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30 November 2005

 
The power went out the night before last, and came on at 7:30 am. At first the boiler started up, then it stopped, and it was cold - especially after a cold shower. I noticed water all over the floor around the boiler as I left for work. I had called my landlord; when I got home the boiler was working and things were warm - however, apparently no one had done anything and it just self-healed. Or (as they think I'm sure) it wasn't out, it wasn't cold in here, and there was hot water but somehow it wasn't coming out of my pipes.

I was exploring today in Second Life and saw a lovely mountain. I approached and saw a beautiful castle with pennants. Closer - my pennants - and also several of my tents. The owner, I then saw, is someone whose name I know as he's bought many things from me. A man showed up and gave me a tour. He called the nice customer, who came and spoke to me for a few minutes.


 
Yesterday I had my two little girls, Sabra and Cheyenne. I decided to give them a breather from the comic strip, and had thought up a project. They had to make some snowflakes at the Flash site snowflakes.lookandfeel.com, then save them, open them in Photoshop, create duplicate layer, get rid of the writing and the white background, and experiment with styles. Then make a letter-size card page, divide with guides, and make a background in the right quadrant. Add the snowflakes, resize them so they aren't all the same, add painted snowflakes if desired, add text on the outside, inside, and back. Sabra was really motivated to get it going, but Cheyenne poked about enjoying the Flash program and cutting her snowflake with the tiniest and strangest cuts imaginable. Sabra was bolder and did some experimenting. Cheyenne has her snowflake in Photoshop now, but Sabra printed a test card out and just needs to make a few adjustments next week. It's all good. Maybe I'll just pop over to snowflakes.lookandfeel. and make something to illustrate this post. See you in a minute.

Just a little project to get them using - joyously - the tools in Photoshop. They are only about 10, anyway. Sabra did well to get her project printable in 45 minutes.

Then I went next door for the virtual world class. Things went VERY well, I thought, as I could explain things to the children. I sat by Milan and Cheyenne, and Milan was da man. He "got" the idea of changing things, building, moving, etc. Cheyenne did well, too. Scott apparently thinks his valley is just a little part of his valley as he has it chock full in that wee area. There is a bad, old, futile, incredibly sucky comp in their room that has WINDOWS 95 and doesn't function except to chat. Well, you can do s-ooo-m-e t-h-i-n-g-s bbbuuuuuuuuuuuuut t-h-e-y aaaarrrrrreeeeee sssssssssssssllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww. Windows 95. Gak. I couldn't even stand Windows 98 in 1998, let alone 95 in 2005. Is there ANY excuse to have such an old piece of crap technology? It isn't teaching them anything useful.


 

The M2 article finally came out - Sarg B did a very nice job of writing it.

I went to my first practise roller derby session in Zouk City. Enjah wasn't around for some reason, and Forcy was occupied, so it was just me from our team. They divided everyone up into practise teams and we raced around the track elbowing each other. The fatal flaw is that (of course) it's a leveling-up experience type game, and anyone who has high points in speed, attack, and defence will be unbeatable by someone who has fewer points, I think. "Training" is accomplished by wearing the gear within the sim. I had a good time, though. I was deemed especially good (must've had more exp points than most).

Then I TPed off to see the new Wynx ponies - Forcy had been telling me about them. Very nice. She bought a green one with black dots ("Like mint chocolate chip icecream," she said). I would probably get the black if got anything - not sure I want one at all... well maybe. Considering how few times I've worn my Tiny rabbit it would probably just suck up space in my inventory.



27 November 2005

 
I made some bodysuits and we are trying to get a team up. Right now we have Enjah, Osprey, Forcy (the queen of the elves), and MAYBE Salazar's mother. I asked Eos, and she seemed horrified, and Zobeid, who said it wasn't her style. I asked Racer if Neon would like to be on our (women's) team, which caused him to question if I really know what Neon is - yes, yes, I do, but I just thought it would be fun. I'm thinking our team is the Grig Bombettes. We are in it purely for hilarity. Enjah says she's in it for the outfits. My helmet illustrates my nickname (thunk up by Enj) Oscilatin' Osprey Therian (animated texture). Enjah called herself the Eliminator, which I said sounded like she eats lots of roughage. We went skating with Selador around Nova Albion. He was "Slippery Selador." We had one of those old, slanted, outside cellardoors at the farmhouse in Ontario, and it was quite slippery.

