Why Shouldn't a Mermaid Have a Sailboat?

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!

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

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

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

The People Have Spoken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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...

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

Gather Moments While You May

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

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

I just love the Caledon sims

Crap All Over The Place

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

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

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

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

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

*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

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®

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...

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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...


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