Artbox

Written 28 September, 2011

Artbox

A couple of weeks ago Sweetie and I and our friend Elysienne explored a place called Artbox.

It was pretty cool.

At Artbox you can, by sitting on poseballs, insinuate yourself into any number of pieces of art.

Here I am in a Keith Haring painting.

My Wish List, Two Years On

Written 27 September, 2011

My Wish List, Two Years On

Here's my my top ten wish list from June, 2009, with updates:

1. The ability to have large amounts (thousands) of avatars together in one place and one time. No progress.

2. Smooth handoffs between sims (no lag, no weirdness). Significant improvement, but still a problem.

3. Increase in prim allowance (maybe 40,000, as on other grids). No progress.

4. Decrease in tier ($195 USD sounds like a fair amount for a sim. $295 is too much. No progress.

5. Longer sounds (10 seconds is just not long enough), and zero delay in hearing sounds. No progress.

6. Ability to create bigger prims (100 meters is a reasonable upper limit. 10 meters is ridiculous). ARRIVED!

7. Ablity to teleport with avatar intact to and from other grids. No progress.

8. More attachment points (my sop to the fashionistas amongst us). ARRIVED!

9. More upper and lower clothing layers (another sop). ARRIVED!

10. Double-click on attachments or groups of attachments to attach them. ARRIVED!

So, four of ten are operational, at least if you use a third-party viewer. Not too shabby.

Some things my readers mentioned were group chat-- better, but, not fixed; ability to join more groups-- ARRIVED!-- ability to stretch prims beyond 10 meters-- Arrived! and lots of things that aren't on the radar: things like the ability to drag inventory and other windows to a second monitor; more flexibility in avatar sizing; flexible sculpted prims, and intergrid teleportation with inventory.

We can only hope.

Comment Moderation

Written 27 September, 2011

Comment Moderation

I've added the dreaded word recognition step to commenting. That's because I've been getting hundreds of spam messages.

Hopefully this will end that problem without unduly penalizing those who comment on this blog.

Oh, wait! Nobody EVER comments on this blog.

Well, there are a few of you, and let me tell you-- I appreciate you! I really do!

Just Hanging (Literally)

Sometimes when I'm busy doing things other than Second Life I fly up and just hang in the air-- especially now my second monitor is dead and SL is covered by other windows. If I'm on the ground people sometimes walk by and say hi and I don't realize it, so being in the air is just convenient.

Tonight when I bought Second Life to the front, I realized I had a great perspective of the southwest corner of Whimsy. Without moving my camera I took the photo above.

Then I zoomed out and took this one:

Visible are Whimsy's entry point, several waterfalls, the path to the volcano Pele, Pele herself and her temple, the lower gardens and Whimsy's lagoon, the aboveground portion of the Whimsy Express rail line, the Temple to Bob and Bob himself, Marienn's house on Whimcentricity, and several small islands on Whimsy Kaboom.

In the top photo just above my right shoulder you can see a hot lava boulder Pele has hurled.The black smoke marks its trajectory. It's about to hit the shoulder of the mountain and then roll and tumble into the sea.

100,000 HIts!

Written 25 September, 2011

100,000 Hits!

While I wasn't looking the Neocounter on my blog passed 100,000 hits.

The blog was between one and two years old when I installed both the Neocounter and the Cluster Map above it. Along the road the Cluster Map got reset; until it did it was keeping pace with the Neocounter.

I don't know of 100k is a significant number of hits for a blog, but it sure feels like it!

Whimsy is Ba-ack!!! (The Lindens are Amazing!

Written 24 September, 2011

Whimsy is ba-ack! (The Lindens are Amazing!)

Less than an hour after I wiped out my sim and 30 minutes after I filled a support ticket-- on a Saturday!-- the Lindens rolled it back. Everything is back to normal and I am much, much, relieved.

I take back all the bad things I ever said about you guys.

Oh! My! God! Sim Rollback Requested!

Some Parts of Whimsy are Relatively Unaffected

Written 24 September, 2011

Oh! My! God! Sim Rollback Requested!

This afternoon I logged in after a nap to await Sweetie's usual melodramatic entrance.

As I waited I looked at prim usage in the About Land menu. Whimsy has build enabled, and people often leave prims here. I routinely return them.

Today, somehow, some way, I managed to select my own name and return my prims. All of them. Ten thousand of them!

I had hopes of using Phoenix' Restore to Last Position function, but that worked only for some of the grouped objects. Thousands and thousands of objects won't go back to their proper place.

Since it would take months and hundreds of hours of hard work to put everything back into place, and since Whimsy would never again be quite the same, I've asked the Lindens for a sim rollback. I've notified residents and asked them to hold off on setting out no-copy items until the sim is either rolled back or the Lindens (and god, let's hope that doesn't happen) tell me no).

Some Parts are Wiped Out. The Volcano Goddess Pele Is NOT Going to Be Happy!

Dark Carousel, Bright Carousel

Written 20 September, 2011

Dark Carousel, Bright Carousel

Tonight Sweetie, I, and our friend Elysienne were looking for the roller coaster featured in my ((I think) hilarius blogpost Day Pass. Alas, I neglected to include a landmark.

We tarried awhile at Carnivale, where I took the above photo of a dilapidated old roller coaster.

I know Second Life's prim rain and virtual winds are harsh, but I sure hope it wasn't the remains of this beautiful carousel, which I photographed several years ago at Carnivale.

Outfits

I just discovered this piece, which somehow never got posted.


Written 4 February, 2011

Outfits

Second Life has long had a feature to create outfits, but until the advent of Viewer 2, it was useless. That's because making an outfit would move no-copy clothing items from their original folders to the newly created outfit folder, making a mess of your inventory. Consequently, hardly anyone used the outfits feature.

Viewer 2 brought a huge improvement; rather than move the actual objects to the My Outfits folder, shortcuts are created for each item. The actual items stay where they are, yay!

The third-party Phoenix viewer now supports outfits, and I shouldn't be surprised if Imprudence and Kristen's do, too.I've been having a grand time making outfits.

I can only nest outfits one deep in the My Outfits folder, but even so I'm able to sort them in a way that makes sense. I can now put together some 30 looks in an instant-- complete with hair, skin, HUDs, shoes, and jewelry. I'm making about four outfits a week and will be busy until at least the end of the year, but already life is easier.

Making Outfits

To create your own outfits you'll need to be running Viewer 2 or a recent version of Phoenix (again, maybe Kristen's and Imprudence will have the feature). Dress your avatar, then go into Appearance. Choose Make Outfit. Be sure Use Viewer 2 Outfits is checked, then hit Save and give the outfit a name. Next time you want to wear it just go to My Outfits and choose Replace Outfit. You'll be ready to go in ten seconds or so.