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31 August 2007

 

I'm out of control with all these scripts, and will pare down as soon as I have a minute + inclination. I tried a few times today but ran into some people every time - not that it was bad just distracting.

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30 August 2007

 
Hmmmm... I was building feather skirts and there was a disconnection. Now SL seems to be offline or at least closed to logins. I should probably just go to bed.

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29 August 2007

 

Three + hour Burning Life meeting. Despite holding it where 4 sims joined 41 people stayed in one sim, 9 were in the one I was in, 5 in another, and a few in the fourth.

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I have wanted to connect with OpenSim for a few days, and just did it because of Vint Falken's clear blogpost. I spent a few minutes dressing myself and rezzing a cube, flying, taking pictures, then logged out as my brain exploded :D

Thanks, Vint and sim builder Dalien Talbot. Awesome!

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It seems that identity verification has arrived in Second Life. I believe the accessing-flagged-areas is just a kind of carrot and that the more important reason for IDV is so that when there's a legal dispute people can't laugh and say they didn't give true information at sign-up. I don't particularly like the idea, but if it were LL doing the verifying I wouldn't be too bothered about it, though. As it stands my only real objection is that the third party verification company is Aristotle.

I don't mind giving my driver license number to someone without an agenda (or even with an agenda I approve of), but Aristotle is part of the general evil abounding in the USA (spreading to the rest of North America) at the moment and feeds off the leavings of the institutional evildoers. I can only assume it was the feds who recommended Aristotle as a way for LL to comply with their rules.

I don't understood why Americans haven't taken to the streets about what's going on here. It's been years - things are getting worse and worse by leaps and bounds. I question why anyone would think an election would change anything when two presidential elections in the past were stolen. I hear from a friend that "there will be an overwhelming number" of opposition voters in 2008. Well, it's not my country.

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28 August 2007

 
W00ty - my car is back. When Tiff came we went and picked it up and then she left :( Also just before she arrived the UPS man banged on my door and delivered my replacement for my dead mouse. It's sitting in the box on the keyboard of my dead new puter, so maybe things are coming back, piece by piece.

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That game I was trying to remember was Game Neverending, which ended and they put all their energy into their site Flickr. I joined Flickr back then - when they said, "Hey, we are making this great photo-sharing site! And by the way Game Neverending is ending." It really never started (well not for me, anyway, as I think I was just perpetually waiting to enter), but they had some wryly-named objects that were interesting. Thank g'al I have a banjo and 75 doughnuts. And those are some kind of explosive devices I think, and a stick of butter. Oh - recyclator - I guess it didn't explode.



27 August 2007

 
“Grass is the hair of the earth”
Karl Foerster (1874-1970)

I like grasses a lot - all different kinds from the ornamental grasses that demand our full attention to the short and very fine old grass that is nice to lie upon. I ran into this quotation and thought it was funny. I'd rather think of hair as the grass of the human head. I vaugely remember giving my sister a poster of something with a title akin to that. Grass is far superior to hair.


 
*Gasps*

WindLight update from Torly:

"Today's special includes EDITABLE ripple water… ooooh…"

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26 August 2007

 
Nice conductor's baton by Kamilah Hauptman

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Another gem pointed out by Candide, who has his finger on the pulse of weirdness:

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I want to keep the upcoming lunar eclipse in mind and watch it - I'll might forget but I will try.

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25 August 2007

 
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh :(

Twice in one week :(

So my fan stopped working and my car overheated (at about 5:50). I did various things then called Con who arrived with Deb. A different wrecker with the same driver as on Monday towed Sha to my mechanic's, and Con and Deb and I drove back here. I said good-bye to them about ten minutes ago.

I had almost decided to slowly drive to the car place but smacked myself and went for a tow instead. It's just not worth risking the destruction of my engine.


It was a long wait for the wrecker, but at least we spent the time laughing.

One lousy week: 2 breakdowns, an exploded video card. At least the major things makes the minor things seem inconsequential.

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I just saw this and it made me laugh so hard I registered - besides, they are giving 50 KNEECAPS!

I doubt I'll be in here for long, but it's good for a brief laugh.

Made me think of that game... errrg... what was it called... I'll have to think. It had all kinds of bizarre objects... Canadian game... *lapses into silence*

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The show had a number of exciting... uh.. impediments that held it up for a bit, but was ok once we got going. Except for the knitters, which act suffers badly in the lag. I was told it looked fine audience-side (they don't know what we are supposed to be doing plus our shinee pointee ur-bras are mesmerising).

Unfortunately in a way, the video stream didn't materialise - but that was all right. The sim was maxed and uber-laggy, and we shall make our own videos come September when we retire to our home stage at Phobos. I can keep close to home as Bodega-Phobos-Europa are all close (Bodega being the furthest west).