It was the first anniversary of snail-racing, on Saturday. I wanted to race but the first race was filled with new racers who must've spent 10 minutes trying to get their 3 laps. I was the only one who hadn't raced and usually I would race the top 3 in the next race. I couldn't imagine they'd want to go round again so I bowed out, regretfully. Racer gave me a hotair balloon that is a huge racerX head for the balloon part. He is getting YadNi-itis.

There was a funny exchange before the race. I was decked out in my roller derby togs, and Racer said, "roller derby siut" (roller derby suit)
Kanker said, "Did Racer just call Osprey a slut?"
I laughed, "Bad bunny!"


 

If you look closely you can just make out Enj and Os hovering near the middle of this picture of the great wall in the new continent. We are the two dark streaks. We roller skated the length of the wall on the outside and inside. Then Enj went off and I kicked around for a while, exploring the coast. I got caught in between two parcels with ban-lines up - so, thwarted in my shoreline travels I had to turn inland, where I found some interesting things.

Interesting things like this katamari! I kicked it around a bit then stuck myself to it.


 

Here I am misbehaving in the ActiveWorlds object yard. I was looking for things my children can use in the WaHeLut2 virtual world. I found... hmm... an eagle that flies around, and... hm... maybe that was it.



26 November 2005

 
A multiplicity of outlined objects in Grignano Books. I selected everything just to get an interesting picture.



25 November 2005

 
Enj and I are diving off a diving board in Chaos, a posthuman city. We were skating around then I told Enj I'd seen an ad for roller derby, so we TPed to Zouk City and got all obsessed with roller derby.



24 November 2005

 



23 November 2005

 
Salazar Jack and Champie Jack built this seaside village in Cowell. I sail through it all the time as it's picturesque. There are the stirrings of life here as the buildings are now finished and are being rented out.



22 November 2005

 
Second Life had another griefer attack, but this time they quickly firewalled the affected sims and shut them down, containing the problem to a small section of the grid which came back online in about 45 minutes. Congratulations on a job well done!

In the last update there was a change in the way information is accessed for mouse-overs. Formerly everything automatically produced a bit of information (name, etc.). That was perhaps reckoned as intrusive for the default setting, so it was made in the UI to switch ON showing information only for interactive objects (touch and do such-and-such, etc.) OR turning it OFF to show nothing. A third way was allowed for all of us who would scream and yell: go into settings.ini and add a line to set it back as it had been (everything) or to have it show information for land. I thought I should give it a try, so I went in world for about 5 seconds before leaving and altering settings.ini - I just felt blind. One of the things that I didn't like about There was the inability to know anything about an object. Whose house is this? Whose tree? No way to know. Second Life has provided us with incredibly flexible tools that stretch miles in every direction - the way the POV moves is extremely wonderful and I get down on my knees every day and thank LL for that. Yes - why, yes, I actually FALL TO MY KNEES and raise my arms to heaven. Of course you'll just have to take my word on that, but I assure you I'm completely honest and trustworthy.

Anyway - LL has opened up a can of worms now. The forum is full of people relating how they are now poking about in all the various settings files. Heh - nothing we all like better than to creep through and fiddle with things. LL set up, ages ago, a way to personalise colors on the UI, which I thought about then never did as I really don't like to focus on any UI. Just getting the itch a bit, though...

No photo article in the metaverse messenger AGAIN, so by the time it comes out, if ever, the contest information will be outdated. That's too bad.


 
Heat! Yay!
Went to work. Last week I'd had Alex standing next to the printer feeding single sheets of cardstock while I printed the various tickets for the movie. This week, low and behold, he told me he'd called a printer servicing business locally and is arranging for them to come out and look at it. A mere 90/hour + 15 service call charge. Averaged over the amount of time we've used it, that's practically nothing. Alex is also working to get the BIA doods to permit me to ftp stuff to the server. Printed up 60 more tickets for each of 4 shows. Elders Dinner was an apparent success. Had Cheyenne working on her cartoon when Sabra came in late (she'd been gone with the performance group). She got going on hers, so the project is starting to come together. Sent home progress reports. Worked with the 5th graders in WaHeLut2. Saw Tiff. Um... that's about it I suppose.

