The Village: Making Progress

Oh I love those prims! I'm very happy with how the village is progressing. Six shops and three apartments so far. The shops all have good access and the apartments all have nice views as well as outdoor space and privacy. Different sizes and styles for different tastes. Lots of fun. I made window boxes under the shutters in the duplex style shop - apartment fourplex. So flexi flowers that blow in the breeze greet the visitors. I'm going to add some tables and chairs between the two shops -- maybe this afternoon. We'll see.



I think this brick style with a slightly retro feel is my favorite so far. I may put some more of those on the last side of the courtyard.

The database is being persnickety again this afternoon so I can't upload my door textures for the white stucco apartments. But that will happen in its own time.

Time Out for Philosophy

Sometimes the things that seem most problematic turn out to be better for us than we expected. First of all, OL has no currency. We may get currency by mid December. We don't know that for sure though. Then we have that pesky -- may have been fixed but no official announcement so far -- permissions problem; so selling or giving away anything could come with a full perms copy of our items on other grids thanks to Second Inventory.

Some people are in limbo right now -- waiting and wondering what the future will bring. Some are worrying. Real life isn't too helpful at the present time either with the worldwide economy moving quickly into a dark era.

That's all true. BUT, at the same time, all those difficulties have given me something important -- TIME. Yes, there is rent to pay still and yes it will be coming out of pocket rather than being offset by any possible profits. I had a bit of ironic wisdom a couple of decades ago that I said quite often. "We either have time, or we have money." That was very true then and it is somewhat true now.

I am grateful, really, for the problems -- at least in one sense. There is absolutely no pressure to get all the vendors in the stores and the items in the vendors. I can play with decorations, work on animations one day and hair the other, and earrings (well I HAD to cover my ears with something) in between. With no deadline, there is the luxury of simply creating.

And I like that.

The Village: A Beginning

So what do you do with (almost) unlimited prims. Well ya BUILD of course. And I decided to build a village. I started with a central park as green space is always a good thing. This area is in a "tree" bagua -- feng shui wise so I wanted lots of growing things and trees. I made some circular flexi grasses and added some more of my homemade flowers. A cobblestone walkway adds a bit of an old fashion feel. I've made two shops and an apartment so far. I built the steps you see in the background out of real prims and there are MANY.

I've always been a big believer in details so the the signs hanging for the shops have real chain, the streetlight of course gives real light and the shutters in house number two -- the small one -- are part way open and you can see curtains though the gap. All fun little bits of reality in our not exactly real world.

I have no idea how the village will evolve. That's not really the point. The point is to play and that I am doing. The village adjoins the main park and is bordered on the other side by the huge pond and trees. So it is cozy -- at least as cozy as a village within a "city" with both shops and houses can be.

Meditation in the Temple of Sam - LOL

A friend of mine mentioned that he would SO like to see a NEW meditation animation. So today after I added a new shop (shift + drag + align LOL) and put up vendors in the clothes shop, I went to work on the beginnings of a meditation pose. I've got the ease in effect all worked out which is SO much nicer than just turning into an instant statue, so that's a relief.

Logged in easily today. Crashed a few time but got home OK. Will work on the animation again soon. Most of use could use it on an off day.

My First Hair

So I haven't been able to get into Fantastic at all today, but I did late this afternoon make it to the sandbox. The bad news was that I had to start over again on my hair as the part I made earlier went missing. The good news is that it turned out pretty well. I love the texture. I need to add some more curls and things, but it is presentable and it is MINE and that counts. It feels much more "me" as it is patterned after my been-wearing-it for-ages do. No flexi parts yet but a bun is a practical style for the frontier. I am happy with the effort.




While I couldn't get in world -- partly because of a rolling restart -- I could work on animations and poses. The pose above is called "I don't think so" for lack of a better title. I figured out how to ease into static poses and I also made a 12 second looping sit that worked great when I tried it in a couch on Phil's beta grid. So I can use it at SS even if I can't quite use it here. And then again, scripts may get better soon.

That's today's report.

Beam Me Up Scottie

Woot! I can have HAIR and SHOES this morning. Hair is more important of course -- of COURSE IT IS.

So asset server seems happier today finally, but physics / scripts? Not so much. Getting up from any chair sends you hither and yon -- flailing around the atmosphere in a swim that gets you no where.

I finally got a bit settled at 50 meters up or so. A little hard to work this way.


On a thumbs up note, I logged back into Nara to find Fantastic buildings all gone. I checked the general chat to ask if a rolling restart was in progress to find that Sakai had his name listed as *Sakai Openlife (rolling restart)*. SOOOOO -- better communication in effect. This works.

