Written 10 November, 2009
Bonus Bird
The little hummingbirds from Animania are notoriously pushy.
Pictured: A Whimsy tragedy (previously documented in Dangerous Whimsy): As Chey looks on in virtual horror, Sweetie is pushed to her virtual death by the ruby-throated monster.
Brightly colored parrots (free from Garth Fairchild (although they broke in early 2008 when the new physics engine was introduced and required fixing to stop them from flying backwards ) make a colorful show over the lava pit of the Pele volcano.
Written 10 November, 2009
Whimsy's Animals
I. Birds
Animals go a long way toward making a sim interesting and realistic.
At the same time, animated animals draw upon the resources of the sim, and too many, or even a few of the poorly scripted ones, can slow things down.
We try not to go hog wild with animals on Whimsy, but we do have quite a few.
I invite you to come to Whimsy to see if you can find these critters.
This eagle by Julia Hathor patrols the upper gardens. A second eagle, this one by Bill Havercamp, circles above Pele.
Julia Heron's beautiful heron catches fish in a pond at the upper gardens.
This heron by Animania struts its stuff on the beach.
This vividly-colored parrot from Animal Island soars above Whimsy's lower gardens.
This little guy sits atop a fence post on the upper gardens. Two others of the same species sit on a fence at the lower gardens. They can be found at Happy Mood.
Written 9 November, 2009
Woot, it worked!
Horray, it worked!
Having the Blogger app on an iPhone might be useful, as you could post from anywhere on the planet-- but the iTouch requires a wireless network, and wherever I could access the internet with the iTouch I could access it with a laptop. So nice experiment, but I don't expect to be cramping my thumbs sending messages from the iTouch.
Okay, we will now see if this post, composed on my new iTouch, will successfully send this brief message to Blogger. And, I suppose, whether the two abortive attempts which preceeded this one went through.
Wish me luck!
Written 6 November, 2009
Sparkle IM for the iTouch
It seems I spoke too soon. There IS a Second Life iPhone app.
It's called Sparkle IM, and it allows you to send and receive IMs to and from Second Life and OpenSim. Read about it and watch the video here.
Written 6 November, 2009
Come On, Come On, Come On, iTouch Me, Babe!
OMG! Total geek-out!
Yesterday, as I arose from my bed at the leisurely hour of ten, there was a loud knock on the door. It was the FedEx man, and he handed me a box that contained the 32GB iTouch I had ordered from the Apple Store.
Think of the iTouch as an iPhone without the phone or an iPod on steroids. It connects wirelessly to computer networks and runs thousands of apps ranging from games to restaurant locators to a virtual zippo lighter you can flick open.
The iTouch is small, but all screen, and a touch screen at that. Most operations are done by touching the screen. There's a button to turn the device on and off, volume up and volume down, and a handy button to close applications.
Thousands of apps are already available, many free, and many at a nominal cost (usually $.99 or $1.99). And no, alas, Second Life is not yet available. But iSnort is.
After I opened the box I topped off the battery, synched the iTouch with iTunes, logged it into the local wireless network (Sweetie's lair is in the same building as a computer store with a T3 connection to the Internet). I downloaded an app (GTI Racing) to make sure the iTouch worked, and put it back into its box to await Sweetie's return.
When Sweetie came through the door I waited a few minutes until she had finished her snack of truffles and caviar, then handed her the iTouch.
And there went the rest of the evening.
You see, Sweetie instantaneously and completely geeked out.
And, well, to be completely honest, so did I.
There ensued a frantic googling and downloaded of apps. Soon the iTouch was loaded with every application known to man, from a map of the New York City subway system to a great Electronic Arts game called Spore Origins. I had apps for:
Tuning my guitar
Reading electronic books
Looking at FLICKR photos
Finding AAA discounts
Converting measurements
Recording or writing notes to myself
Playing mahjong, pool, sudoku, and roulette
Making any of 68,000 mixed drinks
Listening to AOL radio or Car Talk
Reading the news as NPR and Huffington Post
Finding Wi-Fi spots around the world
Tuning into any webcam on the internet
Finding movies
Identifying birds
Using eBay
Looking at any spot on Earth with Google Earth or regular old-fashioned maps
Touring the Louvre
Making an alarm clock
Generating white noise to go to sleep by
Finding the current weather and forecast at any place on the planet
and yes, even flicking open that virtual Zippo!
I also had an assortment of games, including the aforementioned Spore.
Now I need to use the supplied USB connection to add my music and videos to the iTouch!
The combination of the touch screen and the built-in accelerometer makes for easy and fun control. With racing games you can turn the iTouch on its side, holding it by both ends and turning it just like a steering wheel. You can grab your one-celled organism in Spore and stretch or shrink it by scissoring your fingers. And you can turn pages by flicking a finger. And shake the iTouch to select a song at random. Way cool!
The best app I've seen so far is a virtual level. It not only contains a level; it will tell you exactly how much you're off plumb.
The iTouch isn't quite as handy as the iPhone because some features won't work unless you're somewhere you can hook up with a wireless server (and even then the iPhone's GPS features won't work), but it's a ton of fun-- so much so that Sweetie went to bed after midnight.