Came home, went in Second Life. Reworked a weathervane so it has less prims, for Enjah. Oh yeah - that's what I was going to say. I made the weathervane, then tried to get various people to script it. Jeffrey (who was very busy and was super kind to help me) said it was straightforward, "just use xyb... er I mean xyz." I added the basic code but it made the vane turn just once. I got involved doing something else... then asked Siltar. She took Jeffry's snippet as a lead, and wrote a script that operated by touch and was supposed to operate without touch but just didn't. I put her script into the vane and it got discombobulated, but then I had a flash and realised I needed a p2p joint. Made that but it operated only by touch. I mustered my brain cells (this amazes me as I swear I know nothing about scripting) and decided the time event needed to be specified, so I called it wind_seek and wrote 2 lines of code, put them in the script, and it worked! I dun be flabbergasted. My two lines, inserted in two different spots in the code:
float WIND_SEEK = 6; // 6 seconds
llSetTimerEvent(WIND_SEEK);

Maybe there's hope for me yet. I may take forever to learn it, I may never be very good at it, but just maybe I'll be able to do little bits of scripting.

Joints are really quirky things. I have to remove the joint and stop the script before I move or do anything to the weathervanes. We had an update on Monday, which left out-of-whack both my weathervanes at Bodega. That was ok. I'm getting the hang of realigning them.



21 November 2005

 
No heat. Went to jin shin... have to work on various things on the computer so I have to go back and forth from here to the (warm) kitchen.



20 November 2005

 
Today is the anniversary of my father's birth in 1919. The heat went out sometime last night and it's freezing in here (not literally, but it's cold enough). Good thing SWMNBMIMB came yesterday.



19 November 2005

 
This morning I raced as a snail (just me and Racer) and fiddled ith the weathervane. I made a p2p joint and now it works. If I need to move it I have to unjoint then rejoint it. I don't know much about joints - this was purely a flash in my brain that commanded me to use a joint. I've experimented with then a bit but haven't dome much with physics-enabled objects.

Then SWMNBMIMB came over, bringing me lunch. She has a nice groovy new Mac laptop. We worked on her website until 5:30, at which point I was exhausted. I read a bit of the SL forum and a bit of the New Yorker then went into Photoshop and altered some graphics for hersite and finishjed it off. Then went into SL and was TPed by Siltar to a blues event in Coniston.


 
Linden Lab is always experimenting with ways to increase the number of people with premium (land-owning abilities) accounts on the grid. As I see it, the percentage of people who like Second Life is not going to change, so the only way to increase the number of premiums is to increase the overall number of people who try SL. That seems to square with LL's thinking, too. They've tried lots of things. Off the top of my head:
There is a basic account -- which used to be $10 but is now free, resulting in a great influx of people trying SL.
Choice of spawn areas is/was offered so one may choose to enter the grid in, say, a nightclub, or perhaps in a forest.
A limited-time choice of gifts was given with a move from basic to premium (there was a folder of my clothing in that promotion).

Now LL has build a wee Levittown and is offering a free tiny house and 512m2 plot of land in a limited-time promotion. I like the way they try to figure out this knotty problem, which, after all, is of utmost importance to us all. No matter how much a few people love SL it won't be around if it can't pay its bills.

Judging by the newbie response on the forums this is a highly-regarded thing. It's not the same now as when I bought my "Land for the Landless" as that was assigned and not my choice (I love my landless land and always have - but many people didn't). Now new people can choose from a varying number of "First Land" parcels (it's available in different areas in various numbers of parcels that are always 512m2 at 1Lm2) and move wherever they think might be good. From what I hear, typically the newbies sell the land fast at a profit (the land becomes, then, just ordinary land) and move elsewhere. There's First Land scamming, too, where older players offer newbies a slight profit if they sell their First Land - which may actually be worth much more. Newbies have a bad experience if they have a tiny plot and something huge and ugly crowds up against their property lines. The new sim requires a 3-month residency before turn-over, and it's zoned for houses, so the worst newbie experiences can't happen. Well, something else will, most likely, but I hope not.