After the show Salazar pointed out that the show date on the TSMGO page was wrong (gah!), so I was just going to fix that quickly. I couldn't log into my ftp account - not surprising considering I use an ftp client on my puter and am using my olden puter. I am not very familiar at all with the dreamhost web-stuff as I never use it, but had just waded through to the ftp password changefication area when I got two emails that (to me sounded like they) spanked me for leaving the show things up as the space was needed and they were, at 2am, trying to set up for 7am. Eep - I felt badly and raced in to delete madly, IMing Salazar and Vlad as they owned a few things too. Salazar came pronto and deleted the curtain, and helped by pointing out things like the drill track, which was in the floor (that's where I keep it but one can't see it). I gave Des a copy of the curtain (I wasn't sure I really should as it's a curtain I made for our shows, the texture being one I made for Ambat, but I did anyway), as I think when we deleted everything it was emptier than they had expected and Des has asked for the curtain back.

Then I went back and fixed the webpage, and thought about food. In the olden days I taught myself how to ftp using DOS and did that quite happily until getting Go-Live (Adobe web thinger). The first way way interesting, but I was happy to swap over to an fpt client after a few years of it. I just figured all this out on my own so I'm sure I have major knowledge gaps and sub-optimum ways of doing things in many areas, but I just teach myself how to do something when I need to do it. Back when I used to be around people they'd always say, "How do you know this?" I dunno. No one's ever taught me anything about computers so it's a bit of a mystery, but I've never been any different about any aspect of life.*

Where was I? Now the footnote is longer than the post :( What a windbag I am.

Sub-post: Going Down Memory Lane
*When I invented the art program (I'm not a teacher - I'm an artist and we just did what interested me and the students like clay animation and monotypes) at Wa He Lut (my lone foray into education that ranged from part of 1 to most of 3 days a week) I tried to teach the children (5-13) that very thing. They'd say, "Can we do XyQ?" I'd say sure. I'd figure out how to do it, then we'd be doing it in class (say photo-process silkscreening of our original designs) and a child would say, "How do you do abd?" I'd say, you know as much about this as I do - this is the first time I've done it. Read the directions and experiment - if you have any good ideas let us all know. And they did. I used to tell them not to listen to me (I did tell them the wrong thing once or twice which gave them the indication that they needed to think and use their own judgement, but not sure if I did it on purpose or not). It was cool because we were on an equal footing and it set them up better to find out things in life. Nothing galls me as much as adults who act like they are repositories of all knowledge, far above the lowly child.
Once I had a whole class of kindergarteners on the floor with X-acto knives cutting out kites from garbage bags. They survived just fine, built kites with the plastic, plus skinny dowels, and tape, then we went outside where they thundered up and down and up and down while I was busting a gut laughing on the sidelines as the kites weren't going up in the air. It still makes me laugh.
We made giant papier-mache fruits and veg one time. A disturbed boy smashed the banana so we transformed it into a red pepper.
I used to make the children build things out of wood as most had no fathers and no one to show them how to use tools. It was very cool to see children gain confidence and be, for instance, drilling holes with the power drill in perfectly workmanlike fashion (they complained but I made them wear goggles). The biggest thing a group built was a large (6x6x4 feet maybe) turtle on wheels for the Procession of the Species. That entailed hammers and nails and screws and power drills/screwdrivers/stapleguns and chickenwire, cloth, paint, stuffing that was shredded paper from government offices, and g'al knows what else.
I think I'm thinking about all this as last week Tiff called me and told me Roxanna was going to throw out everything from my art program - which included photos from long ago as well as all the original yearbook paste-ups from back when I had them printed. My only option was to have everything brought over here. I said throw it all away - as I can't do anything with it and no one else is there who even remembers the old days.

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24 August 2007

 
From teh LL blogpost today by Ian Linden:

"We’ve been talking about upgrading the Havok physics engine included in the sim software for years, and haven’t managed to deliver. However, this project is making real progress now and will be ready for a beta test soon. The Havok 4 version in development can withstand the majority of physics glitches and attacks that cause most sim crashes."

That's going to be very nice. It sounds like it will happen within my timeframe, which is very awesome. I know everyone thinks it has been a long, long time, but it hasn't - at least not to me.

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O.o
My computer men called me out of the blue about 20 minutes ago and said they had put in for a replacement card and would come out and swap the cards as soon as it arrived (next week). Yay!

