Things went all right for our open house, which was good. I got there at about 12:50 and someone from another world was there looking around. Then Rich came in, the queenbee and Ladybug, Phil from Taholah, Hammer and his students, and Leslie and Alina. The girls were both late - that was all right. queenbee is the big power behind this entire scheme - she's awfully nice. I spent some time talking to her in private, and she said she is coming out to Seattle in July and will rent a car and drive down to Oly. I'd spoken previously with Mothra, so I could say we both are interested in continuing the virtual world project next year. Mothra and our students were missing due to dreaded WASL testing all week. Hammer was a lot of fun - what a nice man. The eighth graders were flighty, to say the least, and it didn't help much that they were sharing log-ins as we only had 5 guest accounts. On the whole it went as well as could be expected. I'd been slightly worried that Hammer wouldn't get them logged in promptly, but he was great. I'd had to sort out a log-in problem (just a permission-to-enter-world thing), so although he had inworld experience yesterday, it was through Mothra's account.
Went into Second Life to visit the new island called Taco, which is well-done in a toon theme with a "Dwellget" store and an apartment house.
I liked this floating teacup.
- Our first open house inside our Wa He Lut virtual world is at 1pm. I hope it goes all right. Hammer is bringing his class in.
Last night I fooled around making a larger tent. I crashed to desktop to my great dismay as I was linking the last piece (no real biggie as I save all along) but I logged in again, flew back to Cordova sandbox and my tent was still there. Olmy IMed me when I was finished building and had gone to Chaotica to take pictures. I TPed over to the new island sim, Athena. He showed me his new voting machine and I showed him, and SSK, my tents. That's my third visit to the new island - Olmy has been busy and it looks very nice - he's a wonderful builder and his "Hexamon House" which I particularly like, is on the shore. Once in Zoe I was zoomed in staring at the details of HH when Olmy came up and said, "Hi."
The pennants are animated so they flutter. I've been getting into texture animation a bit.
27 April 2005
Hmmm... work was all right. I said to Rosanne that I knew she didn't remember, but I'd asked her when she first came not to use my computer, and now - knowing she's using it, I want her to keep off it. There's another computer. I struggled to explain - I said that I'd given everything away but I wanted just one place that is mine - and she said she understood. It's one thing to be, as I wish to be, open and generous in giving up everything - which is difficult. However, it's another to have people think that because they have 99% of my space and possessions that they can take that last 1% without thinking or causing me pain.
I went in Second Life to gad about a bit. I took a few screenshots. I feel like since I changed to the Nvidia beta drivers my graphics are more contrasty and more highly saturated. I usually up the contrast in Photoshop before posting - these I merely cropped and resized.
All by Starax
The last few days inside Second Life:
Wearing Thundercloud P's green titanium robot av
Flowers made by Fallingwater C.
Osprey's outfit is the one I just made for KW.
Eddie E's castle in the sky seen from underneath - the dark spot is Ozymandias standing on the glass floor.
Ozymandias and Eileen
There was another Ozymandias apparently, which surprised Enjah, but now that other Oz. seems to've departed. I never actually had to think up a name for Ozymandias - that always was his name from the beginning.
24 April 2005
I've always got a big cogitation going on, and my current one is trying to figure out if we are just adult-controlled pixels playing around in Second Life and may do anything, or if some things are too icky and regressive to be tolerated in any form. In SL people are what they want to be - an animal, a robot, a child, a dragon, or anything else. They may be any gender or none. They may choose to be involved in cybersex or not, in fashions that can be hetero- or homosexual as regards the gender of the avs involved and the (unknown, sometimes) gender of the pixel-pushing adult. All that is fine with me. I'm just trying to establish a base line, and pinpoint where I start to have trouble. My unease begins here: there are now, or have been in the past, people who are interested in playing a child* available for "hire," in hiring the "child" and having cyber sex, in "owning" slaves, in pretending to be a slave, and other things too I reckon. Many people respond to specific complaints by saying, "Both players are adults and it's THEIR choice, so why are you being so immature as to object as if this were something happening in real life, and not just role-playing in a game?" That's a point. It doesn't make me feel better, though. It bothers me that there is any interest in using children as sex objects, and I don't think this type of "play" is restricted to the virtual world but slops over into real life in the desires and thought-patterns of the participants. And indeed, has probably slopped FROM the real world. Also, some things are just emblematic of outdated and regressive behaviors that we should damn well have risen above by this time - or at least there should be general recognition that these behaviors are not expressive of humanity's highest potential and we ALL should be attempting to reach a greater state and not straining to regress to the level of the beasts. All right - that's my point of view. If it's all right to pretend to own slaves, then is it all right to own a private island that is set up to represent 1825 Alabama? If everyone is just role-playing? How about if the island is run by a university so that they can immerse students in that part of history? Is it any different if people just want to own slaves and be slaves for fun? What if the island makes all the slaves white? As a social experiment? What if the island is owned by the KKK so they can build a world that has the social order they would like to have in real life? What if the "slaves" aren't avs but are artificially-intelligent possessions that players can order about? And which might look like avs. Is it ok if they are humanoid and green? What if they look like robots? What's the difference?