Spies-- I mean, special agents-- need a lot of sleep.
She wouldn't have gotten any sleep at all if she had seen the Escape from Castle Wolfenstein 3D app.
Written 5 November, 2009
By the Way... Genesis
Robert (R.) Crumb has long been one of my favorite illustrators-- since the early 70s, in fact, when I stumbled across his Zap #4.
Having been raised on bland comic books that followed the insulting (to my intelligence) and obscene (to my standards) Comics Code, I was blown away by Crumb's work.
Crumb went places that would have been unimaginable to psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, whose book The Seduction of the Innocent led to the threat of congressional hearings on comics and the formation by the comics industry of the Comics Code Authority. For instance, that Zap 4 featured a Crumb story about happy family incest, dad with sis, mom with brother.
Crumb's comic artwork has elicited harsh commentary from critics. He frequently draws pictures of overly sexual women in subservient roles, as well as "darky" afro-americans among other stereotypes. Numerous critics cite his overly sexual women, calling him "the chief sexist of underground comics." Other critics, such as African American cartoonist and author Charles Johnson, claim that Crumb's comics are inherently racist because of their racist portrayals of minorities. Crumb's response to such criticism is that he was only "playing around."
-- Wikipedia
But Crumb has a serious side, too. His 1979 poster A Short History of America was revelatory and his Heroes of the Blues and other trading cards were and still are inspiring.
Shortly after the 1994 movie about him, Crumb moved with his family to France-- but clearly, he is still busy.
When I was on Cape Cod last month, I chanced across a new work by Crumb: The Book of Genesis Illustrated ($14.95, W.W. Norton & Co., 224 pp., cloth or cover, available at www.amazon.com). Read about it here.
Crumb spent four years researching Genesis, searching ancient texts to determine the historical meaning of words and making sure the buildings in his texts didn't look like movie sets. The result is astounding, a read of at least four hours, a faithful telling of the entire book of Genesis.
The illustrations are typical Crumb, black-and-white, heavily inked and highly detailed. And it's wonderfully entertaining. Even those dreadful begats are readable, as each of the begatted is shown as a distinct personality. And no sexual or racial stereotyping here.
Whether or not you are Christian, I really recommend Crumb's book.
And if you're really wicked, find a copy of Zap #4 and read it.
Written 5 November, 2009
In the Beginning...
The previous post got me spinning Bible stories in my head.. as told in Second Life.
For instance...
I.1. In the beginning Philip created the prim.
I:2. And the prim was without texture, and scripts; and plywood was upon the face of the prim. And the Spirit of Philip moved upon the six faces of the prim.
1:3. And Philip said, Let there be texture, and there was texture.
I could go on...
But maybe I shouldn't.
Written 4 November, 2009
Here's a New (And Slightly Slutty?) Look for Chey
It started when I journeyed to Sky Everett Hair to see if there was anything new. There was, the do pictured, which is called Quiet Seduction. I bought it, but I also picked up the pack of freebie eyelashes.
Now, I'm not a big fan of prim eyelashes-- they don't move when you blink and they look like fat black worms on your eyes until they rez-- but these were, after all, free, so I grabbed them.
They turned out, like Sky's hair, to be a bit out there, but I liked them, especially when worn with the new hair.
So I threw on this recently purchased Nona Hedges outfit (it's called Spanish, see no stupid anti-inspection orbs around this avatar) and did a self photo op.
The look is a bit dissipated, I think, but striking nonetheless.
Behold the serpent.
Behold Eve.
And Eve saw the serpent.
And the serpent said, "Woah! Check out those eyelashes.!"
"You can eat of the fruit," said the serpent.
"Hmmm...," thought Eve.
"I wonder how snakes taste?"
Written 3 November, 2009
Evil Clowns
My RL friend Rena's grown son is frightened to death of clowns.
I can't blame him. Clowns are creepy. Especially when 20 or so clamber out of one of those tiny little cars!
There are some great evil clowns in SL, and someone should do a photo essay of them (hint hint, Melissa!).
To get around to the point of this blog, I got an IM from my friend Pam Havercamp the other day (just the week before we had been sitting around a table in RL, singing along with Bill Havercamp's guitar). Bill wanted me to see something he had been working on.
You must understand, Bill goes ALL OUT for Halloween. He opens a Halloween store and fills it with ghosts and goblins and cauldrons of blood and haunted houses and graveyards and spiders and witches. Then, on November 1, it all comes down and it's Christmastime in Havercampland.
So I was shocked to see Bill working on Halloween the day after.
It must be the evil clown got to him.
Here I am, captured by Bill's evil clown.
Posted 3 November, 2009
And Yet More Photos of Fall Foliage
I have to say I'm thrilled with the performance of my new camera. Then again, the uplands were gorgeous, lots of bright yellows and muted oranges this year. There wasn't much bright red, but when it did it really popped, as in the top photo.
Written 3 November, 2009
Fall Colors
On Saturday, when the mail came, there was a box. Inside was my new used Canon Digital Rebel SLR I had purchased on eBay. I topped off the battery, inserted a memory card (both were included), made sure the image quality was set high, and Sweetie and I took off to take pictures.