Off to RL for awhile. Hoping to work on hair in progress later. Or another building. Whatever I am ABLE to work on is OK.

Building a Bench

I will preface this post by recognizing that most likely 90 percent or more of the people on the OLG right now are content creators of some kind. They know how to build -- and how to build well. But, the future gets here pretty quickly and it is ALSO likely that REALLY new folks may be arriving soon. Some will want to build. While I have no big plans at the moment to start from "rez a box", I'm hoping that these few pointers may be helpful in the future.



Since I was on a roll with my conspicuous consumption of prim usage, I decided to build a bench for the park. Not a two prim bench - mind you -- A BENCH. So here we go.

I made a box and adjusted the size to approximate the finished bench size and I hollowed it. I then HELD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY while pulling UP on the prim ( the blue arrow) -- thus making a copy that was aligned with the prim below.

I resized the second prim to make the larger of two slats, taking out the hollow and setting that field back to zero. I made sure that the "Z" values of the new slat and the original prim were the same. Even though I had made the new slat thinner they would be aligned. You can also use Shift + Z here but I have run into problems with that here so staying away from it most of the time.



I then HELD DOWN THE SHIRT KEY (this is called Shift - Copy by many) and pulled to the left and made a copy of that larger slat. Three more slats were needed so more shift copying was necessary. You can of course hold down the SHIFT key and click on a second object and then Shift-Copy them BOTH at the same time. I aligned the slats by eye. You can use math if you prefer.

Using the same method, I filled in the open areas with smaller slats. Then the back was finished. I pulled DOWN a copy of the outside of the back (the one with the hollow) to use as the start of the seat. Then I selected ALL the back prims by holding down the Shift key and dragging across the bench back. With them all selected, I held down the CTRL key to turn on rotation and rotated the back TOGETHER to the angle I wanted. If you are not used to doing this be SURE you click and drag on the CORRECT color of the three colored rotation ball.


Using the same method, I made slats for the bottom of the seat, selected all the prim in the seat (maybe 9) and then moved them as one with the arrows to line up with the back.



So far the bench is ALL about boxes. Rectangles are king here. But a little softness would be nice.

I made a new cylinder, hollowed it and used PATH cut to slice an appropriate shaped section out. The "height" of the cylinder needed to be the same as the width of the chair arm. Other than that I just cut and moved the new curved piece over to the arm to see EXACTLY what width and thickness it needed to be. The thickness was controlled by the hollow.

I highlighted the complete build. (Remember -- at least now at the beginning, linking along the way is dangerous. If you DO link, be sure and unlink the parts of your build before linking them for the final time.) I then double clicked on one of the slats in the seat which was set at 0,0,0 rotation (most always a good plan) and linked the bench. I added a darker wood texture from the library and adjusted the direction and pattern of the textures on the different parts.

It still needs some pose ball or "pillows" for the sit function. By the time you read this, that may not be necessary.

That's a bench. 45ish prims in all.

1,000 Prims of Flowers

Think about it. We each have 45,000 prims per sim to work with. I couldn't get much work done today as the assert servers were on a very long lunch break. No shoes, no hair, no hair in the making, no pose stand poses to work on hair just sitting there (tricky but possible) -- you get the idea.

So what can you do when you can't get into your virtual closet / garage? You can GARDEN. I had the beginnings of a park in place. I'd abandoned it for other projects somewhere along the way. So I was building hair there today as it is quite pastoral even though not finished. It's a little bit of GREEN anyway in all that gray granite and deco pink plaster.

After looking at the Blender 3D tutorials and thinking that seemed WAY too much like work for me, I logged back in and decided to improve the park space. I copied over some long leaves I had made the other day -- no taking into inventory as inventory was out of the question. So I used my arrow keys to lug them across most of a sim -- bit by bit. It works!

After a lot of selective copying and dragging I have filled the large planters that abut the park. Just how many prims are in those lovelies? About 750. When you count the rest of the park -- and the rest of what I'm going to put IN the park, we are looking at 1,000 prims I suspect.

What better way to spend your prims than on flowers?

Free Artist Spaces

I posted this on the OLX classifieds so thought I should post here too.

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So this is a bit premature also, but the building is finished. As soon as groups are active, I have a very large gallery area available at Fantastic.

These spaces (I have them quite large at the moment but people could share or I can divide as needed) are available for free for a month. If the space works for you after that, you may rent at a nominal fee or vacate and let another artist have the space.

You can see the building in Fantastic. It is the largest building there at the moment and is in the North East corner. There is a sign that says "Art Experience" on the outside. I want this to remain a consistent looking space so no wall color changes etc. It is all pretty much light gray at the moment which should work for everyone.

