The Elbow Room

The Elbow Room. CarlosdaRat Wasn't There at Photo Time

Written 23 February, 2007

My Alt

III: The Elbow Room

My last time out was typical. I rezzed at the Isabel info hub. It was empty, so I flew to the adjacent shelter to play trivia. But every time I reached the trivia area, I fell through the floor. And when I used the teleporter to go back upstairs, I was launched into space. And when I tried to fly back to the shelter, spatial weirdness ensued.

I finally managed, by relogging, flying to the shelter, and choosing SIT while still 15 yards away from the trivia lounge, to get within Chat range of the trivia machine, but by then I was in no particular mood to play.

And so I started bouncing around the mainland.

Looking at the map, I would see places where avs were gathered and teleport there.

Only to find them sitting in camping chairs.

Camping chairs here.

Camping chairs there.

Camping chairs everywhere.

What IS it with people, that they’ll sit in camping chairs all night to make 50 Lindens. Don’t they know how to give blow jobs?

I mean, if they MUST degrade themselves, they might as well do so efficiently.

Finally, I chanced across a tiny place called, tongue-in-cheek, The Elbow Room (I believe it was on a 512 plot). Avs were dancing inside, and I joined in. But no one was talking, so I flew up to look at the map.

And noticed an apparition on the roof.

He looked like a mafia don, and had a name like one—Carlosdarat something-or-other.

And he had big ass wings and a halo. And not just an alpha effect halo. A real halo.

I looked at his profile, which made a big deal about him being a Christian and a conservative and being a member of the anti-av sex league and part owner of the Elbow room.

I asked him what his deal was, but he wasn’t talking, which I figured was more about him being AFK than about me having blue hair and striped leggings, so I flew back down to the Elbow Room, where everyone was already cracking up from my comments about the mafia angel.

“Yeah, he and the J-Dog are down,” said one av.

“Yeah, the J-boy is cute,” I said. “But the mafia angel isn’t.”

After a while, Carlosdarat woke up and came down to the club.

“I was taking bets that you wouldn’t fit in here with those humongous wings,” I said. Indeed, he had taken them off.

The mafia angel was on message, but in a lighthearted manner. Still, there was something strange and disquieting about him—more than just the fact that he was espousing conservative views of the world that are rare among the geekazoids in SL

Just a typical night in the life of Malta.

Which is why I don’t rez very often. Chey has a much nicer time.

Malta Speaks

Weirdness Magnet

Written 23 February, 2007

Malta Speaks

II: She speaks

It was pretty clear from the beginning that my alt (for convenience sake, let’s call her Malta) had a lifestyle and personality of her own. She was not the grand lady that Cheyenne is, but, rather, a cocky kid. But let’s let her tell it.

-----

I’m not so sure about this whole SL thing.

I mean, my experiences so far haven’t been the best.

First time out, I nearly get eaten by a scary ass dragon. If I hadn’t lied about my sexual status (I am a virgin), I would have been dragon poop, or else sacrificed to the volcano goddess.

I don’t even get to rez at a nice place. My home is in one of the infohubs, surrounded by newbies and sound spammers and griefers. Every one of them thinks it’s funny to make farting noises. Bo-ring! And smelly.

Thank goodness, my friend Cheyenne Palisades gave me a bunch of Lindens; if she hadn’t, I would have been bully bait. First thing, I bought a Mystitool, which give me movelock and a sit shield. Then I went shopping and bought hair (blue), a skin (glittery eye shadow) black nail polish, and a couple of outfits on sale at PixelDolls. And shoes. A girl has to have shoes.

So, on my third rez, when I got accosted by a gang of toughs at the Isobel infohub, I was wearing the Mystitool and was ready. I just turned the movelock on and they couldn’t budge me. I stood there and calmly wrote an abuse report while they were wailing on me.

I suppose if I had kept my big mouth shut, it wouldn’t have happened, but an av was abusing a woman for turning down his crude sexual approach, and I had to say something about it. He said, “Shut up, bitch,” and I told him his newbie manners were appalling.

Well, that’s not exactly how I said it.

That really set him off. He called me a blue-haired freak of nature and he and his friends started trying to push me around by bumping me and shooting me with a watermelon gun. It made them angry when they couldn’t budge me and even angrier when I told them my dick was bigger than theirs. In fact, I questioned whether they even had dicks. And meanwhile I was muting them one by one so I couldn’t hear their sound spam, and tearing them to shreds verbally.