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The coyotes are rather noisy and active in the spring and summer, but this morning (late! It was 9!) they were very loud and just went on and on. If you haven't heard coyotes they sound like the very demons from Hell's Mouth. The yippingly strangled shrieks and responses echo hauntingly and make them sound very awful indeed although they aren't bad at all. They sound like they could be hyenas, but thank g'al they are not anything like those creatures. I am overjoyed every day of my life not to live near hyenas. I believe* that Mankind's expansion to cover much of the globe happened because people were trying to get well away from hyenas and I would've done precisely the same thing.

*looks around to make sure no hyenas are nearby*

*I was thinking yesterday that I believe nothing/believe everything. I keep experimenting to figure out what I believe in and think positively but it has been draining away this week. I'm reminded of my friend Hel Hel, who believed that once you die that's it. She died - I don't know if that was it. I find the concept of nothing a burden, sadly. However since I believe in all somethings as well as nothing, I'll just wait for the wheel to turn a bit.

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This Week is teh Suxxors = -565

Minus side:
  • Sha was in the shop because of breaking down* on Monday -50
  • I missed jin shin and Frank is now gone for two weeks -30
  • My puter has exploded - dunno why -500
  • We had to start rehearsing with no music as the sim had changed ownership (same person different account) rendering the music box unuseable. After a frantic 45 minutes or so emailing and IMing the problem was solved and we went on with the rehearsal from the dog act. -20
  • Enjah had an optical migraine and Theo and Ida had sinus headaches. (no rating)
Plus side:
  • I picked Sha up this morning - Tiff gave me a ride on her way to work. +20
  • Todd gave me the new and improved Puppeteer which just rocks as that's what I'm using to make the growing plants. Plus I'm dying to make more robots. +10
  • I saw a Great Blue Heron** on Monday shortly before breaking down.* +5
  • Uh...
Monday-Thursday ---- 35-600= -565 rating

*Not exactly breaking down - I saw the temp gauge was high, smelled antifreeze, saw a puff of steam, pulled off the road and stopped. Went 500 yards to a tire place where I called my mechanic and triple A in that order. Waited for the tow truck. Mysteriously became a complete imbecile through shock. Adam, "You need a new radiator." Me: ===:O When Bret drove me home he said, "Did you turn it off or did it stop running?" I said I had turned off the engine. "Pfft - then it'll be fine."
** I don't see them every day, but it's not exactly rare to see them.

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22 August 2007

 

The Treachery of the Google Calendar

Mr. Noone* cannot have a party as Google changes the flaming "noon" part and adds a "pm" which is not appropriate for noon. Argh. I find that very* annoying.

*Mr Noone is a "friend" of Ted - well, Ted doesn't like him, but they reside in the same facility. (Mr Noone has a moustache, and Ted declares everyone who has a moustache an "oppressor." Don't ask me why. I think he once had a cruel boss or something who had a moustache. Mr Noone was in dry cleaning so he just thinks Ted is mocking him by saying, "Oh, presser.")
**very, very, very

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W00 - finally Sha is fixed, and I am going to the car place tomorrow morning (missing jin shin, however, which is super bad as Frank is away next week and... the week after? I am not sure but I think it's two weeks). Adam fine-tooth-combed Sha and said that except for the (known issue) small oil leaks he looks good.

Apparently The Show Must Go On! is probably going to be streamed on Friday, which is wild. Now that we want to stop touring we have lots of people requesting we do shows.

Burning Life parcel grab is Friday at 6pm - so that's not going to work very well for me. There's always the Playa.

Had to hoover up a giant house spider this morning - it's the one that lived in the (I think) window in front of me, but he had grown. A lot.

Got some kind of graphics issue that is not good - fixed by new Forceware, but it happened again this morning so the fix was not permanent. I have Derek thinking. At least I hope I do.

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21 August 2007

 

The Show Must Go On!

Friday, 24 August at 6:30pm

SLCC @ Learning

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20 August 2007

 
Anji (my niece in Brisbane) says:

Ryan has come up with some beauties this month, and lots of them.
  • “I wonder what those birds eat?” I asked Ryan. “Maybe crumbly donuts” he replied.
  • Commenting to Ryan that I had some fluff of something up my nose, he suggested ”or a lizard!”
The first one reminds me of the story written by a few Wa He Lut kindergarteners in Judy's writing class (a million years ago - those children are now out of high school). It was called The Bird and Worm Restaurant, and declared that, "the restaurant was located in Spain behind some bushes." I'll bet crumbly doughnuts were on the menu.

Regarding the second, nose lizards are not merely an annoyance but can lead to serious negative consequences in one's personal relationships* if unchecked.

*unless one's S.O. has, or is, a nose lizard.

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Wow, traumatic day.

I had to get towed, and my car is at my car fixers. It *might* be done tomorrow - depends.