*player removed I think due to complaints
23 April 2005
Saw Psi yesterday and today. I told him I'd give him anything I had made for free because he's my oldest friend in virtual worlds, and he responded by giving me about 110 bazillion things he'd got at YadNi's junkyard and other places (which have made a major clog in my inventory). Most of the things I have already, but some are new. He keeps crashing. I TPed him to Navora and he crashed, came back and crashed again (I was re-texturing the hat I made Perwin A. make for me and didn't see him return). I TPed him to Bodega and he came then crashed. We were going to the new land but he TPed and went off the map into some weird limbo-land (from whence he was still able to IM). It took me 3 or 4 tries to TP -- something I've never had trouble with. After his relogging I TPed Psi to Purple, and he exclaimed how it'd been immediate and how everything was lag-free now. I was confused as he HAD NO GREEN DOT on the mini-map - like he had died and was saying, "All of a sudden I feel fine. I'm not ill anymore!" We flew around the eastern seaboard and to the moth temple. Then I logged off as I hadn't eaten dinner and it was past 11 pm.
20 April 2005
Wednesday was bad.
19 April 2005
Malachi P. has given me a pro account for Flickr! w00t! I've been a Flickr member since it started as I was a Game Neverending Beta-queue person, and Ludicorp made both things. Flickr is a photo site, and has been bought out by Yahoo quite recently. I'm not sure what the upgrade to pro does, but it must be good.
18 April 2005
Screencleaner
17 April 2005
Thundercloud Partridge sent me his new creations - alien-brain robot AVs. Here I am wearing one and hovering next to a space ship that happened to be right there when I needed it. I'm waving, "Hi!" Gestures look so funny when I'm wearing this AV. Second Life is filled with people in various guises, including 50-foot-tall mechas, furries of every kind, and spiders.
Half furry half spider
Huge thing. I'd asked him if he felt really enormous and he said, "Yes."
Huge thing flying away.
16 April 2005
In SL went to the ElvenGlen open house. For some reason I wound up being coaxed into fighting with a mace, and then proceeded to win the competition. Whooda thunk it? Osprey is a feisty minx.
Then I went to YadNi's one year birthday in his newbie-paradise called the Junkyard. We were all wearing YadNi avatars (well, most) and it was hilarious. Yad was late but the party was still going on when I left - in fact is scheduled to go all night.
I'm one of these YadNis - but which one?
15 April 2005
Friday... hmmm... well I was supposed to work on some actual, real-life work to day but instead I went into Second Life got embroiled putting up my things at KW's place (which I'd put up yesterday in the wrong spot as he has so many castles and things it got confusing). I was making an elf outfit, too - Legolasian duds. While I was doing both those things (alternating) I was IMed by For who had bought some things of mine from the DarkWood market, and noticed one thing wasn't set to sell. At KW's I was hit by horrid lag again that I wonder might be the dreaded inventory lagwaves since I was rummaging about in my nine mile long inventory at the time. KW had suggested I get some patented inventory organiser-thing*, but he didn't realise that I make anywhere freom dozens to hundreds of things every week, depending upon what I'm doing. I, like many I know, was putting off working on my inventory until 1.6 as I figured there'd be some improvement to the way inventory works. No, though - and I get disheartened pretty quickly when I go to a sandbox to clean up the inventory a bit (which I do about once a fortnight). No multiple selection, so drag one, put it in a folder, drag another, etc. I think it would be to LL's advantage to have better tools for this as it would cut down on the amount of useless crap they have to provide for.
*I've never understood them - I just bung my overload into a prim - I put all my Burning Life build into my Burning Life medal. I filled a cushion with something else... textures, methinks. Living on 512m2 with a puny prim allowance makes one creative about double-usage, too. I have a list-maker at my gallery that is a petroglyph on the hill. And the environmental sound-maker (nice one, Apo) is in my deck.
In rl Mrs. Landlord is here and came to see what I was doing - I showed her Wa He Lut virtual world and told her about our mentors - one from China and one from Russia. My landlords are from China.