So, anyway, I went to see this sim last night. After a bit I TPed Enjah and we rode around on our bicycles, then fell through a bit of pavement into the sewer. After a bit of larking around in Blumfield we went to the neighboring sim to look at some pre-fabs floating in the air. They looked awful due to the fact that everything had shiny turned on and some things were shiny and bump-mapped - I can only guess the creator doesn't have shiny setting turned on or he'd see how terrible it looks on these paticular objects. I've run into printed signs twice in the past two days that were "shiny," and, therefore, unreadable. Anyway, I was doing something on my bicycle and fell off the platform, plummeting down, down and landing in... the elephant's graveyard of sex balls.

In SL if you want your avatar to, say, use an umbrella, fight with a sword, or swim, you need an animation. It's common to see animations in round prims attached to furniture, so that you can sit in the right spot in the way someone has decided you should sit. Most of the female anims are heavy on the sexeh affected super-model. People being as they are, there is great variety in the sex animations, which are commonly put in poseballs (usually one is pink and one is blue) which can then be placed in furniture or sold as-is to the do-it-yourself sexual set designer.

When I fell off the platform I landed in the midst of a bazillion sexballs. Enjah came down and we started trying out the sexballs (while still on our bicycles). It was pretty funny.

After that we went and bought little hoverpad-style flying craft from Max C's spot, and flew around. We ran into Max who gave us the Builder's Eye, which I was interested in as I thought it would help in machinima-making (and it will, which is exciting, but there's a fundamental problem for me with machinima-filming as my right arm only works in a limited way for a short time but has great capacity for pain, apparently).

Afterwards I sailed to the Moth Temple and part of the way back, stopping in the middle to talk to Siltar in IM and ask her to script the weathervane - which she worked on. I later TPed her into the middle of who-knows-where as I was standing there and we both started working on the weathervane. As yet it... sort of, kind of, partially works - needs me to beat on the prims a bit.



17 November 2005

 
Yesterday was NOT GOOD, but today was ok and Iwent to jin shin, grocerralisationering, and did a load of washing, Now I'm pooped. Just went in Second Life where I decided that things must be better for people (we've had major woes since Griefer Sunday and the point release) - my informal view based upon the amounts of things I sell. It's been strangely up-and-down but all of a sudden yesterday there was a surge. The surge (I think) was just the people who didn't buy while things were wonky all coming good on the same day (there was an update yesterday that seemed to help things a lot) and deciding to shop. Today is the same. Then I thought, "Oh, but isn't there supposed to be a newspaper article mentioning me..." and looked up the Metaverse Messenger, but the article isn't out yet, so that's good. I'd attribute this in part to the article if it were out. So - from my guesswork I'd say people are doing all right. It's been touch and go for a bit. I didn't have huge problems but I sympathise with those who did (or do).

An Aussie, Midnite R, bought my delphiniums - the first sale. I asked her if the flowers were all right, and she replied that they were. I'm glad about that. The objects that spawn the particle flowers are tiny and I was worried in case they'd be easily lost. I keep trying to get someone to open a garden accoutrements shop so I can contribute things (I don't really want to do it myself). I tried to get PetGirl to do it - heh. So far I seem to be easily resistable.

Did a custom tent texturing, yesterday, and started a strange upper garment that I'm not sure how to define. It looks a bit like a space commander uniform, but I need to beat on it some moreto turn it into something I like.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Elf Clan, so I went for the last hour (in my sicky state) and saw nice fireworks with Catherine Wheels and other things, and an exhibit of spell-casting which included things like Rain of Fire (red cloud forms and drops fireballs all over), levitation (someone gets lifted up into the air), and a rather cool thing with rotating swords that spin around a targeted avatar's middle as copious amounts of red particle blood spews out. Very nice.