They had a very cool 1926 motor car, with wooden spokes, up on the rack in the shop. I liked seeing it though I was too much in shock to appreciate it fully. Doesn't take too much to send me into a tailspin apparently. My car men were very sweet to me and B gave me a ride home. His son recently began driving and is very sensible, he said, but his daughter is approaching that age and has a liking for speed. I said, "I wonder where she got THAT from?" - heh - B is a race-car driver.

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19 August 2007

 

*whistles*

Mysterious Photographs
So... 50 strange images were sent to me anonymously and seem to have one thing in common - they all show a column from Tina Bergman's Burning Life '06 build, that was called "Pixels in the Wind."

I'm investigating...

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18 August 2007

 
Os Gets Up to No Good
or "1 from column A..."

After Burning Life '06 I took down my build, which was called "Mankind's Giant Footprint Upon the Earth." Immediately I was asked to rerez it in a different location, which was hard as I had deleted it, and it had great community collaboration in the form of objects added to the landfill. I rebuilt, but the closed sim meant I couldn't ask for community additions until it opened. Tina gave me one of the pink columns from her build though. We waited and waited - then the sims went offline and I just figured it just hadn't worked out and that was fine.

Fast forward a year... "The object 'Second Life' has sent you a message from Second Life:
Your 12 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder...Your 25 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder...Your 48 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder...Your 16 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder..."

W00t! I can look through and find Tina's column - and get up to some manner of devilment with it! /me rubs her hands together and cackles.


The end of Tina's 2006 Burning Life build:

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Awesome show at Hopes Point. Mass people in the audience. The sim had 65 in it (we were 8 of those). Almost everything went perfectly - the one mistake being that I (it must've been me) moved things so the drill track was too far forward, resulting in a rough ride. Higbee came, which was great! The Tinies kept up a stream of funny sounds and comments that made me laugh, and they partied like hedonists afterwards. Those Tinies know how to have a good time!

Vlad took lovely pictures of the audience, which are on Flickr.

Zayn said just now, "At one point we had 70 ppl in the audience and you have to admit that tinys are a pretty enthusiatic crowd." Woo - 70!

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17 August 2007

 

VENUE CHANGE FOR SATURDAY

Raglan Shire has been having dificulties so we are now performing on Hopes Point sim.

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16 August 2007

 
Stupid Google Calendar
It drives my OUT OF MY MIND that when I write "Noon" Google Calendars changes it to "12p." There is no such thing as 12 o'clock am or pm. Why don't they keep their nose out of my calendar. Besides, what if you wanted to put the anniversary party of some friends named "Noon" on there.

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15 August 2007

 
Typically for me I got over-excited and read the LL blogpost wrongly, resulting in me sending in an application for a Burning Life plot when I just wanted a small one. For small plots one should just go and try to claim one whenever they open up, and I will do that. I tried asking what I should do as I didn't want anyone to think I was trying to get two plots, and I'm not sure I was understood, but I shall try my best to get there. At Blackrock I saw Scrap Book, as a HUMAN not a book ==:O - he was helpful - and RacerX too, which is always a pleasure.

I did briefly fly my ornithopter around the Burning Life sims, which was fun.

Enj and I went to Straylight. Her new computer is coming soon, which will make her happy.

Short video on my installation idea (I just came up with the idea and made these last night). I had earlier ideas but they didn't quite hit the spot.
The idea is when you interact with nature you will see things that are otherwise hidden; that the Green Man's powers are in all of us.
Music: Spirit-Sky by Orb Gettar


 

Update: There's a blogpost and 18 sims.


 
I started working on my Burning Life '07 build the other day. I have no clue how it's to be signed-up for, but only know it's on. I'm excited (as usual) about BL, and hope I get a spot.



14 August 2007

 


 

Fer Enj

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Candide sends me all the funniest video urls. Witness this!

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Now the Razerian helperer has asked for all the information they already received when I registered the mice, as well as "proof of purchase," which I know not what that thar would be. I attached a picture of the green mouse coyly posing with its accoutrements, including the Certificate of Authenticity, the invoice, and so forth and a picture of its bottom ===:O with the numbers showing.

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13 August 2007

 
Watching "300." When I was a child X in alphabet books was usually for Xerxes and I don't recall him looking that way.* Anyway, it's a familiar history, and one I always liked, especially the "We shall fight in the shade," part, which just goes to show you that a good quip has legs. I don't recognise any of the actors but they all do a decent job. It's fun to see that Scottish man rolling his eyes at Xerxes, almost but not quite saying, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Anyway it's not like I didn't know what it'd be like when I chose it. I like the stylisation. Visually interesting.

