52 weeks of color challenge tracking post

I've been participating in the 52 weeks of color challenge and using mostly mermaid themes since I have a ton of mermaid sets. Pics.

Changes to Avatar Toolbox

Added the Masks page and its links. Made a change to the site so it will be easier to update in the future.

TODO:
animation - deformers
animation - low level constant anim trick for mission critical AOs

Changes to Avatar Toolbox

Updated the skins page on Avatar Toolbox. New pictures, some new text, some reorganizing.

TODO:
avatar masks
animation - deformers
animation - low level constant anim trick for mission critical AOs

First Time Land Shopping

My friend Alix posted about her experience finding some virtual land on which to place a skybox. This is her first foray into virtual land ownership.

It was enlightening to try explaining tier pricing, membership, group deeding and that 10% bonus, and the differences between mainland and island plot ownership. (She wanted to own, so we didn't have to discuss rental situations.) The whole process is far more complicated than it needs to be. The Linden Home program does make this easier for a first time buyer, but if you aren't attracted to the homes...

I purchased my first plot back in 2006 with the First Land program (when you could purchase your first 512m2 for 512 lindens.) I remember taking a class at NCI to understand the process. It's depressing to see that the process remains cryptic for first time buyers.

Burning Man 2

Wandered around Burning Man 2 with some friends and saw the sights. Lag was bad (as expected) but we still had a good time.





Inspiration for my next sky platform.



And of course we had to play in the cardboard box fortress and use the transmogrifier!

Small World Syndrome

One of the players on my favorite Minecraft server is Psyra Extraordinaire in SL, maker of the really sweet bird based avatars.

AU gone

Goodbye, Avatars United!

Inventory folder sorting setting

The debug setting "Inventory.SystemFoldersToTop"
When set to false, it allows your inventory to sort without the default folders going to the top.

This has been driving me nuts with the 2.x viewers.

Is there a fly on my nose?

SLCC 2010

Lots of news rolling in from SLCC 2010.

*Teen grid to be gone in Dec this year, and the main grid to become 16 and up. Costs sited. I guess the younger kids will go to opensim?
*Open source Client development to get a boost. Philip does love him some open source movements.
*Mesh is supposed to be open beta by the end of this year.
*Some kind of avatar name changes or new options for naming, not sure what yet.
*Raise the avatar limit on sims.

Fast, Easy And Fun!

I just listened to Philip's talk, and I was so inspired that I...

...made this available free on Xstreet.

Artificial Life + OS grid update

The opensim grid was updated to 0.6.9 yesterday or today. I've been running a pool of carnivores for 12 hours and I'm seeing no signs of memory leaks! If things continue to look good it might be time for setting things up to add more species.

LL CEO change 2010

A few things changed yesterday. Philip's back in the driver's seat, M's out.

Among the things I'm most curious about are the layoffs. Did Philip let M break the bad news to his friends so he wouldn't have to, or are some of the old timers getting job offer letters?


EDIT: And on October 19th, he's off again.

Dots!

My first vid evar! This is the Dots avatar I made a couple weeks ago.

There's no sound yet, I haven't gotten that far yet! Mix of WeGame (for capture) and VirtualDub (for crop and polish.)



And the second vid! Here's the Pink Invisible Unicorn running about.

BBBC 2010: Friday

Today's Topic: If this is your first BBBC... What did you get out of your experience? Do you think it will change the way you blog in the future?

It was a good opportunity to check out a lot of bloggers who weren't on my reader. I don't usually blog general interest topics anymore, so that was kind of retro. (grin) And something I read led me to experimenting a bit last night with making SL video, which was a lot of fun! If I can figure out how to edit the video, I'll post some up.

BBBC 2010: Thursday

Today's Topic: Blogger's choice! Write about anything that's on your mind!

Watched the Lindex drama yesterday. Sad that the CEO felt the need to say something when the value bobbled. Not the best time to sell, great time to buy.

Bah, who needs polish?

Viewer2 v2.02 just made me laugh.

"Darn. You have been logged out of Second Life"

Almost as good as hippos. ;)

BBBC 2010: Wednesday

Today's Topic: Is your avatar more or less your current biological age? Do you portray a younger avatar, or older? Why is this?

This one's a poor fit for someone who's constantly changing their avatar. I'm one of those people who flips appearances regularly, and several of those looks aren't remotely human. When I'm looking human I tend to look younger, but that's because it's a challenge to find skins that make it easy to appear between 25 and 75. I've been known to appear as anything from a dragon to a potted plant to a walking collection of ping-pong balls.

BBBC 2010: Tuesday

Today's Topic: How hard do you think it is to find a relationship in SL? If you have an SL relationship, have you met in the physical world? Would you meet them? Do you think it would change your SL relationship if you met?

I see lots of people in a wide variety of relationships in SL, so if you're looking I imagine it's not too hard to find something. I'm happy when I find an acquaintanceship is turning into a friendship, but it's a fairly rare event for me.

I've met a couple people in the physical world that I first met online or on the grid. It's interesting to see which relationships are forever changed by a physical meeting, and which don't pause to notice.