I resisted the temptation to cage them, as that would have been a violation of the terms of service. I may have a fast mouth, but I’m not foolish.

That was my first really unpleasant experience, but not the last.

The next time I rezzed, I made friends with a new av couple and, with Cheyenne’s permission, showed them around Pele. It started out well, but the girl soon logged and I was left alone with the boy, who right away began to hit on me.

I put on my vagitarian t-shirt, but he was undeterred, so I just walked away.

“Don’t be foolish!” he shouted after me, as if I were throwing away an opportunity or something. He was still shouting when I logged off to fetch Cheyenne, who could ban him.

The next time I rezzed, I met a French newbie lady who told me I was beautiful. It wasn’t clear whether she was hitting on me, but as my best guess was that she meant she wanted to improve her look, I took her to a skin shop and gave her 5L to buy demos.

She seemed to be a conflicted person. She kept asking questions like, “Are you a real person? Or are you a machine,” and “Do you hate your first life?” and “I can’t take this money.” (C’mon, it’s a penny and a half!) I could almost SEE her agitation. She logged before she tried on a skin.

I dunno. Maybe she WAS hitting on me. But I don’t think so.

About the only good time I had was when I introduced myself to Chey’s friend Leaf, who is a nice lady. She thought I was funny.

Ordinarily, though, I just seem to be a magnet for weirdness

My Alt

Written 16 February, 2007

My Alt

I. Want to Meet My Alt?

“I have an alt. Want to see her?”

“Sure,” Sweetie said. Sweetie is up for almost anything.

Especially when she’s in dragon mode.

I hit the big red X and closed the program and immediately logged on as my alt.

-----

An alt, for those who might not know, is an alternate avatar, a second or third or four character with another name, controlled by the same human.

People make alts for a lot of reasons. Some do so to cause anonymous grief to others. Some to do in order to cheat on their Second Life lovers. Some do so in order to pimp their business. Some do so to express another side of their personality.

And some, like me, do so when they attempt to get on the grid and are told they can’t because there’s a problem with their inventory.

(I’ve no idea at all why that would be. I have only 1 x 10 to the 19th power items in my inv!)

In my case, I had come home from work for lunch in order to meet with a landscaper who was based in the real world in Europe. We had an appointment for some work on Pele, and I couldn’t get online.

And so I created an alternate character, named her, turned her into a generic Japanese goth grrrl, popped on the grid, did my business, and logged off.

And now I was trotting her out again, wearing the Vagitarian t-shirt she had acquired in her first minutes after rezzing, taking her to see Sweetie.

My alt used the landmark Patrice Cornoyer (Chey's landscaper and one of her friends) had sent to her after my alt had IMed her, rezzing at the Exuberance house and flying up to Pele’s caldera, where BreathofG8d Onura was bathing in the lava.

“OMG, it’s a scary ass dragon!” I found myself typing, although BOG is ordinarily as friendly as a kitten.

“Hello, little human,” purred BOG. And I WAS little, too, under five feet, I think, with my chalk-white skin and purple hair and lesbian t-shirt. “Welcome to Pele.”

“Are you Pele?”

“No, little one. Pele is the volcano goddess. This is her home. She’s looking for a virgin sacrifice.”

She peered at me closely with one big dragon eye. “Are you a virgin, perchance?”

I said quickly, “Technically, no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty much” I said, “because of that thing I did that time.”

That thing she did that time? Jeez, but my alt seemed to have a personality of her own!

“You are a newbie,” BOG rumbled, little plumes of smoke rolling from her nostrils. “Newbies are delicious.”

“I’m not THAT new,” I lied, and started backing away.

“Uh,” I said, “I have to see a man.”

I backed away some more. “Uh, about a thing.”

“Yeah. That’s it. A man about a thing.” By now I was a nearly at the limit of Chat range.

“Stay. I won’t eat you.”

“Man,” I said. “Thing.” And derezzed.

-----

I thought it was a marvelous bit of role play, but when Cheyenne returned and BOG told her, “There was a new citizen here. She was afraid of me,” I was no longer certain.

Did Sweetie forget I would be trotting out an alt?

Yes, she did.

I love my Sweetie.

Balance Board

Written 22 February, 2007

NB; Chey’s Balance Board can be seen and purchased on the Forsaken sim.

Chey’s Balance Board

Last week I started to play with the physics of objects.