15 November 2005

 
A busy day at work - I finished and printed up all the Elders' Dinner invitations, made four different versions of 2-part tickets for the four showings of Christmas in the Clouds to be shown in the school gymnasium, worked with Cheyenne and Sabra making their cartoon characters, shoved a few papers around, worked with 5th grade inside the school virtual world. In that world (WaHeLut2) the children were working very well with the Cornell people, and when Scott to me to get out of his valley ("Please leave. Get out.") I turned half my attention to my printer as it hasn't been serviced so I have to feed cardstock into it sheet by sheet. I can use the lower tray for paper (although that tray is too small to be useful for the yearbook) but cardstock uses the top tray. I saw Alex and Tiff and Montrose and Mr. Yazzie, and talked to Brenda and sallee and Denise on the phone. The entire time I was there I was jumping up and down to shove a page in the printer, go back to Photoshop, shove a page, go back to the virtual world, etc. Well, except after the children left and Alex came in and I made HIM stand there and feed paper while I kept working. It all got finished, which was great.

Came home, went into Second Life, and wound up playing bumper boats with Enjah. Bumper boats are like bumper cars on the water except they have cannons. One fires at one's opponents, and at a certain number of hits the boat sinks. It was rather crazed trying to drive and shoot with my left hand - I was trying to perfect a way to move whilst shooting, but it really doesn't work. I had done it once before, last year, but I was alone, so it didn't actually help (I hadn't remembered how the boats worked anyway). We got shot at for a while when we were standing on the shore, by a fellow trying to inspire us to engage him in battle, I think.



14 November 2005

 
Heh - testimonials from the FYZYX Physics-Enhancing Spray campaign:

Cubey T. rated you positively: "WOW! IT REALLY WORKS! THANK YOU FYZYX SPRAY!"




13 November 2005

 

FYZYX Physics-Enhancing Spray!
New on the market - a bargain at 1L in my cave in Bodega and soon to be available at Grignano Books. FYZYX, when used as directed, smooths your unsightly sim border crossings and eliminates those unseating blues. Fast-acting, non-staining formula washes out easily with a mild bleach solution. Spray on thoroughly - no need to wait, since FYZYX is immediately on the job. Try FYZYX today!




12 November 2005

 
Anji sends news of her family at least once a month, and in the current email she says:
(I left out the dates as it doesn't matter)

"I Went to a scrap booking party. For those who don’t know what this is: it’s where you sit around a table with other people talking rubbish while you chop up some precious photos and stick then on another bit of paper and then add decorations to make it look gaudy all for the cost of $10...that’s how much I have to pay to make friends. Ryan, while I was shredding, sat on the couch and watched Hi-5. He mustn’t have paid his $10. The other children ran around like maniacs having a great time.

Caitlin and Ryan went to Meg’s 3rd birthday party. She lives across the road. It was a princess and prince party. Caitlin was a beautiful princess and Ryan went as prince Batman. They had a lovely time. Ryan was most excited to be given a lolly bag...

Caitlin’s talk at school today was on 'Jobs you do at home'. She has to talk about the jobs she does at home and the jobs she could do at home. If she were to do all the jobs she said she did then we’d have to pay her a king’s ransom. There was so many jobs that she said she did do that there wasn’t much left to write on the jobs that she could do. When asked ‘when do you do these jobs’ she answered...’ I don’t have to do them all the time, just sometimes’. So once a year is enough criteria in her opinion. Meanwhile, in the swimming pool, Ryan is doing a great job with his swimming. Steve took Caitlin to Athletics. Circuit, hurdles and shot put. I’ll have to remember to put the times and distances next time. She is now an official paying member. # 194 She has the club shirt and the bits and bobs that have to be sewn on. Lucky she has a mum with a nice new sewing machine. It seems to rain every Friday these days. It’s too wet for Ryan to go. He would have to go in his togs.

Ryan and I went to the indoor play center before swimming with the swimming group. The most torrential rain was falling and so ½ of Brisbane was at the play centre. It was so loud with kids and rain of the roof we left almost deaf. Ryan’s mates at swimming are Phoenix, Jake, Joseph and Emily. It rained all day so Little athletics was cancelled...except the water polo. We had Mc’ Rotten’s for dinner. Steve had a big work lunch to farewell his favourite crony Matt (aka..Steve’s drinking friend) who has since gone to work in Qatar for 3 years... I knew it would be a big day for them, but I didn’t expect him to ring up at 11.30pm and say ‘I fell asleep on the train...i’m in Beenleigh’...which is about 40ks south of Brisbane..(we live 12k north/westish) So he must have got all the way to Ferny Grove station the first time (asleep) and then the train turned around (not literally), went back to town and onward. He got home at 1.30am. Funny ay!?"



