Impolitik

All Hat, No Cattle

Bush Has Even Managed to Get His Mother’s Picture on Our Currency! 

Warning! The following blogpost has political content. If criticism of the policies of the government of the United States gets your blood up, you might want to go read a blog about dressmaking or something.

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Written 30 April, 2007

Impolitic

On behalf of the majority of American citizens who did NOT vote George Bush into office, I would like to apologize to the rest of the world for the recent behavior of the United States.

In fact, I would like to apologize for it all—our exterminations of the indigenous population, the great bison herds, and the passenger pigeon; our aggressions against sovereign nations from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, (including but not limited to Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Spain, North Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq); our shameless imperialism; our setting up of and support for bad-guy dictatorships; our internment of our Japanese-American citizens during World War II; and our history of slavery.

Am I forgetting something? Oh, yes. Sorry, Hiroshima. Sorry Nagasaki. Sorry, dead people all over the world who were killed by guns and land mines and chemicals manufactured in the United States. Sorry, citizens of various African countries who might be alive today if we hadn’t ignored the genocides. Sorry, everyone, for all that disco music.

But let’s just pick on George W. Bush.

What can I say? The guy has a father fetish. He failed as an oil man, so he’s doing that other thing his daddy did. That’s why he invaded Iraq—because Daddy invaded Iraq. And since Daddy left almost as soon as he got there, Shrub is running in the dark without lights. Plan? There is no plan. There’s only bluster and stubborn persistence in failed policies. If this guy was a mechanic he would have changed your fuel pump seven times and would still be insisting your problem was a failed fuel pump.

Shrub is acting tough and full of bravado in hopes people will forget he was AWOL from Viet Nam and ran and hid when the twin towers collapsed on 9/11.

Or maybe it’s a dry drunk, since his handlers must be keeping him away from his alcohol and cocaine.

George W. been assiduously following the master de-deomocratization plan laid out by Adolph (can I paint your house?) Hitler in Mein Kamph, violating just about every clause of the Bill of Rights (so far I’ve not had to quarter troops in my house, but I can feel the day is close at hand) “Habeus Corpus? We don’t use foreign words like that in Texas.”

I mean, he created a universal spooky enemy—terrorists—and it’s a great concept, since anyone can be cast to fill that role. In fact, thanks to the sheep we have in Congress, the Shrub can declare any American an enemy combatant without cause. In fact, if you don’t see any more blogs here, please send me a fruit basket at Guantanamo. I’ve dared to criticize Mr. Mission Accomplished.

Four words. All hat, no cattle.

That about sums him up, don’t you think?

The Case of the Multiplying Prims

This Little Box Works Wonders

This Giant Palm Has Been Rezzing Reliably since December
Pay No Notice to My Wonderful Pinstripe Outfit from PixelDolls

Now You See It

Now You Don't

Written 30 April, 2007

The Case of the Multiplying Prims

Shortly after I bought Pele I found myself in a sex shop. There were penises and vaginas for sale.

Last time I looked, I had a vagina. And I most assuredly didn’t want or need a penis.

I wasn’t there for sex bits at all, in fact. I had gone to check out something called a one-prim rezzer. Getting to see all the body parts was a bonus.

A one-prim rezzer consists of a box with a script inside. It creates an object (or group of objects) that don’t contribute toward the prim count of the land.

How can this be, you ask?

On the Create menu is a tic box that will set an object to temporary. Try it. But be sure you’re not temping a noncopyable object, because in 90 seconds or so it will be gone, deleted by Second Life in a routine cleanup.

Temp objects make practical such things as guns (or, rather, the bullets they shoot), and the coconut-throwing monkeys Leaf Shermer was so kind as to give me. Temporary prims lie about for a few seconds then disappear, leaving the land uncluttered.

Rezzers take advantage of this by throwing up temporary objects of your choice in the location of your choice and immediately replacing them when they are reclaimed. In this way, it’s possible to stick objects (or groups of objects) on your land without eating up precious prims.

All you have to do is to rez an ordinary object, rename it so you’ll know it’s rezzed, make it temporary, and take it back into inventory before it disappears. Then you drag it into a box containing the DAPSI that’s the rezzer I bought, no idea what the acronym is), then move and restart the box until your objects is where you want it. Then you make the box invisible and presto! There’s your house, or stairwell, or grove of trees. It may flicker a bit on occasion, but for the most part it’s just there, taking up only one prim and looking just fine.

The version of the DAPCI I bought worked, but the entire sim slowed to a crawl. The creator came right out when I IMed, him, though, and gave me his new version, which was sim-friendly. He helped me stick the palm tree back up, and all was good.

That was in December. That palm is still there, temp rezzing.

Last week I wanted to temp rez some beautiful but high-prim copyable tropical plants, and pulled out the DAPCI. I made four rezzed copies and placed them, and all was good.

Or so I thought.

When I logged onto SL the next morning, I was deluged with a flurry of messages telling me there were no free prims on my land.

How could there be? There were over a thousand available. Weren’t there?

Weren’t there?

I flew from parcel to parcel, checking the land to see if there were unaccounted prims anywhere, or if there were prims from someone I didn’t know.

There weren’t.

I made the rounds a second time, and then a third. No dice.

WTF?

Eventually it dawned on me that the last thing I had done was to play with the rezzer. So I flew myself to the nearest huge tropical and deleted it.

And it was still there. So I deleted it.

And it was still there.

That’s when I knew the pooch was, to use the vernacular, screwed.

It seems I had forgotten to turn the giant tropicals temporary before putting them in the rezzers.

