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...