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31 March 2009

 
Doesn't it seem as though...

...a company could go into just the avatar side of virtual worlds and create an avatar that has compatible forms for each VW (licensed by each world), with a registered identity that then goes wherever the avatar goes? Doesn't it seem possible? Months and months ago I brought up the avatar identity clearinghouse idea, but this would go much further. In the case of someone having an avatar already in a VW the identity would just need to be linked, but the larger benefit would be the ability to roam at will with all your data in one place. Rather than the 3d web being a single "winner" it would be more fun if it were lots of worlds with lots of variety but with a less complicated way to skitter across the net.

I'm sure if it's a useful idea someone is already working on it.



30 March 2009

 

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This is very cool, too: Intensifying Open Source Efforts

Very, very.

It's been sad in the past that LL has not done right by the many skilled and generous developers who willingly donated many hours of time to improve the viewer. This sounds like efforts are being made to rectify that.

In the past the complaints I've heard were along the lines of: LL never gets around to/takes ages before incorporating fixes, it doesn't acknowledge/seems not to care about the effort expended in its behalf, that incorporated third party patches are busticated over and over by LL code until the patchers throw up their hands in despair. It could be that a general looseness caused things to happen not just to volunteer code but company code, too, I don't know. Volunteers don't take kindly to that treatment, though. If things are being tightened up so everyone's work is considered and knitted into the whole if appropriate as things go along it will be less wasteful. Knitting, not sewing, is the model.


 
Under the Sand

Charlotte Rampling gives a wonderful performance. This film focuses closely on one character, a happily married woman, and her way of dealing with life following a terrible blow.

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I Got Your Ice-Cold Nugrape
The Nugrape Twins, 1926

I got a Nugrape nice and fine
The rings around the bottle is a-genuine
I got the ice-cold Nugrape

Way down yonder in the Promised Land
Run and tell your momma here the Nugrape man
I got the ice-cold Nugrape.

Sodey-pop gospel


 
Qarl said on the jira:
"flexi-sculpties are implemented and ready for official viewer integration - however they still require cache work in our texture system (as detailed above.)"

Which I didn't really pay attention to until this part:
"this work is being done by another linden as he reworks all of our texture system. i think there's almost NO chance of all of this being in 1.23, but a good chance that it'll appear in 1.24 (or whatever we call that version). "

Might that involve how textures are cached and reconstituted?
That would be awesomely good.

I have heard that viewer called something like Viewer 2009 or something.

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29 March 2009

 
OnLive


Looks interesting.


 
Aethernaut Molly Montale sent me this link for Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment.


 
I'm almost 100% an observer now; whereas in the past my core passions were painting, reading, live performance, laughing, building, dancing, sheer physical exuberance, and observation, I'm down to one: observation. It's ok, I suppose, although being an observer and not a participant is excruciating and perhaps gives one a slanted view that's not terribly useful. On the other hand it's always interesting to look at things from strange viewpoints, plus it's all there is, heh.

It's obvious now that virtual reality is influencing reality a great deal, and in a positive way. I did used to wonder years ago if people who first learned to drive inside virtual reality would have subconsciously-held beliefs like "it's not real" that carried over into reality because they would be sitting in a seat looking at a screen - however that isn't apparent to me. What is apparent is a license to play that, once acquired in VR, is not revoked for just plain R. That's good.

The other thing has to do with social media. Because I grew up in a time of centralised information dispersal I used to think that things like, say, blogging, shattered and dispersed the ancient juggernauts that had always existed. Taking a longer picture, though, I can see that what social media really has done is allow people to go back to the old information-sharing processes of tribe and village. It was the juggernauts which were artificial, not the blogs and twittering and whatnot.

It has a parallel in the DIY movement in indie music. A hundred years ago I enjoyed seeing Calvin and Candice, who started K Records, mailing out cassettes of music that went around the world to fans who had picked it out of a crude catalog. K was operating outside the realm of the taste-setting music juggernauts, celebrating the small, the niche market, the raw. What was only possible in a small way then has become possible on a global-ish scale now. It was easy to see even back then that what was going on was not a change in what-had-always-been but an edging closer to ordinary people making music for other ordinary people, the goal being live music for everyone, and not a central recording industry spitting out copies of the same song to be consumed by millions.

