported by self-imposed morality monitors.

We must stand up for the world that we have made!

Just Squeaking By

2007-05-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

I spent some time today teaching the rats in Master V's dungeon how to squeak.

Technical notes: What that really means is that I found some .WAV sound files of rat squeaks on the Net, used a sound-editing program called Goldwave (highly recommended) to convert them to the format that SL will accept (44.1 kHz sampling, 16-bit mono), and then loaded them into SL.

I added a simple little squeak script and the sound files to the rat object. The script sits in an endless loop and does random-length llSleep calls and then plays one of the squeak sounds (also picked at random).

Just another element added to the dungeon ambience. Maybe dripping water next...

Grendel's Children

2007-05-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I visited Grendel's Children, so I went there to browse, and discovered that they have been expanding. There are now 3 sims where there used to be one, and the store is much larger now (I'm sure that everyone but me knew this already).

Rats!

2007-05-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

The dungeon is now infested with rats. They're scampering quite nicely.

Homesteading, BDSM Style

2007-05-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Master V has been staying in a free apartment, because the owner was trying to sell the land, and let people stay in her apartments for nothing pending the sale. But she finally decided to start charging rent, so Master decided it was time to buy his own land. He had me look for a likely place.

I found a 1024 m2 lot for less than L$10K in the northern part of the new NorthEast Continent. It looked like a quiet area, although there is always the danger that someone will eventually put up a casino next door. And it was near the top of a hillside, so there is a good view. Master looked it over and liked it, so he bought it and told me to start construction. Well, I'm the one who has building and scripting experience. I put in a grassy terrace temporarily and dropped a pink flamingo on it for laughs while I planned the real landscaping.

I made a simple rectangular 20 x 10 m house out of 4 basic prims, and found some Tudor and Gothic textures to give it the proper look for a BDSM master's domicile.

Of course the dungeon was the most important element. I put in an annex to the house, and a ramp leading down. Master V gave me land modification rights, and I dropped the ground as far as it would go to see what I had to work with. Fortunately, there was plenty of available depth.

Per Master V's requirements, I put in three isolation cells at the bottom of the ramp, and a door leading to a sizable dungeon. I sank a pit in the deepest corner for recalcitrant slaves, and put up the proper gloomy textures on the walls and floor. I laid terraces overhead for respectable public landscaping which served as the dungeon ceilings. I killed the flamingo as he was taking up 14 prims.

The past couple of days, I've been rolling my own lockable cell doors (the same scripts also work for the grating over the Pit). The doors have an option to allow someone on the outside to spy on the prisoner in the cell, while remaining unchanged on the inside (isn't SL texturing fun?). I still need to figure out how to detect if a prisoner TP's out, so she can be reported to the Master.

Oh, and I've started working on rats. Really.

The Wide World of SL Sports

2007-05-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

Tiny sumo wrestling!

Court of Atlantis

2007-05-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

Attended a meeting of the Secrets of Atlantis group yesterday afternoon, Queen Luna Misfit presiding. It was definitely an experience being among so many merfolk at the same time!

One thing that was discussed was the role of "evil" merpersons as part of the Clan roleplay. Nearly everyone immediately volunteered to go to the dark side; which says something about merfolk nature, I suppose. But if Caledon can have a war, why can't we merfolk cause a bit of mischief of our own?

Of course it's all in good fun, and Queen Luna warned everyone about taking things too seriously.

Princess Ikioi Tiramisu (left) and Queen Luna Misfit

There is a rumor that a sea area may be created in the elven lands, and if so, we might be able to occupy it from time to time. I certainly hope so -- it would harmonize with my own combined mer/elven heritage.

The meeting finally closed and an impromptu game of beach ball soccer broke out. I was experiencing so much lag, though, that I couldn't manage to fin-kick the ball when it flew by me.

Little People, Big Sim

2007-04-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

On a visit to Caledon Tanglewood yesterday, I happened to encounter Oolon Sputnik, who is pursuing a project to photograph the X-Men as tinys. Certainly a fascinating idea. He was in his Cyclops costume, and fired an energy bolt from his visor for me.

The Slave and the Zombie

2007-04-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

So what do I do now?

