A Whole New World

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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* 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

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

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

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

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!