I think most people have been at a job or in another situation where gossip runs rampant. I certainly have, but my response (partially because I was brought up to know how to keep my mouth shut) was just to never tell secrets. I've been in trouble more than once for knowing something but never saying a word - not a very common thing. The more social human trait is to speak and receive gossip and let the chips fall where they may. Information became centrally dispersed because the power-wielders could make it so, but then it became useful in some cases because the central source was trusted (say, The Times in 1920). Once the central sources became less trust-worthy there was nothing compelling holding that artificial net together and people were free to revert to an older model. I don't see it as better, necessarily, but as they say, a change is as good as a rest.


 
HBA's monitor exploded while we were in the middle of rehearsal.

At least I hope it was his monitor not his video card.



28 March 2009

 

Snowing.

Everything is white.

Maybe an inch an a half or so at the moment.

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27 March 2009

 
Zee's leaving post seems enigmatic to me. Addressed to "Friends" it lays out very simply the reason he came to LL, what he accomlished, and his reason for leaving (it's common for a person to be interested in pulling something up to a certain level rather than enjoy the maintenance). I had skipped over the initial "Friends" salutation, as it seemed a formality, but when he wrote "I'll miss you all" it stopped feeling like a general announcement. I know he's not going to miss me. Perhaps he knows he has a lot of enemies and was instead speaking to those who have been supportive of his actions. I don't know - I'm not friend or foe. I'm not going to be missed. Maybe both were formalities.

I'm glad SL is profitable, however there seem to've been a lot of short-sighted and destructive changes that have damaged the company in ways it may be difficult for insiders to see, and those changes came about during the Zee years. Forced to choose between the company going bust and what we experienced it was the better choice, of course - if that was what it was. I don't know anything about the way those changes came about, or if we shall enter a more stable time when customers can count on the accuracy of their budgets, or enter a yet more turbulent time.

Dunno, dunno.



26 March 2009

 
Recommended

I knew it was possible however just never bothered to fiddle around to make a default email address show in the Snapshot pane, but this morning I was searching the jira and ran across an old issue
with Dedric Mauriac's very helpful comment at the bottom:

After talking with SignpostMarv Martin, I found that I could edit the floater_postcard.xml file and define the default email addresses with the following line:

(<)line_editor bottom_delta="-6" follows="left|top" height="20" left="120" max_length="254" name="to_form" width="150"(>)email adress goes here(<)/line_editor(>)

(<) = < (>) = >
Obfuscation added by me intentionally.
Easier to see it on the jira as Blogger and Linkification alter the code if I don't change it.
So I added the address I wanted and it works perfectly.


 
Tiff was just here. She was telling me about her son's divorce difficulties (he has done everything reasonable that he could, and taken much financial loss paying for things his wife was court-ordered to pay but didn't, etc., etc., but now his only care is his three year old son) and told me she kept having little heart attacks - which I thought was a mere vivid description of how she felt emotionally until she brought it up again. Apparently she IS having little heart attacks, whatever that means.

She's an interesting and unique mixture of brilliant pragmatism, OCD, and something I can't describe that gives her big picture insight beyond the mere atomic. I met her about a year after the Flood (no, not that one - the huge flood that destroyed Wa He Lut in 1996) when she was lured up from Arizona where she had just retired from being de facto principal of a White Mountain Apache school (or maybe it was district). When she started there as a kindergarten teacher in, I think, the late 1980s, the isolated mountain community sent their young ones to school not understanding a word of English - they spoke only Apache (which would be a dream come true for Native peoples of Washington State, as their languages were long ago diluted and lost and much effort has been expended trying to reinstate a few). At Wa He Lut by dint of tireless efforts, tour de force grant-writing, and absolute 24-hour attention to detail (for ages she actually lived in the nurse's office), combined with ethics and bravery that allowed her to fight for what was right for children with no thought for her own safety or gain (or anyone else's) she raised the school up to a reasonable level (no mean feat), supporting all staff no matter how much she liked them or disliked them, judging everything by simply how good it was for children, their safety, and their education, but viewing things from the standpoint of parents, teachers, BIA, and so on. "Parents have entrusted us with their most precious possessions - their children." After she left and a (nice) new principal took over, ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL I had a dozen panicked phone calls from parents about a six year old child gone missing. He had got on the wrong bus and was all right, it later turned out, but no one was manning the phones or following the progression of each child from school to home, apparently.