It's one of those cartoon films wherein the killing has no impact and the good guys are goood and the bad ones wear masks and file their teeth to sharp points. It seems like the filmmakers and producers must've cynically held up a licked finger to determine the way the fickle wind of public desire was blowing. It is rather a disservice to mankind to bolster the need of some people to feel things are black and white and there's an us and a them and ne'er the twain shall meet. Orthodontics versus filing one's teeth to sharp points = no common ground there.

However it's just a movie I suppose, and good fun in a way. There were scenes in Pan's Labyrinth that I couldn't watch - not at all stick man violence - it felt very real.** If you suck all the meaningfulness and complex human interactions out of something I reckon you can have as much violence as you like with no waxy yellow build-up or bitter aftertaste. Yummy, and can be fabulous propaganda! w00t!

*I think it's xylophone now.
*I have to say I draw the line at real violence. Depictions in aid of a story are fine, but I don't ever ever ever want to see any more terrible things like I saw recently. It's no argument to me that every day a billion times that cruelty goes on in factory farms. All of it should stop. I don't know how it is the human race thinks so much of itself when what has been done to cows, for instance, just to pick one animal, reveal what we are truly like.

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Armath made me a text spork: ===CE
He also made a text bandaid after we had a text spork battle and he won (my text bandaid looked, he said, like a watch): (__[:::]__)

Indeed better than mine which shame prevents me from typing.


Punk.


:(


 
Certain people* think I am totally mad, but I've always believed LL is doing a lot of necessary structural changes to Second Life that will result in more-or-less a new platform ready for (or already incorporating) things we've been waiting for for a long time. I think SL started a bit off kilter and quick fixes got it into a muddle, and that nothing could be done but to simultanously keep the online grid going while preparing a replacement. In other words work on two projects at the same time. At least that's how I see it.

I base my thoughts on nothing much: belief and trust, and certain wave disturbances that feel like someone tippy-toe-ing through the code. It feels like the grid equivilent of a girl wearing an old dress whilst a new dress is created beneath. What seem like random holes are cut in the old dress, showing the new dress. At some point the old one will be gone.

*>:( heh

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Sadly, my mouse went all borkified again last night after having a sweet week of smmooth gliding. Something is corruptifying its software but damned if I know what can be done about it. On the bright side, maybe I can fix it all up re: registry on the olden puter which isn't internet-bound, and run sans AV. Then we shall see what happens.

I emailed the support Razerite and asked for ideas. Meanwhile I'm back on old klunky and I don't like it one bit.

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12 August 2007

 

Another cool build under construction by Salazar.

Me atop a whale near the towers which are next to our rehearsal home stage and just north of the Kill Club where I spend a fair amount of time. I like everything to be packed up close so it suits me.

Sunday Slashfest resulted in Lain coming and posing and a new person showing up and fighting me three times. We then went to see the Snurbomatic and had a long talk about finding things, selling things, buying things, etc. He wants to have a thriving businessand laments that it seems that opportunities are not what they were. He said there are ten thousand stores all trying to make money. I said I don't shop. I told him there are holes - like never being able to find anything - holes that are the opportunities. I think that things like marketing, pr, sorting/rating in some way like say Netflix (in all its weirdness), etc. have a lot of room to grow.

Addendum: information access - sorting: I can almost see how something akin to Ban-Link might be useful, the rub being that no one would bother to list things they like and I'm sure it could be gamed if not thoughtfully arranged.

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11 August 2007

 
At rehearsal I was trying to video and rehearse - Vlad and Maxie were videoing too, and we are going to share snippets. I was stupid enough to have my inventory open when my UI was suppressed, which resulted in folders accidentally getting dragged into other folders without me seeing.

First inkling - I dragged a folder onto myself and all hell broke loose as multiple hippopotamuses, theatre curtains, juggling balls, etc., etc, all came out and attached themselves to me in a weird dance. Salazar said, "It's curtains for Osprey." I logged out when I twigged, to stop the onslaught, but had to go back later and rez everything and set it all straight.

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10 August 2007

 
Just SPIT IT OUT, Larry!
Due to no fault of his own, I'm receiving clumps of the following every day. They used to be in groups of 5 but the last one was a group of 10 and looked like this:
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
You have a message from Larry Pixel waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it.
...only full-sized, of course.

I don't know what it is, but it isn't as bad as the hundreds of emails and notecards (at a time) I used to get from *shudder* Sterling the Horse. If I happen to spot a Sterling I gasp and run away as fast as I can. That was truly awful and went on for a long, long time (months).

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09 August 2007

 
Karma

I don't know ANYTHING about religion at all, so forgive me if this is stupid.

