atomic-raygun

 
             

   
 
 
----------->vivian-oblivion<--------

Site Feed

www.flickr.com

31 May 2010

 
Katla

Katla is rumbling, which indicates that the enormous volcano cloaked in snow and ice will soon come to life. I paid attention when President Grimmson gave his blunt warning; these times we live in are certainly "interesting" after the fashion of the Chinese* curse. Katla is much larger than Eyjafjallajökull.

* Whether it's really a Chinese curse or not I really don't know.


 
WOW

*shifts uneasily*
That's... a huge hole :-(

Weirdly Guatemala seems to have a habit of forming sinkholes like this; I accidentally linked to a sinkhole video before noticing it was from 2007.


 
Modern Dance in Miniascape


 
France has set up the first governmental use of brain/behaviour research in the development of public policy within the Centre d'Analyse Strategie.



30 May 2010

 
Bootsy Collins has a new Funk University.
Enroll now!


 
Phantom Menace
One of my jira issues got a very, very speedy fix, so I was poking about on the jira after I closed it and found this remark by Falcon (Havok 7 person) from 18 March, regarding the desire for individual-prim-set-to-phantom-in-linkset which we only have now in a kind of sideways workaround through floopy prims or by child-phantom scripts. He said:

"Hi Folks,

Denis Tristan pinged me on this inworld, and it aligns with what I'm working on right now, so I thought I'd drop a note to all of you. First, believe it or not, providing this feature is not as simple as it sounds. That's the bad news. The good news is that the need for the feature will soon be obviated. I'm presently working on a system that will allow you to specify individual prims in a linkset as having no physics shape. This is not quite the same as having individual prims be phantom in that phantom prims bounce off the ground whereas a prim having no physics shape will have no physical interaction at all. Accordingly, to keep objects from getting lost, you will not be able to have a linkset without at least one of the prims having a physics shape. But in general, this new feature should allow content creators to build all the things they could have built with per-prim phantomness. I'm marking this feature request as Resolved (Won't Fix), but rest assured that a better solution is in the works. The new system will also be more extensible, allowing us to provide you with entirely new options for physics shapes down the road. (E.g., we might allow you to specify that a shape should behave like llVolumeDetect and provide callbacks into LSL when it's penetrated, or allow you to request information about overlaps synchronously in an LSL script. Note that neither of these are in the works at present, but they are real options down the road with this new implementation.)

Cheers,
Falcon"




29 May 2010

 
Waiting for Wol


 
Dirk Talamasca pointed out this post about Robert Johnson. Alas the link just takes me to a "bandwidth exceeded" error, so I stuffed a song into Audacity and slowed it by 20%. Sounds better.
Robert Johnson on Internet Archive

robertjohnson-StopBreakinDownBlues.mp3 slowed down 20%
robertjohnson-SweetHomeChicago-20.mp3


 
Startling
No wonder it's hard to sort things out.

Washington Post:
"On a typical day, nearly 1 million people cross from Mexico into the United States, according to U.S. government figures. Roughly 270,000 vehicles cross the Southwest border every 24 hours, along with about 57,000 truck, rail and sea containers."


 
Damage Assessment

Lucy Tornado: hola! you fell, but now you got up?
Osprey Therian: nothing broken but was very nasty
Lucy Tornado: bruises?
Osprey Therian: will take me a while to recover
Lucy Tornado: oh
Lucy Tornado: makes one feel tentative as well
Osprey Therian: like all bad falls it's impossible to track, but I hit the kitchen counter hard with my jaw, then hit my head, then twisted and hit my head hard on the hardwood floor, plus all ripped up neck muscles and my right leg is not happy - but at least I see the dentist on Wednesday.
Lucy Tornado: oh noooo!
Lucy Tornado: that is worse than i thgout
Lucy Tornado: thought
Osprey Therian: It seems teeth might be ok, but they can xray.
Lucy Tornado: gaaa
Osprey Therian: I have a bruise under my chin that's black and fairly big.
Osprey Therian: My head is very painful.
Lucy Tornado: you must be aches and pains all over
Osprey Therian: yup
Lucy Tornado: can you take any painkillers?
Osprey Therian: plus screeching noises
Lucy Tornado: what??
Osprey Therian: in my head
Lucy Tornado: oh nooooo
Osprey Therian: nm
Lucy Tornado: that is very odd...screeching noises
Lucy Tornado: concussed?
Osprey Therian: yup
Lucy Tornado: what r you doing in SL anything interesting?
Osprey Therian: I've had lots of concussions - this one is not bad



27 May 2010

 
Fell.