We drove to the New Jersey Botanical Gardens, which are a short six mile drive from Sweetie's Fortress of Solitude in New York. Despite the full fall colors, traffic was light, and we were free to stop the car wherever we wished to take photographs.
Alas, Sweetie's camera's rechargable battery promptly gave out (when we got home I ordered a spare for her on eBay).
That's Sweetie for you; her katanas are perpetually sharp, but she forgets to recharge her camera's battery.
My new camera performed beautifully. Here are some of the 125 or so photos I took. The photos are unaltered except for cropping the rear-view mirror which wound up in a couple of the shots.
Written 3 November, 2009
Cameras
When I was 14 my parents gave me a cheap camera for Christmas. I had no budget for film and developing and it leaked light badly, but I loved it and still have the pictures I made with it. Here's a photo I took on a camping trip with friends. The light leak gives the photo an eerie quality, huh?
The cars are Corvairs, BTW. Remember Corvairs? Unsafe at any speed?
...I will post the photo when I plug in my external hard drive...
During my college years I, like almost everyone in the U.S., took snapshots with a Kodak Instamatic 110. It was easy to use, but the pictures were crappy because of the tiny film size.
When I was in grad school a friend came to stay with me, and he brought his Canon AE-1 35 mm SLR with him. My eyes were opened.
Single lens reflex 35mm cameras are a bit limited by their film size (about the biggest you can blow up an image from a film camera is 8' x 10' before it gets grainy), but they're delightful to use. You look though a viewfinder-- but unlike that Instamatic, you are looking through the lens, so you see exactly the shot you're going to get. When you take the picture, there's a satisfying click as a mirror flips up to expose the film and then back down.
I bought that AE-1 from my friend and merrily took photos until it broke. I was unable to find anyone in Europe or the US to fix it. Later, I bought a Minolta Maxxum 35 SLR. It had all sorts of bells and whistles, but I didn't use it as much. I missed the manual AE-1.
The 80s saw widespread sales of 35mm cameras with film auto advance and rewind, autofocus, and advanced electronic features.
Then came digital cameras. Crude in the 1990s, they have grown increasingly powerful and sophisticated in the 2000s. Almost everyone has one. Feedback is instant (just look on the viewfinder after snapping to see your shot), there's no need to send your negatives to the drugstore for processing, because there are no negatives-- and there are no negatives because there is no film. Film, after 150 years, has become nearly obsolete. Even our favorite, Kodachrome, has gone away. Yes, they took our Kodachrome away.
Early digital cameras, and the more inexpensive ones of today are fixed lens cameras-- but over the past six or seven years digital SLRs have proliferated.
I, along with almost everyone else around the world, bought a digital fixed lens camera, a Fujifilm FinePix 2600 with a 2 mb CCD. It served me in good stead, taking competent pictures once I figured out I couldn't use regular alkaline AA batteries.
I eventually sent that camera to my Second Life brother Mordecai Skaggs and purchased a 5 mp camera which I have used only infrequently.
Why infrequently? Because it just wasn't fun-- and because I was able to take stunning snapshots in Second Life. My artistic photography needs were met and I just wasn't interested in taking mundane snapshots in real life-- especially since I lived alone in RL and there was nothing in particular that needed documenting.
In the past year or so, however, digital SLR cameras have improved in quality and decreased in price to the point I couldn't ignore them. This past month I've been pricing them.
A number of companies make digital SLRS, and there are hundreds of models. The more expensive cost several thousand dollars, but the entry level ones had fallen to as little as $500 for a camera and basic lens.
Last month I spent a good while in the electronics stores near Times Square trying to get a good deal on a Canon Digital Rebel-- to no avail. I found better bargains online, but it was looking like I would have to spend at least $550, with tax and shipping, to buy the most basic Rebel or Nikon SLR.
I didn't want to spend that much, however, so I turned to my old friend eBay; immediately an early model Rebel turned up, and I bid and bought it.
The minute I opened the box, inserted the battery, and took a snapshot of the room, I knew I had found interest in RL photography again.
On Saturday, Sweetie and I took a short drive to see the fall colors. Instead of going to Harriman State Park, which is less than a mile from her apartment, we drove south, into the highlands in neighboring New Jersey, where I had blundered on Wednesday, while driving in a blinding rain.
Stay tuned for photos of fall foliage.
Written 3 November, 2009
As Promised, Photos
Here are some of Sweetie's photos from Cape Cod.
Top to bottom: Beach grass, Lifesaving Museum, the last sea rose of the season.
And here are two she took in Connecticut, on the way back home.
The top photo was taken at Gillette's Castle State Park. It seems one of the heirs to the Gillette safety razor fortune was known for playing Sherlock Holmes on stage. He built the castle for elaborate weekend detective games; it's replete with secret passages and hidden rooms and ladders for clambering about. Razor boy was naughty; he was able to look into all of the guest chambers from his master suite.
The bottom photo is the Connecticut River, taken from the castle grounds.
