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.