It took me ages to get used to her. Although we were pals right off the bat my focus in life is very different (I have zero interest in schools and only wound up creating the gifted art program there by some twist of fate that put me in a position where I could do whatever I wanted*). Tiff's personality is very quirky, and though I would never claim not to be quirky my quirks and her quirks are about a million miles apart. However, here we are umpteen years later and I'm writing something a bit too eulogistic for comfort, so I'll stop.

*I never thought of the my art students as anything other than young artists, and would tell them that, and expected innovation and ideas to flow freely back and forth, which is what happened. I used to tell them not to ever listen to me, to do what they wanted, and would occasionally do something deliberately wrong so they'd rely on their own judgement.



25 March 2009

 
Trapped in Wax Like a Fly in Amber

I spend a few minutes (translation: hours) poking through wax cylinder recordings listening to audio ranging from Arthur Osmond ("Bob down, You're Spotted") and Harry Lauder to American ethnographic recordings to Luisa Tetrazzini and Antonio Vargas, the latter in a recording of Ah che la morte ognora from 1902.

If I once set foot near wax cylinders, which can be found all over the place on the web, I am doooomed as I go from one to the next until I notice just how much time I've spent. My ostensible quest was Adelina Patti recordings, which recordings - a few, anyway -I did find. Didn't slow me up, at all, but I did find them :-D

Arthur Osmond
Bob Down, You're Spotted - 1911


Old Ninety-Seven
Sung by Fred Lewey in Concord, N.C., October 15, 1925.



24 March 2009

 
The more I think about it the more I realise I have no real idea what manner of enterprises comprise the ~10% of triple ecks businesses destined for Pornistan, and I might actually, should I find out, be glad they are moving to their own continent. So - I was a bit unhappy at first, then decided to wait and see, and still feel that way with a bit more positive flow.

And of course I had hopes that the TG would merge with the MG for purely selfish reasons. I was hoping the TG, if abandoned, would be perfect for my Geezer Grid, however after years of patience I realise the TG will stay the TG. No GG :-( RATS!

In my plan sims would be named Marchbank, Deptford, Malice, Salterton, Table Talk, High Spirits, Leaven, Manticore, Breakfast, Papers, Brindled, Robertson, and Davies. There could be leveling in Geezerkraft - for instance telling someone off for being uncivilised might get you 1.7 million Geezerkraft points. The unlikelihood of there being anyone to tell off merits the high value, I believe.

Contrary to what the forum wags think, it isn't a grid for grannies; the Geezer Grid is intended for old avatars who don't make trouble, aren't especially interested in business, and who are tired of competitive striving. There would be no currency - instead there would be a small, monthly, all-inclusive fee. GK points, if we decide they would be fun, would begin at zero each day, then rise rapidly with everything accomplished. Upload a texture? That's 450,000 GK points! Delete a texture? That's 455,000 GK!