Today, Master V announced to me that he now had a new servant; one to occupy camping chairs for him, leaving him free to do whatever he wanted on the Grid while said servant brought in Lindons that Master would then harvest from him. I wondered about this -- even a slave such as myself has some rights, but this new "servant" was being treated as little more than a zombie, a mere placeholder for Master's benefit.

"I'll show him to you," Master told me, commanding me to dress.

We ported to a casino, where Master searched around for a few minutes, unable to locate his minion. Finally, he resorted to calling him up. S (or so I will call him) appeared soon afterward and stood before us, unmoving.

His clothes were plain, but his face was textureless white; cabalistic writing scrawled across it. "I didn't give him a face," Master explained. "He is nothing; a thing." I was disturbed and a little frightened by the soulless visage that turned in my direction.

Then Master V had to leave, and commanded both of us to be about our respective businesses. But as I ported away, I received a single IM message -- from S:

Please help me escape

There is someone there, behind the blank mask, someone who suffers. But what can I, a slave, do? Master punishes indiscretions readily; I shudder to think what he would do to me were I to aid another of his "possessions" in escaping him even if I knew how. Could S even survive as an independent being, or is he totally at the whim of his maker? Worse, what if this entire episode is an invention of Master, a trap to test my obedience?

I must think.

The Case of the Disappearing Sim

2007-04-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

I logged on today and got relocated to "a nearby location". So I TP'd to a neighboring sim and discovered that Sipiwesk was AWOL. The world Map didn't show anything out of the ordinary, like it usually does when a sim is offline.

A big hole where Sipiwesk ought to be

Sipiwesk appeared a little later on, so everything's OK -- for the time being.

Collar and Cuffs

2007-04-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

I guess I should mention that for some time now, I have had a Master.

We met when I was making my usual rounds of the BDSM sites in SL, and I decided to submit myself to him, for as long as the relationship might last. Master V (as I'll call him here) is 8 time zones away from me, so sometimes it's a bit hard to get together. But I now wear his collar and look forward to the times when I can be his slave. He helped me choose a better skin -- to enjoy me better, he said.

Meeow.

2007-03-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Feeling in a rather catty mood, I acted on impulse and bought a set of Twitchy Kitty Ears and a Twitchy Tail from the strangely-named }(O.o){ Fa's Shop (of doom) in Mew. (I had to substitute braces for the '>' and '<' in the name because they played havoc with the HTML formatting of this post). I think the animations add a lot to the effect. Now when I go out catting around, I can do it in style!

Mermaid's Dream

2007-03-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

I attended a sailboat race at the Starbord's Yacht Club in Hollywood, and after watching the races, I was hooked. I just had to get a Flying Tako, which is said to be one of the best sailboats in SL. At L$250, it was a bargan. They were for sale (I resisted the urge to spell that "sail" there you'll be glad to hear) at the dock, so I splurged and bought one.

With some advice from a bystander, I was soon in control. I used to have a 14' Sunfish-class sailboat in RL years ago, and though my experience wasn't all that vast, it helped understand how the boat was reacting. The Flying Tako really does sail much like a small RL sailboat about the same size. And if you go into Mouselook, you get the sounds of the water lapping against the hull. It comes with two HUD attachments that simplify control of the boat and picturing the direction of the wind and the set of the sail, although you can use Chat commands for control as well.

You can set the color of the hull by command as well. I decided to go one better and add a wood-plank texture on the deck and a design on the sail.

Since I'm a part-time mermaid, I decided to name the boat Mermaid's Dream. A bit of searching in Google Images found me a perfect picture -- named, appropriately, "Mermaid's Dream". Some searching found me a template for the sail, which I imported into Photoshop and used as a base onto which I overlaid a half-transparent version of the image picture. You need one image for the left side, and the reverse of the image for the right side.

All this was after quite a bit of fiddling around to get everything to work right, but the result was well worth it: a distinctive and fine-looking boat (if I do say so myself).

There are several yacht clubs in SL and some good waters to sail in. The Hollywood area recently combined with Nantucket to give a total of 24 connected sailing and island sims. Mowry and Caddo have a couple of other yachting clubs and shops.

I don't feel ready to enter any of the races yet, but it may only be a matter of time and practice. Now if I can just find my hull wax...

Does a mermaid really need a sailboat?

Sitting on the World's Largest Poseball

2007-03-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

at Mowry Bay