10 November 2005

 
Poor Second Life has been hit by ANOTHER griefer and has been closed for the past hour or so. Stupid, stupid trouble-makers. On a related (perhaps) note I was taking screenshots for the A Show of Hands poster when a stranger dropped in. A stranger in a grossly adjusted avatar that was obviously made to be as ugly as possible. I asked "her" to jump in and help me by posing, and I gave "her" an animation to use. Very kindly she complied and helped me out, then I left. I haven't done anything but watch for the name to reappear. I think treating people with respect but also keeping an eye out are about all one can do. That's not really enough, though.

I was out of Second Life when LL asked everyone to log out so they can repair the damage. I was making poppies. Come to think of it, Amu asked me last night to make a texture animation for ribbons, which I did, but didn't quite see how it would be good. He didn't like it, so now I'm wandering SL with ribbons in my hair, and I'd said to Amu that he might need particle ribbons I am not sure they'd look good either - not quite able to wrap my mind around ribbons on a sword anyway. His static prim ribbons looked nice.


 
A huge eagle just swooped up in front of the window and veered right to continue hunting. Beautiful! I went to jin shin, did some food shopperating, and went into Second Life where I was IMed by a reporter for the Metaverse Messenger (M2) who said, "Caught you! Ha ha!" He interviewed me for a story about photography in SL. It wasn't a surprise - yesterday he took a picture of me and Enjah in the gallery. I tried to be thoughtful and make sense in my answers to his questions - always difficult for me. Later this afternoon I'm meeting the children in the virtual world. I was just in there changing signs a bit and sending a telegram to Alina. I hope it all goes well today.



09 November 2005

 
Ted Wingnut telling Osprey about how The Pencil Tree came into being.


 
Second Life is closed for an update which includes (gasp!) changes to foot shadows! I'm doing laundry and poking about trying to decide what feeble first-attempt machinima I should make for the Alt-Zoom December themed festival. I have a million ideas for "start" but I need to think of something doable and not too weird.

Enjah and I have been collecting ideas for the big movie I want to make using things I've created but can't use due to prim limits and other constraints. I need to get the contest backdrops up tonight for A Show of Hands, too.

Enjah's son has been doing ok - thank heavens.



08 November 2005

 
Home from work at 5:30 or so - long day. Worked with Sabra and Cheyenne on their comic strip - at this point they have each drawn a character full-face and from the side, have scanned them, and are coloring them. Sabra's is a beeyooteeful girl and Cheyenne's is a crazed artist who is also a wasp. I'm interested to see how they wind up interacting. Vincent was on a field trip. In the virtual world the Tuesday team got the idea a bit, and now there are copied objects everywhere plus space ships moving up high and down into the ground. I have subdivided (per Alina's idea) the new world into individual valleys (she thinks they need privacy and who knows) and put signs up of the order "Milan's Land." I should change the signs to something like "Milan Valley" perhaps. Then I can tell them they have the valley but the hills are buffers. The areas are varied as I like variety and just couldn't help myself - but I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I should make one with a needlelike point of land upon which someone can build a house. Might be cool. I already discussed with Scott how he could build a house in the air "supported" by helicopters. Course I'm a sucker for helicopters.

In Second Life I uploaded my mummy's ATS picture and put it at the Remembrance Day site created by Garnet P. There was no one else there at the time and I should go back and see how it's changed. I keep feeling like I should upload my grandpa in his 14-18 uniform, although then I'll feel like I need to add my uncles, etc. Maybe I should...



05 November 2005

 

Guy Fawkes Day aka Bonfire Night - by far my favorite day when I was small.