As you may've noticed GK points serve no purpose whatsoever - the only way they will not be gamed. For three days people will compete to get the highest GK score before realising that A) no one else can see their score, and B) there are better things to do with their time. Due to the lack of interest an announcement would therefore be made cancelling the GK points program. A huge uproar would follow, with protesters marching with picket signs all over Marchbank. GK points would be reinstated, but shortly thereafter a protest against GK would end in the program becoming an optional setting found deep in the glorious and unsullied hinterlands of the debug menu. Everyone would turn it off, but it would be on by default and would become a kind of rite of passage like the former boxhead and "I can't edit anything becoz it's all greyed out" phenomena. That is, if it's decided there will be a Geezerkraft point program. Which it won't, as there won't be any Geezer Grid. *shakes fist*



23 March 2009

 

I haven't used Cadroe Murphy's TerrainSculptor for a couple of years, but for some reason got a desire to play with it. If you haven't heard of it, this is what it does: creates a sculptmap of a sim and a decal of the map image to fit on it.

I couldn't remember what it was called so Googled "sim sculpty" and it popped right up. I downloaded and logged in and - alas it was busticated due to the Linden map-improvements. Oh, well - but then I noticed Henri Beauchamp's comment about making a new version, downloaded, and leapt lightly from sim to sim making sculptmaps for no particular reason. Henri has fixed TerrainSculptor, yippee! The new version is HERE.

It's a very simple program. Hit the "Log In" button and log in with a penniless alt for safety's sake. You can log in to the default (however you have your SL settings - last location or home), or specify a sim. Have your draw distance big enough so you can stand in the middle of a sim, revolve, and download the sim terrain data. Some sims might chuck you to an off-centre landing point; if you need to move to get all the sim data downloaded hit "move to" and make up some coordinates. Watch your little dot zoom to the new location (unless something is in the way).

You can tick off the autodownload boxes for various files: sculpty, decal, and so on. Saved images are in the "save" folder in the TerrainSculptor folder. Couldn't be easier! Upload those to SL and make your map.

Thank you, Cadroe Murphy and Henri Beauchamp!


 
Bat Mitzvah-ing Nonagenarians in the New York Times

Ten women who missed out on their coming of age ceremonies when they were young recently marked their passage to adulthood.

Rabbi Kutner said. “I think this shows that at any age you can set a challenge and meet it.”
A challenge, perhaps, but not all the women see it quite that way. “My first thought was boy, what a hoot!” said Millie Danziger Fromet, 90.


 

Robots - pictures gathered by The Big Picture.


 

The Big Picture has pictures of spring.



22 March 2009

 

Nova Albion Parade 09 (37)
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

Nova Albion Parade 09

Molly and Mari in Luna



 


We filled all the sims, couldn't move, were noisy, laughed a LOT, and generally had a good time.



21 March 2009

 
"Server-side changes to allow objects to be restored to their last position (won't be fully available before client version 1.23)"

Ooh, interesting. Just noticed this in Release Notes/Second Life Server/1.25.




20 March 2009

 
So far the parade seems to consist of:

Salazar (presumably) with his giganto-Magellantastic balloon
Os peddling her ship towing a giant squid
Lisa as a kinky maid hoovering the city
Zip and a carload of Barcola zombies
Mari and the Bay City Children's Blurtophone Band
Lorna riding her horse
tpain falling down over and over all the way to Luna in an eccentric display (or "tripping," whichever you'd like)
Yo and the Alchemikal props of Dr. Fluxus (who is away or he'd object)
HBA - riding Frank?

and a few more.


 
There are some upcoming changes that make a lot of sense to me (not that I know anything, but even so) - limiting avatar script memory to a personal pool of ram sounds extra-specially good given that there is scripted hair with bazillions of scripts (although for same scripts the creators can take advantage of the bytecode sharing of mono-compiled scripts) and broadly-used scriptalicious HUD attachments. Parcel script allotments seem like they make sense, too.

Right now we are flailing in the dark without tools to know what's going on, and it seems like in order to have the tools we need to have the limits - fair limits. I don't think this is a bad thing. The resources are finite, and if the juice is all sucked up by Mr. So and So's highly complex scripted what-nots, no one else in the sim gets a fair shake. As with the Avatar Rendering Cost, which a person can use to roughly compare the relative hits of, say, hair styles when shopping, I think we'll find out that Script A, while doing virtually the same task as Script B, might use a different amount of memory - and choose accordingly, or even (unthinkable to some people) do without it entirely.