 
Taken during a four or five minute period when the sky was not entirely covered by grey clouds. I optimistically thought it would stay that way, but noooooooooooooo.

Labels:




26 May 2010

 
Power Aware Cord
"Most people have little sense of their energy usage until they receive their monthly utility bill. The Power Aware cord helps make the invisible visible. Designed by Anton Gustafsson and Magnus Gyllenswärd at the Interactive Institute in Sweden, it is a simple, poetic gesture that signals the amount of energy that flows to an appliance through glowing pulses and intensity of light. For instance, the effect of changing the volume on stereo equipment becomes immediately visible, as does the silent drain of electricity from appliances on standby."


 
ZOMFG HAHA!!1!
Intarwebz winz1!!


 
Mr. Landlord Strikes Back

He has the representative of the door works coming to look at the non-matching door, as he says he paid $170 extra for the door to be matched to the existing woodwork, and as we all know there is complete, 100%, non-matchification going on with that door. The door man is supposed to come midday on the only decent day this week.



25 May 2010

 
Ramonna at SCmkII posted a link to these posters featuring Soviet propaganda crossed with American pinups.


 
Tennis+Car-Racing

Massively Speaking Episode 100: The state of MMOs with Richard Garriott

This is a very interesting podcast.



23 May 2010

 
Stressful Animation



This is interesting to watch to a certain point, but when I posted it I was really thinking about Bill Plympton's Your Face, and how that holds me riveted after all these years. Your Face is less than half as long, but contains much more content.

Labels:



 

Behind the Burger: The Sad Reality Behind Ronald McDonald


 



22 May 2010

 
Just looking at the body movements and interactions on this game - impressive.


 
Nude Ore
Despite the carpenters prying off a bit of trim for the custom door builder, the new door doesn't match in any way. It fit the hole, though.

Carpenter boss: Vivian! Vivian!
Carpenter: It should be *this* way.
Carpenter boss: I'm going to do it the way *Vivian* wants it.
Me: Heh, I feel like a queen.
(I think he was just trying to make my day.)

I don't care that it is 100% match free, but my landlord (who is still here making an ungodly noise slamming doors downstairs) was not particularly happy. Mrs. Landlord is still in HK looking after her nonagenarian mater who is unable to speak; Mr. Landlord says, "It's just like having a baby." Then he stopped. "But you can't lift her."

If we started life as old people we'd've died out millenia ago, though, it's clear.



21 May 2010

 
PLZ CAN HAZ TEMP ABOVE 60 F KTHNXBAI
It's the end of May and it's 55 in the house.
Gah - I'm freezing this week.
Colder out than in or I'd stay out.

Labels:



 
The CCSVI news from people who have had the procedure sounds encouraging.
To wit:
"Christopher received the treatment for CCSVI (venous insufficiency) first. He was awake for the painless procedure and the doctors gave him a summary, a visual slideshow, of the procedure before he left the operating room. Within a short time, he had warm feet. He could move his ankles and toes in a coordinated fashion and lift his leg even to resistive pressure for the first time in 6 years. His brain fog was gone. The enthusiasm and discovery of the ‘new’ body was palpable." --from a post on the CCSVI Locator ning



20 May 2010

 
Meds
I like seeing medieval setting for films, even though they aren't usually all that accurate (they certainly aren't common). I just saw The Reckoning and The Messenger - two different films set in medieval times. The Reckoning is about a troupe of players and The Messenger is about Jeanne d'Arc. They were both pretty whacky, but reasonably enjoyable.