I was just thinking about karma... well, my thoughts concern a few things but what started it off was the Flummel post ages ago about the 10 Commandments. I was reminded that in Christianity (I guess - that's what it said, anyway) it's enough to entertain thoughts of something for it to be considered a done deal. If you have ever thought about, say, dragging your neighbors pressure washer behind your car until it jounces to ruin, then you have sinned.

I don't agree at all, since I believe in actions. Eg and Ij, caveman friends, are hungry and each has an apple - the only food for a 2-day journey. Eg eats his apple at 7 pm on the first day then fantasises about knocking Ij on the head with a rock and taking his apple, but doesn't do it. To me, Eg is blameless as he has done nothing wrong. Of course, some people might think him guilty, but get this - Ij spent the entire journey thinking about mating with Ac, Eg's wife - so where are we now? Ac, by the way, spent her time inventing the wheel so she could drag her neighbor's pressure washer behind her car... but didn't actually do it (yet).

Presumably the idea of bad thoughts=action doesn't work both ways. If you think about giving all your television sets to the Poor but neglect to actually do so, I don't think you get Charity bonus points. Similarly, if a church asks you for your tithe and you say, "I paid it in my heart," I doubt that that would satisfy them.

I do believe that if you do something good you shouldn't mention it, though. I'm not sure how that ties in with this - maybe it doesn't.

Anyway, I was thinking about Ginko*, and marveling that anyone would ever have been attracted to that scheme. It popped into my head that for me, even worse than losing money would be having made money from it, as that would be a karma hit. "Investors" would have to know that any money they "made" was merely being taken away from other people. "More fool them," I hear some say, yet for me (I can't speak for others) the motives or what-have-you of other people are beyond my concern. I have enough trouble just trying to keep myself on what I consider to be a good path.

Karma has to do with actions, which makes it an attractive concept to me. Although that word has its origins in certain areas, there are similar concepts in other places. I really don't think we need ever be concerned with anything other than now, for right-wrong purposes. Karma has a "now" kind of thang going for it, which also is attractive to me. It isn't all totted up at some misty future point, but is more like a running total.

Ultimately, it's just a word for a concept that happens to coincide with my own views, I suppose.

*For non-SL-ers: Ginko was a ponzi scheme that recently went belly-up.

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Contest 30: COMICS

Theme: Comics, funnies, cartoons, single panel or strips MADE IN SECOND LIFE
Cash prizes.


SL Toon Studio is on the roof of the Photography Studio! Try it out - it rocks!

http://doodle.blip.tv/ <---demo video Patch Lamington is offering 3 Special Prizes for Toon Studio shots:
#1 - 500 L for best submission using an unedited Toon Studio snapshot (single frame)
#2 - 500 L for the best submission using 3 or more Toon Studio snaps stitched together to make a single comic. (no other editing!)
#3 - 100L special bonus for the funniest joke set in the library ( just to see if its possible :-)

There is a Toon Studio in Amicitia at Patch's Place which can be used by anyone.
Also one will be set up for use at Blumfield Park.
Boxed Toon Studios will be availale at both places for purchase.

THEME
The contest themes are always loose - any interpretation is good. The theme is comics. Do ANYTHING you want. Get funkeh.
Single panel, multi-panel, dress up in cel-shaded gear, use the SL Toon Studio or use something else.
If you make a machinima cartoon I can display it - however if I get more than one it won't be as easy.

You may make something like an animated texture or other cool thing if you want. You don't have any tight limits.
If you make something cool that doesn't seem to fit the "textures" requirement just enter it anyway.

Straight snaps or manipulated - it's all good.

DATES
Enter by: 7 September 2007 - late entries will be hung space permitting but will not be eligible for prizes.
Exhibition: 10 September - 30 September 2007 in the Photography Studio upstairs gallery.

++++++++++++++++++++++++
We will have an awards ceremony - time TBA.
++++++++++++++++++++++++

TO ENTER

SPECIAL COMIC-TYPE ENTRY RULES
COMIC STRIPS may be formed from multiple textures on prims.<<<--
or
Enter 3 textures of Second Life screenshots. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<----------
Textures can be no bigger than 512x512 - rectangular photos saved as 512x512 regain their proportions once they are put on a prim.

Title entries with your name + title <---= so I don't lose it in my inventory

Send them to Osprey Therian with MOD permission and COPY permission.
Give me an IM so I know to look for them.

Don't send them in a notecard - I say this as I look at textures every day but I rarely look at notecards. If I don't get your heads-up the entry gets buried under the billion spam notecards I get per week. I hate it when things get lost - the only entries to've been lost thus far were in notecards.

