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?