The power was out for a while today again. I was in Second Life looking at one of Enjah's characters for the movie I somehow decided to make (having to relearn all the video crapola since I haven't been obsessed in that direction for a few years) when the trizzities came to a halt abruptly. When it came back on I filmed a snippet for practice and dragged it into an editing program (well, two) I have 4 so I should decide which is most useful + easiest then upgrade if I need to. Premiere is the nicest, but I never felt like I was very proficient using it as I did so much with the children at school, and it was just too hard for them. Anyway, it was useful practising. Felt headachey and punk all day, who knows why.

Spent a few hours archiving and deleting and defragging until now I feel like I'm in shape to do a bit of video. I have 75 g free after pruning.

Yesterday I was making some interesting gates for no particular reason when a stranger came by and started talking to me. She's by way of being a neighbor, since she's over in Bolinas, and is another person who started her account years ago but didn't play much, so now is something of an old new resident. She's a furry, so I told her to enter the Show of Hands contest as I never get very many furries. Enjah came over and showed off Ted and JB Fustian (through a typo he has become JBH Fustian). Ted whittled the Pencil Tree (in the movie) and JBH Fustian (the barber from Emma Metropolitan's hometown) has something to do with the potato on the railway flatcar. Ted, who is 102, was the common-law husband of Emma's mother. If I remember rightly her name was Norma Fallupian. I should write these things down... oh wait, I bet I did write it down in the blog. Enjah's newest character is a woman who runs a motel. I named her so let's see if I remember her name... Marilyn Oesterveldt I believe. There's also a roller skating waitress, and I named her Dotty Wood after someone visiting Enjah in meatspace.

Made a custom robe for someone who surprised me a lot by turning up. I sent it when I had finished, and he got it - haven't heard if he liked it or not though. The other night someone actually came up and said, "Excuse me for staring, but you look great." He asked for a landmark to my shop, and went directly there and bought two outfits. That was a new one for me.

Enjah's son is out of hospital, staying with her, and improving rapidly.



03 November 2005

 
The incredible wind last night took out the power. I spent a cold day and was happy for heat and light when it finally came on in the afternoon. After lighting a burner with a match I accidentally turned it off, and still had the lit match which was burning my fingers by then, but just bore up and lit the burner again. That hurt. Reminder: buy some matches. Hours later it stopped hurting and I decided to cut off the burnt part of thumbnail as it was unsightly. I managed to cut off a bit of thumb with the thumbnail, which made it start up again. Heh.

Enjah had scheduled the awards ceremony for the framed contest, and she was there when I finally got power and logged in, frozen. We started out with just Selador, but people started showing up after about half an hour (typical). Later Enj and I went off to try animations with a project in mind. I bought one for Ted Wingnut entitled "hearing voices," I think it is.



02 November 2005

 
Topiary Hand

Actually I saw some bushes years ago that looked like a hand, and never got it out of my head. It was up around Seattle Center somewhere.

I had a grueling day at work for many reasons. I wound up in the school virtual world absolutely unable to function, having had a shock that rendered me useless. Tiff labored to get the thing straightened out, and round about 4pm had it solved. I stayed until 4:30 or so slogging away on the crap paperwork.



01 November 2005

 


 

Last night was the screenings of the machinima entries for the Alt-Zoom ed Wood contest, but I was wondering until the last second where it was being held. I IMed BBC, who I'd never met before, and he TPed me, then I TPed Forcy and she TPed Way... wondered why there was no listing of it. Maybe there was one that I didn't see... I was looking on Events and on the Alt-Zoom website. Anyway, there were three entries, and it was very interesting. Pierce P. is like SLs very own Guy Maddin. His film involved an army of zombie women, god, a tiny warthog and hippo, sex change, and many other elements. The middle film was in black and white with a narrator like "Reefer Madness" and films of that ilk, which purport to be educational (about the perils of the atom) while actually being merely sensational. Total's was less involved but well-made and fun.

Enjah and I stopped in ThunderCloud's Hallowe'en party for an hour, and we both bought storms, although Thunder sent our tiny payments back immediately with the message that everything was free for the night. That is very nice of him - his things are amazing. Anyway, I put my storm up in front of the cave so that as you walk in you get struck by lightning (unless you somehow miss the trigger pad). Yesterday I also put a begging animation in front of the Havok2 shrine, which made me laugh a lot. My cave is getting out of hand.

 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?