14 April 2005
Eventful day in Second Life. Started out when I was fooling with the house I made the other day, in Cordova. A fellow came up to me and exclaimed at house nice it was, then asked me if I had been in There. Ummm... my last name is THERIAN <--clue. He said he had been,too, then said he'd build a house one day but his would be awful as he couldn't build. I told him I'd give him the one I was making (well, I can't use it). It's the one I built while thinking about Luis Barragan although the roof is unlike Barragan. I had IMed Pathfinder about something and he IMed me back, and KW IMed me, and someone from Darkwood IMed me all at the same time, with the upshot being that I TPed to Darkwood and rented a place in the market there (elvish market), having been talked up to the management by KW who is very nice to me. He and his fiancee were both there - I told them I'd been making tents - medieval jousting tents. They said, "We have a jousting arena and we've been looking for tents!" I gave them some tents for fun. They told me to put up a display in the top of their shop, so I'll have to go and do that soon. I set up the market stall, then there was some kind of sim reset and we were all booted out. I went back and finished up, then.... uh... I think I went and ate some Double Gloucester (score!) I got yesterday.
Just got home - had a jin shin appointment, a hair appointmentt with my beloved haircutters, and went grocery shopping and did my recycling. The hair appointment was hilarious and fun - Sean is very funny and Troy F. came in for a haircut with Kevin, so I wound up laughing until I couldn't see straight.
It was sunny when I left home, but through the powers of concentration (me thinking, "Damnable sunshine! It must rain!) it's now raining. Yes, it's true - I control the universe and I don't have a license.
Yesterday I went to my beloved garage and had an oil change and talked to them about leaving Sha for them to go over with a fine-tooth comb. They checked the brakes at my behest and I STILL don't need brakes, which I can hardly credit. It's the everlasting brake pads, apparently. The wreckers who towed my car there when my battery exploded two years ago are now running their business from the same spot - in the office next to the car men. They have some really very nice wreckers - I used to sightsee every time I drove by their old place.
Yesterday in Second Life I was working on my tents in Newcomb sandbox (no scripts - so I can't get shot) when a new Linden came over. She was very nice but reminded me I wasn't allowed to sell things in a sandbox - which I wasn't doing but I'd set the permissions to "sell" on the originasl tent, so they were all for sale. I changed them all (unticked a box), and went back to work. I sent a few tents to For and she IMed and said she and Way loved them. She asked me how much for an open-perm copy and I just sent tents for nothing because it would be fun to see the tents actually being used for something. She made me an elf so I can go to their open house on Saturday.
As I got tired I wound up messing up one tent three times - accidentally made the whole thing have a rock texture, then I laboriously fixed it all but for one surface and accidentally made it all walnut. Then I made it all blank. I finally got it the way I wanted it, but being weak/twitchy and everything else in my right hand (building is a two-handed job which makes it very difficult for me) made an hour's job out of something that should've taken about ten minutes. I was pleased with the tents, though, and took screenshots so I could list them on slboutique.com. Enj came by and tried to use a vehicle which didn't work. I somehow didn't put it together that we were in a no-script zone - I was still thinking tent textures I reckon - anyway Cubey came and said, "Do you know you're in a no-script zone?" Ha! Enj is a woman of action and did about 30 things while I was still dipping my bread in my tents. We flew up and parachuted down into Goguen, she made a whacky vehicle we rode around on, we looked at ahkenaton G.'s huge space ship in Goguen with suburban houses ghosted onto it (there were several ghosted avatars flying in one spot over the sandbox, too, at least for me), talked to a noob who wanted to be invisible (his name tag and footshadows were visible as well as his green map dot). I don't want invisible people, actually. The green map dots are difficult - you can go and see what people are doing when they wish for privacy (because you can go to where the map dots are), but they also allow you to see if someone is near you. There is stalker trouble in SL (like everywhere), but at least you are able to see, now, if someone is close by, even if they are hiding.
12 April 2005
I made a tent in Second Life. I was working in Cordova sandbox and someone shot me - I went a long way away and was a bit disoriented by the time I came down - the shooter was long gone. Enjah came over for a bit and made a "woody woodpecker catamaran." A pointy-snouted flying vehicle that took off when I was standing on it, which was my second fall from a great height in one day.
I just used the ordinary striped fabric texture although I intend to make my own texture later. I took this picture in Navora's ruined castle. I missed it, but there were, somewhere in Second Life, jousts on dragons the other day. The dragons were avatars, and the riders were, too, so it was probably really cool. I'll have to catch up with that at some point.
I made 7 new UN-Linden cards, which I had fun with.
I encountered this last night somewhere on the new continent.
I wonder who created the default texture.