**************************

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08 August 2007

 

Patch Lamington just released a groovy new thing called SL Toon Studio. One is able to pose, change backgrounds, add one's own backgrounds, ADD SPEECH TO SPEECH BUBBLES on the fly by chatting in three different channels (left bubble, right, and caption). I hung out with him a bit today doing some testing, then gleefully ran off to Enjah's house where we posed and traded insults by way of speech bubbles.

Then I went and set up the Toon Studio at the Photography Studio (since we had cooked up this way to kick off the Toon Studio's appearance) and wrote a contest notecard, finished the poster, uploaded the poster and set up a display. I had intended to bump the Origami contest downstairs but the Toon Studio is far too big to fit inside.

About Origami - I received nice IMs from the photographers, and Juko sent me an origami elephant to display. I had to remove the hanging cranes (I needed the prims) which is a shame.

I met a very nice new person and sent him off with landmarks. I did tell him to IM me and say how he was getting on but he didn't, at least this evening. Then I was startled to hear Elf Clan group chat, which is always so friendly and nice it brings a smile to my face. I went briefly to see the third new Elf Clan sim. I realise that I don't feel very connected to Elf Circle because it's very, very big. I don't feel like I know anyone anymore.

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07 August 2007

 
I've always been a huge JJ Ventrella fan and I was ecstatic when he joined up with Second Life. LL has got some incredible people working on features. I'll be thrilled when the Physical Avatar hits the Grid. I always thought, rightly or wrongly, that floopies have his stamp all over them.

There are old things like joints that I think a lot about. My inept experimentation with joints, when we had them, resulted in kewl weathervanes, the fruit of several happy hours of tinkering. I thought about joints a lot when I was making the crane decoration on Sunday, day-dreaming about them in a pleasant fashion.

I have no doubt things are going to pop out of the hole unexpectedly, as floopies and sculpties did, making residents breathless with amazement and wonder.

In the Second Life Herald, a comment to an Inigo Chamberlin story was made by Nicholaz Beresford, everybody's favorite open-source client programmer. He said:

"The worst thing I ever did to that immersion, did to my SL experience, was starting to work on the viewer from an open source perspective. There is nothing that not only pokes holes into the fabric reality, it completely rips it apart. It turned the experience into a program and into bits (in both meanings of this word), and I guess this is the reason why the Lindens, who are working on the plumbing side of SL day in and day out, have lost most of their sense of what SL means to the inhabitants."

That has the ring of truth.

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Standing atop the cranes decorating the Photography Studio.

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The Country Mouse and the City Mouse

Well, the Razer person sent me a list of instructions that included finding (or not) a beeeellion registry entries and deleting them, which took quite a while. So it was uninstall drivers, hunt for leftovers, restart, poke around in the registry for a long time. Restart. Look for something else. Cold boot. Turn off AV. Download new drivers. Install new drivers with mouse plugged in, reboot.

So far so good.

At some point I'll do the same with the old puter. Although I had not run AV during driver install ever, this puter has the despised (by me) Norton and it's hella hard to turn it off, I think. Interesting in an unhappy kind of way is that the port the Logitech was plugged into did nothing for this mouse. I had to plug it into a different hole.

I'm running the green (light) one. The red light one can go on the old puter. Or I can swap back and forth. The red one lost its near fore teflon pad, though. The light on the Space Nav is blue - it will look like Christmas in here. Thank heavens my decorating will be done early. I'd prefer it if they were all more subtle, but alas they are not. The green is especially acid. The blue is benign and jolly. The red is nice (almost all reds are nice).



06 August 2007

 
A Tale of Two Bad Mice

Last year I bought a nice red Razer Diamondback and it was groovy for a number of months (6? 8?) until one day it stopped. I un/replugged it and it went on the stopped about 15 minutes later. I reinstalled the drivers in case they had got corrupted but it made no difference. I secretly thought that programming a button to do the cntrl-alt-1 UI suppression had killed it since I'd probably hit the button without knowing it (I decided) while depressing other mouse buttons and overwhelmed it. I wanted another just like it only with no problems. I asked my computer builderers if they had heard anything bad about that mouse type or if I had just had a freak bad mouse.

Derek said he'd never heard anything bad so I bought another one. This was a green one. The red one lived and died on the old computer; the green one lived and died mostly (maybe it was a week on the old one) on the new computer. I never programmed the buttons in case that had been what killed Red. However, that was sad as programming the buttons was really, really helpful. After I had been using the green mouse for about two months it stopped working. My head burst into flame. I un/replugged it to see what would happen and it bluescreened the computer. I unplugged it (mime a tossing it in a corner motion) and went back to my clunky but reliable Logitech.