There was a comment on The Messenger saying it was creepy, and I thought ?? but it is creepy - it's like the Pan's Labyrinth/kitchen sink version of her story with Dustin Hoffman and a lot of squealing. It featured a lot of nice horseflesh, which kept me interested. And nice costumes. The Reckoning is a fairly thin plot, the kind of thing that feels more like television than a film, but I enjoyed it well enough. They both had Vincent Cassel, whose nose I particularly admire.

Labels:




19 May 2010

 
Update: I'm wrong :-D

Coalesced Objects


It used to be, eons ago, that when you took multiple selected prims it would go into inventory with a single cube icon like any simple or linked prim (which was tough as there was no differentiation and we'd sometimes mean to rez, say, a chair and accidentally rez a furnished house); when someone returned your objects on purpose or by accident the things went into inventory one by one, which was tough as there was no option to replace the objects in spatial relationship for unlinked builds, and linksets were smaller then.

Then coalesced objects came in. Objects taken as an unlinked group had a "lots of boxes" icon, and if objects were returned they not only had that icon to tell you it was a grouping, but the group retained its spatoial relationships and could easily be re-rezzed and put into position. Unless the grouping contained Linden trees, which could make rezzing difficult (no can do in a sandbox, for example).

The biggest bad point for coalesced groupings, however, is one that causes immense trouble. The object limit on coalesced groupings is something like 256, so when a hasty landowner hits the "Return All Objects" button and the returned objects total more than the limit, everythings goes *POOF* and is seen no more. It would be nice if "Return All Objects" just didn't work at all over the object limit. Landowners wanting to return things could select some and return them until the total was below the limit, then hit the button.

It seems nothing causes unalloyed joy; I'd hate to lose coalesced objects but they do cause problems at times. I wonder what changes the new Havok brings to linksets and to coalesced object limits, though. /me sidles over to Aditi to poke around.



18 May 2010

 

Labels:




17 May 2010

 
Annotated Os of the Day

Labels:




16 May 2010

 

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

/me is always a sucker for time-lapse.



 
I should go to bed instead of listening to 578678986565 version of Ombra mai fu, but now I can't stop listening to Beethoven...

Labels:



 
A few versions of Ombra mai fu, from countertenor to baritone.


It bothers me that he needs a shave.

I love this set.






The comments always crack me up:

Question: can someone tell me? why are there so many versions of this thing on utube?

Response: A) Because it's fruckin' beautiful and B) Almost anybody with even a half-assed ability to sing can sound good with it

Labels: ,




15 May 2010

 

I was working on my spaceship as is my wont; I work on it all the time, it seems. Anyway, before going to Steelhead I had a small breakthrough; afterwards I was endlessly doing/redoing/reredoing one animation trying to get it not to stutter, then I decided to take it for a spin unfinished but close, always close.

I was flying over Cowell when a fellow jumped onto the dangling-from-the-wing anim and shortly after that his friend jumped onto the jumping-waving-excitedly anim. They were both biggies so became crumpled, but they morphed into Tinies and I flew around and around before landing in Goguen and giving each of them a spaceship.

They were awesomely fun, so I tried recruiting them for ducks :-D


 
Quackmob at Steelhead

Lucy: that was fun! let's do GOR next week.



14 May 2010

 
^Allegedly a "celebrity" although I have no clue who he is.
Image found by googling "ugly huge tattoo."

Tattoos
I like seeing good tattoos on other people, although I've never had the urge to do that to myself. But... what motivates people to get ugly, bad, huge tattoos? Do they mysteriously not know that their tattoos are horrible/ill-conceived/misplaced/badly done? Should there be public service announcements addressing the issue?]

Update: Someone should make a site similar to all those "see yourself in 30 years"-type things that would be "see your tattoo in 30 years" and/or "see your tattoo if you gain 40 pounds."


 

From Candide comes this link for:

FAKE SCIENCE

Might as well throw this in for good measure:
The Museum of Unworkable Devices


 
Sitting in the sun.

Labels:




13 May 2010

 


The plot of this well-made thriller twists and writhes as it follows a young man who is interested in seeing where people go. I feel is might've been better if the ending had been structured slightly different, but I enjoyed it immensely as-is. A very, very low budget film, it has a stylishness that raises it far above many films.

Labels:




12 May 2010

 

CALLING ALL DUCKS!

