Why You Shouldn't Camp

HUDs Up!

Written 5 August, 2007

HUDs Up!

The Flying Tako comes with two Heads Up Devices--   an info HUD, which sits at the upper left of the screen and provides information about wind, sails, speed, and direction; and a steering HUD, which sits at the lower left.

So anyway, here's a screen shot of Sweetie in her boat, with me riding.

Chey's Tako

Written 4 August, 2007

Chey's Tako
In the previous post, you can see myFlying Tako as it was upon purchase.

Here it is after customizing.

I applied textures to the hull, seats, mast, rudder, and tiller, and followed instructions to change the name from Flying Tako to Pele Princess.

I was able to change the spinnaker texture, but the main sail had alphas, which are still beyond me-- so I took myself to one of the stores that specialize in Tako sails and bought a nice set of yellow sheets. Here they are.

Landlocked

The Flying Tako As it Comes Out of the Box

An Unfortunate Incident occurs on Sweetie's Tako's Maiden Voyage

Written 4 August, 2007

Landlocked

I've lived many places, but never close to an ocean or other large body of water (TVA lakes don't count, as they're full of NASCAR-loving speedboaters).

So I never learned to sail.

In fact, I've been in a sailboat only once, for about 30 minutes, when a friend took me for a midnight ride on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville.

It was way fun.

But water is everywhere in Second Life, and Sweetie and I are taking advantage of that fact.

A month or so ago, while exploring, Sweetie found a cluster of about 4o interconnecting sims, each with lots of water. We teleported there and I rezzed a freebie sailboat, and we were off.

Sort of. It wasn't much of a boat.

The area was beautiful, with blue water interspersed with beautifully designed islands and studded with the distant sails.  We sailed for hours.

Along the way, we ran into some people putting up a start line for a race and they directed us to Kanker Greenacre's shop, where we bought Kanker's Flying Tako 3.2 sailboat (Gray, 33, 151, 22).

At only $L275, the Tako is a bargain. It's a highly-scripted, modifiable boat which is quite easy to command (although, like a real sailboat, difficult to operate). It allows you to set and change the direction of the mainsail and spinnaker, raise and lower the centerboard, and monitor wind conditions and the boat's speed. Way cool.

They say that if you can effectively sail the Tako, you can sail a real life sailboat.

I believe that.

When Sunday rolled around, Sweetie and I took ourselves to the Hollywood sim, where we attended a class for beginning sailors.  And there were a lot of them, maybe 25, including the two of us.

I learned something important that day, which is how Horatio Hornblower could sail in a northerly direction when the wind was blowing from the north.

"Oh, so _THAT'S_ what tacking means!"

Once I realized that I could sail within 18 points of the wind, I was good to go, at least insofar as being able to make my boat make headway-- but sailing is complicated, and I'm way confused about things like sheet angle and head angle and positive and negative directions as shown in the Tako's info hud.

But I'm getting there!

And Sweetie?

Well, Sweetie is a natural sailor, despite that fact that she has turned her boat into concrete.

YouTube

Written 4 August, 2007

Pele Train Ride on You Tube

Way back in December or January I asked someone in Live Help (remember when there WAS such a thing as Live Help? If you do, you're an oldie!) to point me toward a good video capture program.

They gave me a name and I wrote it down on a scrip of paper and promptly lost it. (Nowaways I make all my in-world notes on notecards).

So I went web-crawling and ground a capture program called the Growler. It was free to download and easy to use and didn't bring my system to a screeching halt when I ran it.

I played with Growler a bit and then, busy with other things, left it alone.

But last night I pulled it out and fooled with the settings until it would record both sound and video and shot a six-minute film of me riding the Pele Light Rail train.

There was no title, just an ad for Grower), and there were some artifacts in the visuals (mostly red glows on certain objects), and the frame rate is too slow so there's a little jerkiness, but all in all I thought it was okay, and so I paid Growler $19.95 so I could export video without their stamp on it, saved the film as an .AVI file, opened an account on You Tube, and unloaded.