It seems as though it will necessarily be a difficult and complicated application of this simple idea, as SL is so very complex, but it doesn't seem bad to me. It seems as though implementation would do away with nasty surprises (surprise - nothing is working in the sim because there's too much vying for the limited resources), which in turn seems to be LL's focus.


 
I missed City of God when it came out, and didn't catch up with it until this evening. An excellent film, I found it nowhere near as stressful as I was warned it was. For the record I think the most stressful film I've seen is either Requium for a Dream or Andrei Rublev. Both can keep me awake if I think about them.

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19 March 2009

 

Optional prep times: 7pm Fir/10am Sat
Build a float! Be nutty! Join in!

PARADE: noon on Sunday, 22 March, 2009
Apres Parade: Dedication of Plaque and Photographing of Parade Participants

The route:


Also put yer pix here:


 
Cardboard Surfboards



18 March 2009

 
Cool Hand Luke

A good film. "No man can eat fifty eggs."


 
Fuzzy Dinosaurs

The BBC says: "A discovery in China has prompted researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs. Previously, experts thought the first feathered dinosaurs appeared about 150 million years ago, but the find suggests feathers evolved much earlier."



17 March 2009

 
Seems like we shall be doing Sunday's parade this way - using a cool pictograph-looking route that avoids Miramare. Sadly Miramare has been chock full at all hours lately. It was full at noon today, and full just now when I poked it - 47 people it said ==:O.

Ooh, vaguely reminiscent of trinacria!



16 March 2009

 


S. Ramey/ K. Moll/ F. Furlanetto
1990
Don Giovanni

From the comments: "wow. that was dope :D "

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Antique footage I shot at the Capitol Theatre Backstage at a Mudhoney show. This is just the first ten minutes of oh... an hour show, I suppose. That was a nice decade for me for live rock, opera, theatre, experimental music, and so on - something just about every week. Live is the only way to go.



15 March 2009

 
A Little Bit of Pretty Snow This Morning

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13 March 2009

 
Villa Paranoia

ZOMG - this was good.

Also, in the outline it was very much like I've Loved You So Long, oddly enough.

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Confus-Ed
Since I'm not going anywhere anyway, and since I like to give the benefit of the doubt and not become inflamed before anything actually takes place I am just watching the current triple ecksification process. There is a triple ecks continent planned, we are told. That doesn't necessarily mean there will be ghetto-isation of triple ecks in Pornistan, but if the XXX-odus leads to a gridded continent of compounds like cells in a prison (as there seems to be in a continent named Ursula) then that's... ...distressing. It's all very creepy, in every way.

I'm just wondering how close the weave on the filtration net is; I'm sure there are things I'd consider ugly and horrid - thing is right now I would need to go looking for it to find it. At least I am in SL every day minding my own business and I don't ever seem to accidentally find myself in places that offend me. I'm not quite sure what offends me beyond depictions of child rape, anyway, when speaking of a virtual reality. The things griefers put on particles can be disturbing, but this isn't about putting griefers on a separate continent called Lullz Island or something.

No one in their right mind is offended by naked bodies, but I'm sure people from the worlds of education and business are interested in gaining control over anything they can gain control over. I like messy variety, but it seems that's not what we shall have. It all seems to go along with the uses of SL for educational purposes, and I suppose if it's adapt to education or die then the choice is easy. I hate seeing people upset and leaving in droves over these crises, which in fact may occur with a lapse of time between (get upset but not leave until somewhere appears to go to). LL created something unique and wonderful with SL, and the difficulties and revenue loss connected to sustaining that vision is exactly why no one else has equaled it, or has even wanted to try. Only the SL founders saw the value in a world they would not control; everyone else makes very buttoned-down and tightly controlled environments. And now control is coming to SL, too. I'm watching, but I'm not happy about it.