There are a couple of rules (well you KNEW there would be). All work needs to be original and YOURS of course. All work needs to be made IN WORLD (not imported). Take advantage of what the OLG can offer and make something grand. Sculptures are certainly welcome. 2D art MUST be of your own creation. While photography (your own uploaded as textures and placed "in frames") is welcome, I need to see some providence. So your RL web page or blog with art, etc. or some other proof. Sorry but it's just too easy to cheat here and while I would like to believe we are all up front and honest -- I know that isn't the case. Scripts need to be kept at a bare minimum (texture rotation OK) to keep the sim stable. Think FORM over FUNCTION for now (wink). That can change as stability changes.

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I am hoping that this can become a place for newish people coming into OL -- or coming over. That works too. So while it is perfectly OK to have this as an additional space now, if you already have a spot in OL. I "may" -- down the road -- change that rule.

I have no major plans for this space except that it will hopefully be an art area. That needs ARTISTS of course. I plan to put a few things at the entrance as well as some furniture and such. So it would be a good place to have opening etc should the artist wish. It can just evolve as time goes on.

No prim limitations really but I am thinking that 500 should be plenty per person. If you can't say what you need to say in that many prims ..... well, we'll see.

Made on The OLG at Mac's

I'm getting a little teary here. Mac (who I just met a couple of weeks ago) wrote such an INSPIRING POST about what I really thought was a TINY idea. I never really imagined people would embrace it so. And that says a lot really. It's no wonder I am so happy to be here.

Many thanks, Mac.

Work Ethic Workbench

I've had my region two and a half weeks now. Of course I did some building on the sandbox before then. Still, it was REALLY good to get my workshop more or less finished today. I so love the details. Getting over that "save a prim whenever you can" code and this is good in the land of plenty. I even made REAL thumb tacks for my cork board and have flexi leather swatches dangling. Some sketches add some interest. And boxes of course, shipping and shoe -- you can't have a shoe store without boxes. Mine are ALL made with recycled paper of course.

I finished this area today or at least will be stopping for awhile and see what evolves -- because textures weren't sticking for me. Black shoes became red again in inventory. Scripts not working on the sim but animations still are. So, I got to play.

I was thinking today how much fun I am having here. Partly because it is new of course. I had a lot of fun times in building classes at Phil's when I was learning. FRUSTRATING as even with all my background in graphics and multimedia and the web, somehow building really evaded my grasp. Brain synapses just weren't firing fast enough (sigh). But most of that is under my belt now and so I really can PLAY and that is great. And being able to upload for free -- for awhile at least-- let's me feel I can do more with my graphics. No need to cut corners with textures either. A win - win situation.

TIP: I found today that I could not shrink my tack down below the .o1 barrier. This might be a "today" thing or not. Only more investigation will tell. I'll keep ya posted. I COULD make it smaller. I just had to do it using Edit Linked Parts.

A not too close neighbor came by to visit just now. He spoke Spanish. I am getting a lot of Spanish practice in here and doing fairly well amazingly enough. It's been a long time since I traveled the winters in Mexico :D. It was a fairly humorous conversation as he is a builder and rents casitas (houses) and also has castillos (castles) for sale that he has brought over using SI. So if you read this blog very much you see the humor there. I told him I preferred to work with my hands making things here (wink). And since he couldn't sell me a castle he journeyed onward. It really IS great how people just stop by.

Oh, I forgot to put my new sign up for the Art Center --- can I get back in? We'll see. Yep. I did. New signs. Looks good.

Until tomorrow.

KirstenLee at Corinth

The meeting with Sakai was postponed a day (so it happens tomorrow at the same time I believe). Meanwhile as I was trying to get into world ANYWHERE -- especially the meeting -- I found out in chat that KirstenLee Openlife was giving a talk. It turned out to be VERY interesting. So if you missed it, here are the highlights. I have put things in sentences and added punctuation to make it easier to read. I hope I kept the continuity well.


KirstenLee Openlife:

... also in the upcoming viewer are new features for prim manipulation. In the next point release advanced slice. I'm also looking into off centre hollows this will allow for a much larger range of prim shapes.

I'm also making the partner box in the profile floater a priority. I will make it so people can put in there own partners and save the setting to the users cache.

As you are aware I do the viewer but thats only part of the equation.

Audience: and the connection, is that a viewer prob, or serverbased?

KirstenLee Openlife: The server code is still playing catch up. That's why there is only one dev on the viewer and several on the server side.

I'm trying to expand the graphic card list supported. Since R16 was release, I already added support for lower end ATI cards which LL dropped. The point is I'm interested in inclusion rather than exclusion.