So for the past twelve or so hours, the DAPCI boxes had been faithfully rezzing giant tropical plants with 12 prims each, one per minute, sticking them on top of each other.

I gave the DAPCIs the command to show themselves and turn themselves off and proceeded to delete giant tropicals. There were dozens, stacked atop one another.

After a half hour or so, they were all gone and I had 1200 free prims on the land.

I made new DAPCI. boxes, stuck in temporary copies of the tropical, and restarted the boxes and all was well.

Cheyenne Palisades, prim detective.

Lassitude & Ennui

Written 6 May, 2007

Lassitude & Ennui

On Saturday I went shopping with Sweetie.

She and Aldo had already scoped the places out, so it was a whirlwind tour.

In one store, I found myself feeling a bit lazy and disaffected.

I can't imagine why!

Tearing Down the House

Written 7 May, 2007

Tearing Down the House

Oh, dear.

It seems my friend Boofhead accidentally deleted the skybox I sold him.

Sorry, Boof, no refunds.

The house isn’t really gone, just snatched out of its former location high above Pele and filed away gently in Boofhead’s inventory.

I was on Pele when Boof had his catastrophe, and Sweetie and I flew up to 700 meters to see if I could help.

It was funny (but probably not to Boof).

I asked Boof to give me mod rights and when he had pulled it out of inventory moved it to its previous height (easy, exactly 700 meters) and then centered it—not so easy, but the artwork Boof had hung on the walls helped me nudge it into position.

Damn, I’m good!

Then I raised Boof’s house 20 meters so he could move or take the artwork he had lost within the walls—after which I set it back in place.

This time Boof did what I had suggested before—he noted the position and rotation of his house and put it on a notecard.

Next time he’ll be ready.

And if you read this Boof, I’m not sure if you removed mod rights when we were finished. Please check.

One never knows when I’ll go on a rampage.

Grrrr!

Written 4 May, 2007

Grrrr!

Blogger is insisting on removing my paragraph spacing tonight.

I hate it when that happens.

To delineate paragraphs, I've had to uses dashes in all my posts.

Grrrr!

And wouldn't you know it, it isn't doing it to THIS blogpost!

Really grrrr!

The Caves at Lascaux

Written 4 May, 2007

The Caves at Lascaux

Yesterday Sweetie took me to France, to the caves at Lascaux.

From Wikipedia:

Lascaux is a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département. They contain some of the earliest known (Upper Paleolithic) art, dating back to somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 BC, or as far back as 25,000 BC. They consist mostly of realistic images of large animals procreating, including aurochs, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time.

I've put up four photos, two of the actual cave in Southwest France, and two I took at virtual Lascaux. Which is which? Ah, that's the question!

It's amazing that the caves were built on only a 1024 plot-- and there were prims left over!

After only a few minutes in the caves, I took the teleport to the entrance, thinking I would start at the entrance (Sweetie had teleported me in), but I was unable to find a way inside.

Sweetie found Lascaux at www.secondseeker.com. Maybe I'll go there and get the SLURL.

Flying Stuff

Written 4 May, 2007

Flying Stuff

I'm always finding objects where I expect their owners didn't mean to place them.

Here's a picture of a cow near the Particle Lab.

There's an automobile-- and an expensive-looking one, at that, that has been hanging above The Cauldron since at least December. I can see it from Pele, and it's at times annoying.

I think that cow is wanting someone to come and get her.

Community of Friends

Written 30 May, 2007

Community of Friends

I’m happy to say that more than half of the houses at Pele are rented.

Aldo Zond has taken the biggest tiki house, and Axel Piccard is renting one of the three smaller ones, a beautiful house that stands on stilts, partway in the ocean.

Melissa Yeudoux (I always worry about the spelling of her last name) has taken a little tiki hideaway that sits on the Forsaken River.

Boofhead Oh has rented a skybox. Actually, I sold him the skybox and rented him the space and prims. He has already customized it and it’s looking like the perfect artist’s loft.

Still to rent: two very nice tiki houses and one skybox. IM Cheyenne Palisades if you would like to look at them.

The good news is the renters are my good friends. It’s like we are now a family living in the same small town.

I love that.

If I could afford it I would just give them the space for free, but as my tier is now approaching $200 and as I civil servant I don’t make all that much money, I needed to find a way to reduce the monthly hit. I calculated the rental fees to cut the tier down to about $100. I’m more than halfway there

Thanks, my friends, for helping.

Sculptable Prims

Written 30 April, 2007

Sculptable Prims

If sculptable prims become a reality (one notices that spring is wearing on and there is not yet, as promised, voice in Second Life), it will be huge.

No, the prims won’t be huge (I can slip you a bundle of non-sculptable huge prims if you like), but the ramifications will be.

What part of a prim is a ramification? Good question. I wish I knew. Guess we’ll have to ask a Linden about that And no mention of the huge prims, okay?

From the video on the SL blog, it seems that, among other things, surfaces can be dimpled and corners rounded. This will be huge for builders, and especially for the avatars who make complex curves found in animals and those remarkable prim statues one sees around the grid.

Builders will be able to achieve effects that were impossible before, and with far fewer prims.

But sculptors! They will be able to achieve astonishing effects; today’s statues will seem crude by comparison.

Sculptors take note—your existing work will not be rendered invalid, any more than the works of oil painters have been invalidated by the invention of watercolors. Your prim statues will become articles of historical interest and will one day grace the halls of the virtual museums of Second Life.

Check the Linden blog for a short film about sculptable prims.