 

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12 March 2009

 
I've Loved You So Long

Kristen Scott Thomas stars in this film about a woman whose belief that life has ended for her turn out to be untrue. A good movie.

I enjoyed it while I watched it, and afterward kept thinking, "Why would.." It's another example of someone regarding her life as separate from all else, and doing things that have a profound and long-lasting effect upon everyone who is close to her, without, apparently, considering them at all. One might say, "She wasn't able to," yet if one has to, one can. The policeman's actions pointed out to her that unconsidered effects take place; human beings are in many cases dark and tormented and unknown.

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Thumbs down on TwitSpam.


 


Linden Lab Attempts to Clarify

LL is trying to clarify their definition of "adult" content, and devise a way to separate the mild inworld areas from those with an emphasis on sex and/or violence. It's not an easy task, obviously, but they seem to be approaching it with common sense and wish to provide an SL experience that will be predictable.

Currently there are PG and Mature regions, however those are like tweed and it's possible to stand in a PG region and look at a Mature area two metres away. Mature regions can have anything in them, so might or might not have anything that might fall into new Adult parameters, and of course PG is meant to be mild. By the new guidelines a couple's bedroom with full accoutrements would not be relegated to a triple ecks sim, which is good. Things such as focus, advertising, intent, sales, and so on will define the content, and as I understand it will involve a move away from tweediness to something like two-tone shoes.

I admit I skimmed and have no great in-depth knowledge, however the requirement to access the areas that will be designated triple ecks in some way seem to've been changed to Payment Info On File from Age Verified. I believe most people had their spidey sense triggered way back when as the "Integrity" (these evil things as frequently named the opposite of what they are i.e. "Patriot Act") portion of "Aristotle" was meant to be doing the verification, so I'd assume there was no stampede towards verification.

In everything it's not the black and whites but greys on the border that cause the most grief, so everyone is currently busy asking questions with a variety of hypothetical and more than hypothetical examples. Someone asked something like: If a couple has a sex bed in their house that's ok, but what if a building has several free-to-use sex beds contained within its walls - then what?

Presumably anything triple ecks will be able only to advertise in a separate segment of Search, which would be nice, as anything streamlining that unwieldy utility would be a happy thing in my book. It wouldn't entirely fix Search, which is clogged and ruined by people who set keywords for anything under the sun when they have, say, office furniture for sale, but it would help a lot.

It would be impossible to, instead, separate all the rotten scammers and unethical people and put them in their own area, sadly - just like in real life the sleazy walk among us. Wouldn't that be great, though?



11 March 2009

 
Something Like Happiness

This is a good, small film about three young Czech people. Written and directed by Bohdan Slama.

It didn't have a single robot in it, though.

PS It reminded me of Georgie Girl a bit.

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10 March 2009

 
Quick Light Test

Just a very quick test showing how the shadow viewer shows all available lights as opposed to the limited lights of the rc viewer. Same lights in each part, gamma was low for each but not the same probably (I didn't note it, bad Os). Would be better with a white wall and exactly matched gamma, but I was sloppy and quick and it's easy to see the difference anyway. Lighting FTW yet lack of AA is teh debbil on the SD.


 
A Very Long Engagement

I enjoyed this film, set in 1920, with Audrey Tatou as a young woman still unable to accept the death of her fiance in 1917.

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09 March 2009

 
Lucia has broken another bone in one of her legs - a tibia this time. A femur last time. It's a chapter in an ongoing saga involving, as she says, her bones "turning to chalk."

Her new book comes out any minute now.


 
Snowing.

It's above freezing at the moment but is supposed to drop to 25ºF by 8pm and 20ºF as the low. I have to leave and to go to jin shin in a few minutes.

Update: Back. It was sunny and snow-free though cold in Oly. I drove back to a white-out, although there's not much accumulated snow on the ground.

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08 March 2009

 
Dandruff of Heaven
Snowing and melting at the same time.
It was snowing a lot this morning but now it's just spitting out a few flakes.

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Django Reinhardt playing an electric guitar.
I'd never seen this clip before.