Bay City's parade is at noon on SUNDAY! The staging area is in Bay City - Argos at the bandshell HERE.

All ducks and duck-wannabes are welcome; hit me up for the avatar if you need it (the group is free to join and there's a duck av attachment to the last notice, too, so new people have that option).

(SUNDAY NOT saturday ARGH!
Parade is SUNDAYYY!
I got the day mixed up.)

Labels:



 
Tarnished silver pear from the National Gallery in Canberra, real pears from SJ.
I did try to polish the silver one but it didn't work terribly well, unfortunately.

Labels: ,




11 May 2010

 

Weird

According to news sources, genetic testing kits will be available
from Walgreen's Drug Stores on Friday.

Chicago Tribune:
"Starting Friday, Walgreens will begin selling Insight personal genetic testing kits, becoming the first major retail chain in the U.S. to offer home tests that say they assess the risk of developing one of dozens of different health conditions."


 


1940s Risque Film

Unbelievably, there was THIS comment:
"If they mail ordered these films from catalogs, what did they play them on? It's not like everyone had VCR's or DVD players back then lol."
The uploader responded"
"These films were viewed back then (and today) via 16mm projectors. I dubbed them by shooting the screen with my digital camera."

Labels:



 
Seems like loads of osprey this year - one just flew straight across my FOV and made me smile.



10 May 2010

 
Sub, Dude
This past week I've been making animations for robots, and have been working and reworking them until my eyes are spinning. Today I'm doing a small machinima job and nursing a weird back pain that comes in fairly painful spasms if I move wrongly.

It sideswiped me this morning, and I recognised the pain, which was very like a mystery pain I had for weeks a long time ago that was at least double the intensity. It arrived out of the blue and I couldn't move at all that night or it whalloped me - I sat up rigid all night and actually went immediately to the doctor's - no small feat (I must've had insurance then). She had me do more and more complex tests over time until finally she told me the next step was a colonoscopy, whereupon I told her I was getting off the bus as the pain was nearly gone by that point and the tests had yielded no information. That pain was more central - under the ribs - but perhaps it originated in the back rather than the gizzards. Or perhaps not. Only so many types of pain, I reckon.



09 May 2010

 


Rest in peace, Lena

Labels:




08 May 2010

 


Brother's Keeper

The way I learned to do print-ready graphics in Ye Olden Days involved layers of frisket paper or acetate each with a part of the image that, when all printed separately on one sheet, formed the entire image. This documentary is like looking at one layer of society, a throw-back and fading way of existence that most people have no knowledge of.

Labels:



 
I'm not feeling so terrible - yay!
Plus, it got a bit warmer yesterday!


 
Kumi says in reference to SL feeling dead:
...this intrigues me -- these comments seem to occur in a cycle to me (I've only had a few years experience of just one MMPORG which is SL).

I came across this (Nick Yee) article about MMPORGS and player life-cycles and thought you'd like to read it.
...my recipe for not burning out in SL is to not be in virtual business -- takes all the fun out of the experience. I do however, barter quite happily :)

HBA agreed about the business part:
I've always said that too - I want to make some stuff to sell, but that's more of a roleplaying thing than a business - I don't know how the business lot can enjoy SL.

Os said:
For me it's hard because I feel like there are no boundaries, and as my energy wanes my desire to do things is unfulfilled. Honestly, I start something, get five minutes into it, then fold from exhaustion and delete the lot or just take it all into my inventory, which is correspondingly a nine mile long mess.

(Silly little) Things like, say, finishing my Tiny spaceship so the animation I made for the pilot works consistently should just be a finite task, but as it is I keep having to drag out what (I hope) is the last version I worked on, and try to get it working before A) I run out of steam or B) I get interrupted.
It feels like this:

Of course, I feel a degree of fragmentation in real life, so it would be a miracle if I didn't feel it in SL too.



07 May 2010

 


"Bliss" somehow is able to express how a community can be so much a part of who you are that there is no way to separate yourself from it even when you are unjustly condemned. This Turkish film is exotic to me because of its unfamiliar cultures and landscapes.

Labels:



 
A Canadian doctor weighs in on
the importance of CCSVI treatment.