After a bit I went to the Razer website where I had registered the mice and asked them what was going on. I then didn't look at that email account for a few weeks or so. One day I went and looked in my inbox and under a pile of missives from various people was a support person's email. I replied with a few details. He replied asking me to try the mice on a computer with no Razer drivers. I fired up the Old One this morning before having any coffee and it wouldn't boot - just kept leaping up then crumpling to a heap then jumping up again. I suddenly said Doh! and unplugged Green and fired Old up with the Logitech, removed the Razer drivers, then plugged Green in. I spend 20 minutes or so using it - not really long enough to have it freeze up, most likely, but all I could do. I swapped out to Red and ran it for half an hour.

I reported my mouse experiments to my Razer support ticketeer along with the specs for both computers. Now I'm waiting to hear from Support. I would love to have them back in service as mouse shape and sensitivity make a huge difference to me.


 
Let's have peace.



Remember Hiroshima.


 


HA HA HA HA HA!

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05 August 2007

 
Out of my childhood AGAIN:

Muffin the Mule
Before I was born, during the post-war housing shortage, my father, mother, brother, and sister lived in a caravan. The man who had originally created Muffin the Mule lived there too in a fine, old gypsy caravan. There was an orchard beside them and monks came to pick the apples. One monk was a dwarf. My sister pulled a teapot down on herself and was scalded badly. My mother would take a rifle and shoot at rats in the tip, and the doctor was so taken with the idea that he had a go too. Then they moved out and I suppose moved to Botley not terribly long after, which was were we were when I was born. My mother's great friend was Morag, whose husband was an airline pilot, and who was a total slob until her husband was due home. She'd say, "See how nice it is," about the difference. They had a number of children and one at least was christened in Madeira as they had a great friendship with the mayor. The pilot husband would eat ratafia biscuits and drink madeira. It was a toss-up whether I'd be called Vivian or Morag, but Vivian won out.


 
Out of my childhood: Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men.

Of course Little Weed was our favourite.


 



04 August 2007

 

HAMLET ON THE STREET
Monologue by Craig Bazan in Camden NJ
18 years old


 

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Belle Isle was the biggest show yet, and ran an hour. Vlad debuted Undergrowth, which was lovely. The Droplettes act was the best ever as we had lots of drops (which people persist in thinking are limes).

Earlier I was at Motorati for part of the United Spinal fundraiser races, and took a few pictures, none of which were good, but I was trying not to to get too RSI-ed out before the show.

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03 August 2007

 

This would be better but I was tired and flattened it by mistake before I was done. Sufficiently done for a fun picture, methinks.

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I was trying to find the actual play "The Air Ship," as it sounded (well, looked, since all I had seen was the poster from the Library of Congress) like something we could revive, and found this blogpost.from the bitchin' blog Paleo-Future.

I'd love to do this as a play and a machinima. Maybe all of New Babbage would get involved. I'll keep looking - anyone who finds it tell me!


 
Steampunk Workshop

I like the keyboard/monitor a lot.


 

NMC has blogged about us HERE.


 

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02 August 2007

 
I just logged in to check something, and yes, I was facing the curtain, but even so I was quite startled that my framerate was over 200. Once I moved it went down of course, but I've never seen* it that high before.

Powerful new mojo must be in the day's update.

*I'm not always looking.

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2 pm on Saturday, 4 August
at
Belle Isle

This promises to be the biggest show ever.

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01 August 2007

 

I opted to take a photo or I'd never get it posted. there you are - one of the things I had tacked to my easel. It's just a lot like me - formerly in the physicality but now in spirit alone, which is certainly most important.

What else was on my easel... some images of art (that tulip field by Van Gogh, a Magritte, and other things), wire fishes someone made for me, a necklace from a giveaway for some ceremony or other (maybe a naming ceremony... maybe it was Karen's naming ceremony...), a picture the Russian children drew for me, a Dilbert cartoon that had someone saying, "I paint to find myself," and someone else saying, "You're right over there next to that bad painting." and a whole lot of other things I misremember. Feathers. A milagro. I painted my easel, once, but that painting is in New Mexico so I can't look at it.


 


Octobriana

I bought that (now known as a hoax*) book Octobriana and the Russian Underground when it was new, which was in 1971 (I might've bought it in 1972). I gave it to my sister as a present, since she was a Russian major at college, then borrowed it back immediately and stole it. I am NOT in the habit of doing that, I should add.

For years I had a xerox of Octobriana thumbtacked to my easel - the one of her riding the pterodactyl. That's because it reminded me of me, so to speak. The other favorite I have is the one after she kills the yak (a stampeding yak herd leads up to this), and says, "My kingdom for a Coca-Cola."

I just went to a bookcase and plucked the book out - still rocks. I will scan some pages or maybe just take pictures, later.
*The writer was a spy.

 

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