10 April 2005
Lucia's new book is reviewed
in today's New York Times.
Click HERE
Yay!
This comes under the heading "Only in Second Life."
Yadni sent me an amaing/bizarre invitation to his birthday party next week. The invitation featured a life-size, naked Yadni speaking in a computer-generated voice. The invitation gave me a Yadni avatar and instructed me to wear it to the party. I put it on and looked just like Yadni (a 7-foot tall, blue Frenchman) in a loincloth. I put myself back on and decide to go to see the new drawbridge that Barnesworth A. has built between Boardman and Clara. I'm floating around in an innertube trying to get a good screenshot for the UN-Linden cards, and making the roadbed go up and down, when a car comes. It waits for the bridge to come down, then proceeds across. It's a cop car. It reverses out of my sight and comes back. The driver de-rezzes it, then rezzes it on the bridge but it's perpendicular to the road.
Instead of editing it to face the road she tries to turn and almost falls in the water.
She decides to walk, and goes off into Clara. Enjah IMs me and I TP her. She swims about and I tell her about the invitation. I put on the Yadni avatar and then the cop comes back -- but now there are three of them. Enjah goes up onto the bank to talk to them, and I join her. A cop asks, "Which one of you was on the innertube?" I say I was. She tells me I'm not allowed to be in that waterway. I say, "I was looking at the drawbridge -- that was built so boats can pass -- boats in the water." "Well, you weren't in a boat. It's dangerous." I say I can fly out of danger and they leave since I'm a lousy cop-drama actor. I put myself back on. Enjah has rezzed her boat so we sail around and talk about Hiroshima. Turns out we had both been at the Hiroshima Day floating-candle ceremony at Barbarra B.'s last August. She finds a small island which we both claim (but she was faster) so I try to start a war. Even though I know the cops were people fooling around I'm still annoyed and disgruntled as I hate authority. I even, it seems, hate pixels moved around by a person pretending to be an authority figure. It seems I am TOO GOOD at acting in cop dramas.
Enjah sent me this shot of "Yosni."
I wrote this then Blogger hiccoughed and lost the entire thing.
Then Firefox crashed twice so it must not've been Blogger at all.
09 April 2005
I spent all day working on school things - the yearbook, then the virtual world. I added various things including a water testing info station with 8 lighted posts that link to a webpage for each test - Dissolved Oxygen, Fecal Coliform, pH, etc., and a moving 4-part ring that weaves itself into an atom-looking thing. It was for fun - I surrounded it with barricades and danger-do-not-click-on-the-green-glow signs - in the hopes that everyone will click on it (whereupon it shrieks, "You accursed brat! I'm melting! Mellltiinnnggggg."). I added some sounds and downloaded more to be loaded onto the server so we can splash when we jump in the water. I was under the surface cleaning when I saw a stranger! Eeek! I went closer and it was this:
She must be able to hold her breath for a long time. Maybe she stores oxygen in her shoes.
Small bit of the area where visitors would land... still working on it.
Rather realistic dairy manure pile in the background.
Each test has a post and each post has a blinking light and links to a webpage. Boring-ish, but it's a start.
Acme Widgets spews smoke into the air (rocks with concrete texture, made to revolve) and ugly sludge into the river.
Moving rings around a green glow - don't touch it! It's evil!
I just ran in Second Life, and saw I'd sold three paintings. That's nice.
07 April 2005
Well, I hadn't seen or heard from our vice principal since I got nowty and threw the counselor-type woman out of my room in September, and I just reckoned I was on the stinky list. I had to protect my program from interference and my students from unwanted outsider input into their art classes, so it was all right. On Wednesday, though, I received two visits and several emails from the v.p., so I guess I fell off the stinky list at long last. I had to proof a brochure, advise about printing, set up a new pow wow webpage with "royalty" application (and I've been trying to get an updated page posted since Wednesday afternoon - frustrating and annoying), said I'd add a job section to the website. Oh, and wrote part of a grant application. Ha. That was a funny addition to my real work. And I started printing the yearbook. Beat on poor Rosanne to make her get the last photographs taken (I insisted on retakes for the really horrid shots). The thing is, if it was my picture as a child, in this book that is distributed to everyone and kept for years, I would want a decent photograph. Or if I were the parent of a student I'd like my child to be shown in a nice way.