In the Edit menu, there’s a selection, grouped right there with Temporary and Phantom, marked Physical. When you tick it, the object will begin to behave rather like objects do in real life. It will become responsive to local physics.

Thus, if it’s in mid-air, it will fall in response to gravity’s pull, or, if it’s leaning, it will topple. If touched or bumped by an avatar, it will move, and it will respond to collisions with other physical objects.

But I’ve told you all this already. So consider the above a refresher course.

After the Icarus Society play with teeter-totters, I decided to make a balance board—a plank that would swivel on a fulcrum when an av walked along it.

It was easy enough to make a balance board. Make a board. Make a fulcrum— a cube tapered along one axis to 85% or so. Center the board above the fulcrum. Make it physical. Done.

The problem was in keeping the board operational. In normal operation, it tended to turn clockwise or counterclockwise and would eventually overbalance and fall to the ground. Bumping it would move it so it was heavy at one end and wouldn’t balance properly.

I solved the problem by adding uprights to either side of the board— which stopped it from swiveling—and horizontal pegs which stopped it from twisting upward until it overbalanced and fell out of the mechanism, and other pegs to stop it from moving too far laterally.

Then I fancied up the base so the board would make a nice clunk when it descended, applied some nice textures, and...

Ta Da!

Chey’s balance board.

Coming soon to a mall near you.

Waterfall at Pele

Written 23 February, 2007

Waterfall at Pele

Last week I built a waterfall on the East side of Pele.

I'm a bit disapointed with it, after seeing the magnificent fall at the sim with the Promenade des Pappillions, but all in all, it's not a bad waterfall.

Lovers can go behind the falls and find a nice kissing anim.

More Pictures of the House

My House

Written 22 February, 2007

My House

No, not my Second Life house. My RL house.

William Techumseh Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground in 1865, and some people around here haven’t yet forgiven him.

I can’t understand why, for the inhabitants have since torn the city down and rebuilt it many times.

It’s rather like Second Life around here. One day there’s a nice cottage with azaleas blooming in the yard, and the next— well, not the next day, really, but it SEEMS like the next day—there’s a McMansion or a porno store or a Papa John’s pizza or a convenience store or a strip mall.

All of which means that my RL house, which was built as a one-room cottage in 1936, is positively ancient by Atlanta standards.

It sits in a funky little community of 800 souls that was begun in pre-TVA days as a resort community for those wishing to escape the city. At ten miles from city center, it was almost too far away, but it survived, and thrived, evolving, through the decades, from a summer resort to a year-round resort to a community of wives whose husbands were away fighting WWII to a community of rental properties to a community of hippies to its present incarnation as a gentrified neighborhood filled with artists, entrepreneurs, and professionals of every color and sexual orientation. And now that Metro Atlanta is more than 100 miles in diameter, at eleven miles from city center it’s ridiculously close in, convenient to theaters, good restaurants, and good shopping.

I love where I live. Not Atlanta, in particular—it’s far too big for my liking, although it's above average as big cities go—but my little leafy, laid-back town, with its beautiful accessible lake (only feet from my door), and community dinners and concerts. And I love my house, my built-in-the-1930s-and-expanded-at-least-twice shotgun-style two-story it-will-be-paid-for-in-two-years-and-nine-months it’s-worth-more-than-twice-what-I-paid-for-it house.

And so I’ve set out to replicate it in Second Life.

I chose my house not to memorialize it (although that idea sort of appeals to me) but because I’m familiar with it. I have the real one to which to refer should I have questions during the building process. I can test the reproduction against the original and see where it is wanting.

I’ve not set out to make the reproduction beautiful, or to make it as primficient as possible; rather, I’m going for accuracy and detail.

I’d say the house is about half finished. The front room is completed, and so is the bedroom above it. The kitchen is finished, and my office above it (where I sit when I’m on the grid) is coming along. The stairway (well, a ramp) is finished, and everything that has been created has been texturized and made as close as possible to the original. I’ve even recreated the floor-standing gas furnace in the front room (along with the gas supply line and regulator). The only thing I’ve put off is adjusting the textures of the outer walls so they align perfectly. That’s because I’ve been hoping to find a vinyl siding texture to replace the wooden siding texture I’m currently using. If and when I find it, I’ll fix it all at once.

I’ve made everything as I’ve worked, from walls to doors and windows and doorknobs and light fixtures. I’ve not bothered with scripts to make the doors open and close or the fans revolve (although I may do so later). I’ve just built, slowly and methodically, linking each section when the time seems right.