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07 March 2009

 

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A Low-Impact Woodland Home


 
Snowing.

:-(


As if that weren't enough now the clouds are dropping gluesticks. *shakes fist* Bastiges!

Wow, the snow just changed and became mega huge flakes. They look like soap shavings.

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06 March 2009

 
It's going to snow for the next four days, they predict.

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Alonso Reviews Sukiyaki Western Django




Actually I did think the movie was a mess; I don't like anime or manga much either precisely for the same reason: there's nothing beyond the surface. Some movies are full and rich experiences, some movies are unsatisfying husks, and I put this in the latter category.

I did like the font for the opening credits very much, though - that's what stood out for me. Alonso has his own ideas.

Updatier Update: I decided that when it went missing before it was a yootoob server offline or something, so am posting it again. Alonso reviews the film Sukiyaki Western Django.
Outdated Update: YouTube took it down - apparently they don't allow movie reviews. After they took it down I deleted the page that said 'This video no longer exists." It doesn't really matter as it was just a silly thing, but I did think short clips used in reviews were all right.



04 March 2009

 
Living Goddess

This is an interesting documentary about certain Tibetan children's lives as an incarnation of a goddess. The child, referred to usually as "Goddess" by those around her and worshipped on a daily basis, loses her special status when she enters puberty. There are three such children at a time, all incarnations of the same goddess, and when a new goddess is needed priests evaluate children according to 32 Perfections* to identify the Living Goddess. The footage was really just flung down in front of the viewer, with little in the way of background and the only details were the ones passed on by the interview subjects. A half-baked documentary about an interesting subject, Living Goddess could've been much more. Don't watch it if you mind seeing animal sacrifices.

* Golden skin, upright body, even teeth, chest of a lion, and so on.

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03 March 2009

 
Mossant: Osprey, I snagged a jpg of your nova albion poster from the web and put it up on the cafe. I credited you as the creator of the poster, so I hope it's okay if I use it? It's fabulous.
Osprey Therian: Anything you like
Osprey Therian: ty
Mossant: Thank you. I didn't want to use it without your permission.
Osprey Therian: I try to be open and free
Osprey Therian: ty for crediting me
Osprey Therian: THAT'S MORE THAN I EVER DO
Osprey Therian: lol
Mossant: *LOL*

Ha ha - I've been like that for years and I'm not saying it's good - it might be considered quite bad, in fact. It's something for me to think about, anyway. I deliberately didn't even have a name for my business when I did it.* The sign doesn't even use WORDS (yet it was very successful until I stopped bothering).

On the whole I'm more than a bit like the fishmonger in a Somerville and Ross book who grumbled that people were always bothering him for fish.** I only wound up building Ask Patty, the Car Garden, and the Motorability sim because I said I'd recommend someone - then was swept into it. Of course way back then I had a ton more energy than I do now, and if you plotted all my builds on a graph I'm sure it would just look like \ . These days I'm more likely to get part way then delete everything out of exhaustion. I also have a lot of strange builds in my inventory that will never be rezzed anywhere, and spend tons of time solving little problems like moth lanterns that won't be mean to the sim, and how to make a merry go round explode.

Two things I can always do thus far no matter how things are debased are editing video and doing my dunce baby scripting where I usually start with something that has only a tagential bearing on what I want to do then tear it to ribbons and rebuild it hundreds of times until it does what I want it to do but still probably says Joe Avatar's Script on it heh. I should stop doing that as Joe Avatar doesn't want to get the blame for my kludgey blunders. The other day I was putting things in other things inside other things inside other things like nesting dolls, each to rez the smaller (for a reason), and accidentally made a wee boo-boo the results of which looked extremely kewl, actually, although the sim didn't think so as it twisted in the solar wind like... hmmm... the Aurora Borealis.*** Or something.