In Second Life Salazar came round yesterday and told me he was looking at the land lilone had put up for sale. I was very surprised - seems as though she had just got there, and was still building bits. That's the land on which the very ugly Fantasy Castle once stood. Perhaps she grew weary of the unfinished plywood build on the hilltop directly adjoining her property. Anyway, I was jazzed as Salazar bought it for the Trust. I had swapped my palms for evergreens a while back so I'd match the Forest of Kahruvel (I'm sure I didn't spell that right - and Sal laughed when I spelled Phyneas with an eye so obviously my spelling is suspect) and now the Forest is curling around me in a comfortable way. I moved my gallery deck over today as yesterday I came out of my house (where I was finishing a custom job for one of my favorite twins) to talk and fell the height of the hill. Embarrassing.
I decided that the animation "count" that's a standard in our inventories is about as good as we could get for snapping fingers even if we get a custom made. We will have to add the sound then hang out at the coffee house reading Beat poetry and... oh, I was going to look up Pull My Daisy.... maybe I'll go off and see if it's streamed from somewhere...
04 April 2005
I just missed snapping a duck on the watery dock -- they love it, it's like a wading pool.
Fooling around trying to make a stillsuit.
02 April 2005
Went to see "Reefer Madness" at the Royal in Second Life. The earnest people who made the film are long dead, but we're watching in it cyberspace and snickering. Vita Brevis, Ars Longa!
The Royal has everything - even a projector.
The Flytrap Twins
Osprey Changed her surname a la Judy Chicago
Yay!
01 April 2005
Logged in just long enough* to figure out how to get a video stream going, duplicate it, turn it into a hollow sphere, and sit inside, talk with Enj and TP over to see her movie, then as we were inventing dialog she said "bye," which unleashed her sound clip "bye-bye!, have fun!" which caused me to fall into a conditioned response - I hit the X and then realised it was so much dog drool. It was all right - had to eat anyway, as I was both freezing and hungry - hadn't put on the heat.
*about 10 minutes
I'm wondering where my updated pow wow pages are, since I sent them to Slicin' but they haven't appeared. I hate that - I'd by far rather ftp and fiddle around with it like I do with every other website -- but noooo. Humpf.
Space Cheeze
Worked on the color site for SWMNBMIMB - 5 or 6 hours. Gak, it was horrid at first as the little changes amounted to redoing a large chunk, and my brain was not behaving. Finally went and ate something, which helped a lot. She's great - I adore her - these little things are nothing important.
The water in the lake is now over the neighbor's dock - by about four inches, it looks from here. I stupidly just realised that in SL I have a house on a steep slope that faces the water, and in rl I live on a steep slope in a house that faces the water. I suppose it seems so normal Ididn't think about it before. Water is very important to me. I work on the bank of a river, and I'd really like to live on a river, too, but instead I live on a lake. Well after I wrote that I wasn't sure any more about wanting to live on a river.
The big news at Second Life today was the release of 1.6 which gave streaming video capabilities to us. It also gave some new building abilities -- I spent last night noodling around in Newcomb sandbox building a little house for fun that started with my admiration of many years standing for Luis Barragan. I noticed a misalignment as I was preparing to log off, but thought I'd wait until today, and 1.6 to fix it. 1.6 lets one edit a linked prim!! w00t! So I waited one day and then because of that new capability it was fixed in a snap. I went to see the elves new sim, and was very kindly shown all around by Way and For. They've only been working for about a day and the things they've done are incredible. They were so nice -- I like them both a lot. Then Shan called me and TPed me away to a gathering. She introduced me to her new SL-mate. Then I ate dinner... then I went to a movie demonstration. I got a good laugh out of this:
We're all inside one hugely complex program sitting there watching Hercules on the big screen. It made me laugh since some things we do in SL are just silly - why read a book inside SL? Why sit there and passively watch a movie? I'm sure there'll be other uses besides porn and cheesy movies, and it does seem kind of exciting... except I haven't watched TV since the 1980s (except when at someone's house) and it would be ironic if I sit in front of my computer in order to watch streaming video inside SL. Functioned well with a lot of people in attendance; I should've spent a minute looking at the debug menu but in any case there was no lag.
Weird crud happening at school.
JC called me today and told me the board wants me to work as long as I want to - that I should be the one to decide. That's really very supportive.
Did the pow wow webpages and sent it all by email to Mike. Hope he gets it into the correct folder. The last batch of virtual world things were in the wrong one for a week. That held me up a bit. It's a sore point to me that I can't ftp for school. I have to get on the ridiculous server and plonk the things in the folders myself, or give remote commands. Bites.
No JMan or Vince for the WHL world as they were at the sweats. And JC called me when I was halfway into a discussion about community events wirh Leslie and Montrose so I missed a bit but not much. Alina was off doing her citizenship oath thing. Leslie had showed me photos from her spring break in Puerto Rico so we talked a little about that. Alina and Leslie are at Cornell and meet us inworld to work on Wa He Lut world.