It’s been a wonderful experience—and a bit of a creepy one. It quite frankly feels a little strange to be standing in my living room when I’m actually one floor above and one room over, in front of a monitor. How much stranger it will be when I add furniture!

I’ve found I can make all manner of things, and I’ve learned how to position objects in three dimensional space so they snuggle perfectly against other objects. I can now spot and tweak a misaligned prim or an over- or under-stretched texture; select and unlink a single prim, and make any prim of my choosing the root prim.

This is a very different sort of building from what I’ll be blogging about soon. It’s a bit plodding, and it lacks elegance, but it has taught me a lot, and it has enabled a level of detail that would not have been possible with some of the more elegant building techniques

Review: Outy Banjo's Auto-Emote

Written 21 February, 2007

Review: Outy Banjo’s Auto-Emote

My Heads-Up-Device is getting so cluttered these days that Sweetie has taken to calling me Bond Girl.

Truth to tell, I’m running out of places to attach things.

The lower right has a place for attachment, but is vacant, for that’s where Chat scrolls. Everywhere else but the middle of the screen, I seem to have something attached.

My Mysti-Tool is attached to the lower right. On the upper left is the Sensual Animation Override, which gives me a sexy walk and nice stand, sit, and fly poses. Occasionally (but rather infrequently these days, as Blogger has come to work only sporadically) the AO is knocked out of its place by the translation device Blogger and I have to reinstall it. The upper middle displays my compass, which tells me the direction I’m facing, and without which I feel naked. And on the upper right there’s Outy Banjo’s Auto-Emote.

And it is the Auto-Emote about which I want to blog.

I’ve several appliances that make my avatar smile. One simply attaches them to an inconspicuous part of the body, and, until they’re detached, they cause me to smile at irregular but frequent intervals. I’ve not been happy with any of them.

I like to have a happy avatar, but it’s not quite appropriate to smile when, for instance, a friend is telling me about her breakup to the love-of-her-life, who dumped her after three days of Second Life marriage, or while banning a misbehaving avatar from my land. And I find the smiles, even when timely an appropriate, a bit cheesy. Poorly executed, in other words.

Enter Outy Banjo.

Outy is famous in SL for her particle products. She sells poofers, water and fog and bling scripts, sunset clouds and rainmaking scripts, and anti-griefing devices.

And she sells the Auto-Emote.

Being dissatisfied with my third—count em!—smiler, I took a chance and spent $300L or so for Outy’s emoter. And I’ve been very happy with it.

The Auto-Emote attaches to the upper right portion of the HUD (it can be placed elsewhere), and accordions away nicely. When open, it displays an array of perhaps 20 facial expressions which can be accessed with a mouse click. Actions available include: smile, laugh, surprise, horror, disdain, boredom, wink, yawn, and tongue protrusion. You just click on the expression you want and your av goes into action.

The various actions are performed smoothly, and their timing is expertly executed.

Outy being Outy, the Auto-Emote is an intelligent device. It listens to Chat and compares your avatar’s speech against a list of about 300 key words, and, when it finds a match, calls up the corresponding expression. When I type ROFL or LOL, for example, my av gives an exaggerated laugh. When I type Ewww!, she wrinkles her nose. She can be in turn happy, surprised, frightened, bored, disgusted, or mischievous (the wink).

It’s even possible to add key words to trigger particular expressions.

The expressions on the HUD are signified by emoticons, most of which tend to look alike to me. I sure wish Outy had included text labels. But that’s a small complaint. I rarely make my av execute a facial expression, except when making a photograph—and even then, I can type a word in Chat and make her perform. Mostly, I just keep the HUD collapsed and let Outy’s script animate her. I let her script do the work. For the most part, my expressions follow what I’m saying. That’s good enough for me.

-----

Photo 1: Sweetie is in Chat Range

Photo 2: Sweetie Has Left the Building

Photo 3: Waiting for Plush Beta to Rez

Photo 4: You’re Cute!

Photo 5: Time to make the Tier Fee Payment

Photo 6: Chey Frightened 

Radio Tower

Written 22 February

Radio Tower

While fooling around last week, I made a radio tower.

Only .25 meters in circumference, it rises 30 meters in the air. It’s supported by four guy wires which are embedded in a concrete foundation, and, to warn low-flying aircraft, is topped by a revolving red-and-white light. The call letters of the station are WKRP.

Even though we’re a long way from Cincinnati.