This afternoon it showed up in search.

It's called Pele Train Ride, and here's the URL:

Camping for Couture

Sweetie in a Defleur Outfit, Overwhelming Me in a Moment of Temporary Weakness. :)

Defleur's Charcoal Queen

Defleur's Bloodbird CAT

Defleur Mini in Peacock Pattern

Written 4 August, 2007

Camping for Couture

When I was new to Second Life I sat in a camping chair for exactly ten minutes. That's how long it took to earn $2L, and I was going nuts by the time I earned it. I swore I would never do it again.

And I haven't.

Until the other night.

Awhile back Sweetiei and I went to Catwalk City and found a place called Defleur Designs. The gowns there were exquisite, and reasonably priced at about $550 Lindens for the top of the line models-- expensive enough to make one think about spending the money, but inexpensive enough to make you decide to do it. And the dresses are stunning.

The come with veils for the Gorean-minded, which displeased me. I throw them away as soon as I unpack the boxes and then empty the trash.

The other night I went to Defleur's main store to see if there were additional designs, and found two camping chairs.

And not just ANY camping chairs. These chairs required you to sit for far longer than ten minutes, but the awards were worth it-- a $250L outfit after on hour, a $500L outfit an hour later, and a $550L outfit the hour after that.

So for two nights I took Cheyenne to Defleur Designs and sat her butt in the chair and went to bed.

I got five of the six outfits, because for some reason my computer lost connection-- but it was a dress I already own.

I got quite a wardrobe for sitting in a chair for a couple of nights while my human operator slept!

I gave several of the outfits to my darling Sweetie, and wow, does she look good in them!

The address, for those who don't mind sitting, is Gold Coast (239, 53, 22).

OMG! OMG!

Written 3 August, 2007

OMG! OMG!

When I got home from work and started Second Life, there was an optional viewer download.

Since I figured my SL experience couldn't get much worse than it has been these past four or five days, I downloaded it.

Surprise, surprise, it has voice!

And surprise of all surprises, Everything is working well for me!

I'm not ruthed, I can teleport, my frame rate is way up, search works, my inventory works, my friends list (well, "Contacts") list is working, and I can rez and delete objects. Notecards open, and scripts too.

And I've had the viewer open for more than three hours now, and I've not crashed (Voice first look reliably crashed me every 30 minutes.

OMG! OMG!

Thank you, Lindens!

Pele Community Center

Written 3 August, 2007

Pele Community Center

Awhile back I bought a very nice tiki-style building with open sides (curtains close the building when a switch is clicked).

It's suitable for renting, and if demand ever required it, I would indeed rent it, but for now I've set it up as the Pele Community Center.

The center has chairs, a hot tub, a tv screen, a jukebox (so members of the Volcanoes Unlimited Group can change radio channels), and a massage table.

The center is open to renters and visitors to Pele.

You'll see it from the train station. :)

Aha!

Written 2 August, 2007

Aha!

I've been puzzling over the silence of the Lindens in the wake of the many disruptions in Second Life.

Why haven't they spoken up?

I read a post on the SL forums last night that could explain it.

Someone hypothesized that the grid is under attack. The attack overwhelms the Linden servers, and widespread chaos ensues.

It makes perfect sense.

First, there are two groups who have cause to be pissed off at Linden Lab and Second Life.

First and foremost are the former casino operators, who lost (in some cases) considerable investments and a lot of income when LL recently shut down the use of gambling machines.

Second are people who were negatively impacted by the theft of 3.2 million Lindens from the SL Stock Exchange.

And of course there are any number of individuals, who have cause to be disgruntled-- for instance, the folks who (according to the SL rags) recently had funds imbezzeled by some guy who sold his private island to five or six different people and split the grid with $11,000 US dollars (the Lindens say they can't do anything about it).

But it makes sense that Second Life would get attacked-- other web-based sites do. And it makes sense LL would keep the news quiet.

I talked it over with my friend Peter this morning, and he has similar suspicions.

Something to think about.