The big difficulty of online relationships of any sort is the blanks. Our assumptions and cognitive baggage about gender, race, social status, disability, age, etc. We tend to fill in the unknowns about other people with our hopes and fears, and the reflections of ourselves we use for that often have nothing to do with the person behind the other keyboard.

BBBC 2010: Monday

Today's Topic: Write about three positive things going on in your Second Life.

* Whether they're a delight to build with, try out the latest toys, or just sit around a virtual beach and chat about the simple and serious things in life, I know some great people.

* The new viewer 2 version now has an option that allows the sidebar to go over the window instead of squeezing it!

* I'm getting better at making sculpts. Tatara has been a good tool for me.

BBBC 2010: Sunday

Today's Topic: Why did you become a blogger? How has it enriched your life?

I'll have to get in the time machine and head back to 2006. (Insert Dr Who music here) I joined SL in May that year, didn't start the blog until September. No intro post. I'd just gotten my First Land. I think the main reason was to have a record of ideas, doings, reference sites, SL locations, pictures... A journal.

The enrich part of the topic is easier. I've met a lot of people, both through blogs and on the grid because of the blog. I never would have taken on Avatar Toolbox if I hadn't had the blog. Some months it has gotten thousands of hits. It got easier for me to write essays of all kinds the first year. Seems practice applies to writing too. I suspect the blog and AT have influenced more than one contract offer in the last few years as well. I've got a dated history of much of the goings-on in SL, something we don't really have officially as the Lab has changed blog and forums more than once and jettisoned the past.

BBBC 2010: What is it?

Somehow I talked myself into joining one of those "we all blog the same topics" memes. Post every day for a week, shared topics offered. Big Bad Blogger Challenge 2010

Working around memory leaks

A cannibal pool at 11 hours.



I'm an impatient sort, so I've been doing experiments on using listeners and llDie() in an attempt to find out what was causing the leak(s) so I can continue. Moving the llDie() call to a state without an active listener has helped. If you're interested in what I did, click on the pictures below.

Continuing AL, or Little Challenges of OS

I noticed some of the seeds were floating... Did some followup and I think I will wait on this. We're due to have a server software upgrade in the next week or two, and some of the fixes in that may help. (click on the pics if you're interested, there's more info on the Flickr pages.)





The other issue has been with the cannibalistic life. It uses chat to negotiate energy transfers, and that's been causing the region to go down with OOM issues. The software upgrade is supposed to fix several OOM errors and it also offers HTTP server functionality, so hopefully one or the other will work for the negotiations.

Watching the Pools.

It's been interesting to watch the colors develop.



We're talking about making an ecology so I'm modding the scripts so they can eat one another. The first cannibalistic run caused the regions exe to run out of memory, so I'm experimenting with closing the listeners manually instead of letting state change handle it to see if that helps.

I think I'll leave this set overnight...

Grow, my children, grow! (insert mad laughter here)



I wonder what they'll look like after a couple days?

Artificial Life: Bringing a Grid to its Knees

I'm sharing a play-area grid of 4 linked up opensims with a couple friends. Yesterday we decided to explore artificial life. We're starting with a "simple" sessile form and plan to build up as we learn.

Got the basics working. I've also managed to bring the grid to a grinding halt. Now I'm looking for the best way to set things up so we can both keep the experiments contained and clean up the accidents. Ah, hindsight.

Changes to Avatar Toolbox

Avatar Toolbox has a new home!

I have a lot of updating to do. Found some dead links, and there's all the viewer2 changes to add... Busy day!

And hey! Four years on the grid!

Transfer perms req for deeding to group

What I learned today:

When making something that needs to be able to be deeded to group, Transfer is the required permission.

It seems rumors abound about what is or isn't required, so a friend and I experimented to find out.

Havok 7 video

If you want to see what Havok 7 has in store, check out this video.

Viewer 2 tweaks

Having trouble adapting to the new viewer?
Tweaks here.

Avatar Toolbox

Google's done something strange to Avatar Toolbox, it might be a few days before I have it back up and running.

Opensim llPushObject discovery

One of the projects I've been working on is with ReactionGrid using the physics engine. We'd been having a problem where sometimes llPushObject() was being applied to an object but dampened. It wasn't every time, but often enough to be a problem.

This only seemed to happen on the first time it was tried after a break of at least a few minutes. Do it several times in a row and only the first one might be dampened. Go get a coffee. When you tried it again, the first one might be dampened.

What works is applying a small push backward, then llSleep(0.1), then applying the desired push.

SteamFish pictures

Links to pictures of one of the projects I was working on last fall.

Viewer 2 is live

Viewer 2 is officially live today. Time to start the updates to Avatar Toolbox.

Beta Viewer and Avatar Toolbox

Thinking about the changes I'll be doing if the features in the current Beta Viewer reach the main release. The ones I know of are avatar masks, more avatar texture layers, and possibly more options for basic avatar height. The first two are already working in the beta.

Just updated the Invisiprims page on Avatar Toolbox to include that glow is occluded by them while shine and bumpiness no longer are.

xstreet pricing policy changes delayed

The listings policy change on xstreet has been delayed.

Got megaprims?

http://megaprim.sl/