 
Look up.
Variety clouds.

Labels:




06 May 2010

 
While Lesli was here, John knocked at the door to say farewell as he has moved out. I said, "I'm so glad to see you as I was worried you would leave without saying goodbye," but he said, "Why wouldn't I?" and added that I have his number and I could call if I ever needed him to help with anything. After so many years it will be quite a change having an unknown new person below me.


 
Fun!
As seen on New World Notes.


 
In Poland, at a CCSVI treatment clinic, the staff displays solidarity.

Canadian MS-sufferers demonstrate across
Canada for access to CCSVI treatment.



05 May 2010

 
O'Horten

Odd Horten is retiring and his life's symbolic meaning boils down to the similarities and differences between railroad tracks and skis. It has a great soundtrack, which is rare.

Labels:




04 May 2010

 

Labels:



 

Marianne has put some of my films up at the Bayjou Theatre - thanks, Mari!


 
Nessun Dorma

I have a soft spot for Mario del Monaco, although he took heat (justifiably) for lack of vocal modulation. I think my first opera lp was an old del Monaco Pagliacci from a garage sale. This is a fabulous Nessun Dorma.


I really didn't know Nessun Dorma has been interpreted by so many diverse artists, from Aretha Franklin to Jeff Beck, but it makes sense as it's a powerful and haunting composition. Wily dude, that Puccini.

Labels: ,




03 May 2010

 
A rainbow just faded
It's hailing right now
Horizontally, from the west, more or less

Bald eagle flying around
Must feel funny
Hail on feathers

Three ducks went over the house
Then dived in front of me
Heading for water

An osprey just hurried by
How to tell it was hurrying?
It just was

Hail has stopped
Sunlight, a bit
Another rainbow


 
=========:O
Did I hear correctly?
Jeska's leaving?
Argh.


 
Something flipped a switch yesterday evening and now I feel terrible. It's odd how things like that happen.


 

Labels:


 

.

Site Feed

vivian-oblivion

oblivionstore

firemist red

Combat Cards

Blip TV Rocks

So many things to do, so little motivation

Backpacking Burro

Salazar Jack

Lucy Sits Up and Blogs

Tina's Universum

Nova Albion Detective Agency

Playing Statues

Yarn Miracle

Baedeker

Don Carson Creative

Flummer, Flummel, Flummo

Elle Coyote

Painting Soul

Upload Video and Images - Putfile

Artists Union

Tempietto

2002-10 2002-11 2002-12 2003-01 2003-03 2003-04 2003-05 2003-06 2003-07 2003-08 2003-09 2003-10 2003-11 2003-12 2004-01 2004-02 2004-03 2004-04 2004-05 2004-06 2004-07 2004-08 2004-09 2004-10 2004-11 2004-12 2005-01 2005-02 2005-03 2005-04 2005-05 2005-06 2005-07 2005-08 2005-09 2005-10 2005-11 2005-12 2006-01 2006-02 2006-03 2006-04 2006-05 2006-06 2006-07 2006-08 2006-09 2006-10 2006-11 2006-12 2007-01 2007-02 2007-03 2007-04 2007-05 2007-06 2007-07 2007-08 2007-09 2007-10 2007-11 2007-12 2008-01 2008-02 2008-03 2008-04 2008-05 2008-06 2008-07 2008-08 2008-09 2008-10 2008-11 2008-12 2009-01 2009-02 2009-03 2009-04 2009-05 2009-06 2009-07 2009-08 2009-09 2009-10 2009-11 2009-12 2010-01 2010-02 2010-03 2010-04 2010-05 2010-06 2010-07 2010-08 2010-09 2010-10 2010-11 2010-12 2011-01 2011-02 2011-03 2011-04 2011-05 2011-06 2011-07 2011-08 2011-09 2011-10 2011-11 2011-12 2012-01 2012-02 2012-03 2012-04 2012-05 2012-06 2012-07 2012-08 2012-09 2012-10 2012-11 2012-12 2013-01 2013-02 2013-03 2013-04 2013-05 2013-06 2013-07 2013-08 2013-09 2013-10 2013-11


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