Actually that reminds me of the time (circa 2005) I was in... oh, Goguen, I think, way up in the sky, making builds for a book and wanted prims to fall artlessly into a receptacle. I raised them, turned them physical, and immediately had an IM from some Linden or other advising me to be very careful with physical objects. /me abruptly turns and looks over her shoulder. It wouldn't happen these days of course, but if I'd been sent a warning IM for the kewl nesting thing incident I'd've deserved it :-D

* I stopped due to several things including burnout, seeing my copied textures/builds and just thinking it would be best not to invest tons of time in the indefensible, and more which I shall not list.
** I remember talking to Candide and saying I wasn't motivated by money. That was wrong, actually, as I AM motivated by it, just in the opposite direction.
*** Had a great view of the Northern Lights ages ago when driving between the sea and Olympia one night. It does really make you stop and gasp in awe. That's the only time I can remember seeing it although I had seen it before.

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The Face of Another

The Face of Another is an old black and white Japanese film, and is quite interesting in both its layered sets and its investigation into what makes a person a person. In this plot the main character has had an accident to his face, and as he says, 'It's always the monster's fault.' Once damaged in that way there's no fitting into society, and he can have no encounters uncomplicated by his otherness. To his wife he observes that she seems to feel that speaking to him is like talking to a hole in the wall - because he has lost something that made him human in others' eyes. He feels like a monster, too, and says things that no ordinary man would say. That the loathing is self-generated both allies the character with everyone else and separates him from them.

There's a lot of layers in not just the sets, and the acting is very good. Parts of it felt uncannily like what was being described was online personas, particularly in one scene in a beer cellar as the doctor talked about mass-producing masks. On the Internet, as we all know, an ordinary person who thinks he won't be identified may become rude and out of control - this is similar in a way to this plot in that the human identifier is not there, so the person feels free to act like a monster.

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Le Grand Voyage

Although it was a familiar plot (two people who don't get along are forced together by fate) this film was interesting because of the view into what, for me, is an unfamiliar world. However, that propelled the film just so far, and the ending seemed to indicate that the filmmakers had intended something else entirely rather than what I got out of it. Specifically, I saw a father who selfishly looked after his own godliness as though it began and ended with himself and who, to me, if he truly believed, had fallen down on the job by stranding his teenaged son outside the bounds of that religion (i.e. the son doesn't speak Arabic). The ending suggested that the son, who was meant to be about 17, I suppose, should stop being stubborn and see the value in being a Muslim, and emulate the father, who was considered an exemplary man.

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Contest 46: Nova Albion

To celebrate Nova Albion's fifth anniversary the theme of Contest 46 is Nova Albion. Past, present, future - and future might be lots of fun if you picture an old Osprey with Contest 687: Wrinkles in Time, or something.

Cash prizes.

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
Entries accepted to 31 March 2009
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Exhibition: 1 April 2009 - 24 April 2009 in the Photography Studio upstairs gallery.

++++++++++++++++++++++++
We will have an awards ceremony at the end of the exhibition - time TBA.
++++++++++++++++++++++++

TO ENTER
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. TRY TO ADHERE TO THIS, PLEASE.<<<<<<<<-------------------------------

Title entries with title + your name <---= 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.
***************************************************
The Photography Studio is located in The Brownstone East, Grignano
Grignano is a pg sim. <--=



02 March 2009

 
Strangely, although when instructing new people how to play Combat Cards I always say things like "touch," "left click," "little hand," to try to get the person to left click (touch with the little hand icon) on the arena (which I try to specify by looks, as in 'left click the tree') ALMOST ALWAYS that person will right click on it instead. Makes it harder than it should be.

Osprey Therian: let's start on this tree stump arena
Osprey Therian: left click it
Osprey Therian: you get a menu
Osprey Therian: you need to left click first to get the menu
Osprey Therian: and get the free demos
Osprey Therian: "touch" with the little hand :-D
Osprey Therian: on the tree
Osprey Therian: or I can give you a hud
nice person accepted your inventory offer.
Osprey Therian: ok now wear the hud


Bwahaha - we almost got going.


 
Dept. of "And now a man with three buttocks"
HERE

 

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