Soon I'm going to have an island called OLdev. OLdev island will be a testbed. And I need ALL of your help. I want your scripts ^^ I'm going to be updating the documentation for LSL in OL. Nnything which is nasty, doesn't work or plain kills a sim. Start to give some inworld feedback and document more extensively. What actually works. I want to include a more comprehensive guide into the viewer.

We have a opportunity to do things differently here and in a much more involved manner.

Audience: I saw you mentioned off center hollows, what about non-simetric valued hollows, say 30X and 90Y hollows?

KirstenLee Openlife: Correct. I want to push the hollowing code further. Imagine for instance a cube with a hollow circle that goes over 99% -- that can do over hollows --105% -- cutting a single prim into 4 or off centre hollows.

On the point of meshes -- we don't want just meshes, but powerful inworld tools for making prims even more useful -- making as much creative possibilitys available to as many as possible, so expect to see prim creation sizes go upto 128m. I agree that the 100m arbitary limit is a little silly and 128 seems sensible.


Under other ideas from the participants was a NO ban lines policy on the mainland which was HIGHLY applauded.

KirstenLee Openlife: Ok some viewer tips.

Who has a nvidia card? 7000 or better?

Advanced menu > debug settings > type in "renderUseShaderNearParticles". Will harness the power of the GPU to render particles.

Ok this is silly but fun. Debug settings again > renderResolutionDivisor - go retro with blocky graphics - bigger the number the more retro it gets.

This is major important -- Don't want your sim to become a blackhole? Don't wear SL ao's / radars etc. Timers and sensors are evil evil things.

You in Second Inventory -- log into a build sim you upload. Don't upload the scripts UNLESS your 100% sure they are tested and safe. The sim will try to compile and run on upload. If it's a particularly awful script -- bang region dies. Hence all the big holes. Better to cut and paste individual scripts and test one at a time

I can't highlight this enough -- the reason the grid has been seemingly so bad lately is down to a lot of imported scripts.

See how many of us are here. No problems. Why? I disabled scripts before we met ^^

I have been looking into the viewer code too and I'm thinking about lifting any limits on link distance in there.

We all get to help build this place :) think of Oldev like crash me island ^^ Gonna be doing some severe prim torture there -- running bad scripts but rather covering up any short comings. Letting as many people know SL was like this in the beginning lets face it.

Lindens used to hang out; everything was cool but they screwed it up. See this sim. It was mine. I gave it up so someone else can have it. Me is homeless ^^ lol, but that's the difference. Both Sakai and me really do [care :) ] -- changed slightly for PG rating.


And don't for the love of god lock items.

The Art Experience

The art building is complete for now. I'm happy with how it turned out. I originally made an open area in the floor so that people could fly up if the teleporter wasn't working. I gave that idea some more thought this morning. Point A: it is a guarantee that the teleporter will not always be working -- at least in the short term. Point B: I have UNLIMITED prims (well pretty much).



The end result -- spiral stairs. BIG ONES. While you can still get dizzy, falling off isn't really a problem. And they DO make a statement. It's a very large space so the stairs work fine. I added some light to the stairs themselves.

TIP: It's always good to look at your build at night. Your visitors need to be able to get around at all times of the day. New folks especially are not aware of their power over the time of day.

TIP: You can turn on BRIGHT in the texture tab (build menu) to lighten an area. This is extremely important with vendors and signs. You can use LIGHT under the Features tab to add cast light (task lighting) to an area.

While it is dark in there right now, I opted to leave it as I expect with paintings and sculpture and the like will take on a brightness. We'll see.

TIP: If you link several objects in OL (like stairs in this case) you will find that they become phantom. Pretty difficult to walk up stairs when they are phantom -- you simply fall through. I assume this will get fixed eventually, but the quick fix for now is to unlink them.

TIP: When you are moving very large prims, you often need to stand on them (or over them). As you move them, they become phantom and you fall through. Currently you can simply fly back up through the phantom object and you land on the prim again. This is if it is a GOOD day on the frontier of course.

This was a fun build. I had no idea where it was going when I started. I just let it evolved and let USE have control over the design. It was so fun to simply build and to be able to play with shapes and see what evolved. I hope the space gets some good use :D

Hammering on the OLG

It's been a busy afternoon on the OLG for me. While it wasn't as SMOOOOOTH as yesterday -- read that as quite a few crashes but getting back on was easy (whew) -- I did manage to get a lot done. Mortus solved my invisiprim problem. I'm not sure if it was the 2004 code (old / simple things work better here it seems) or simply WAITING for the server to find that mysterious graphic referenced in the lines of LSL. Whatever the outcome, I have HEELS!

Now I don't particularly love heels, but other gals do and we all like to feel pretty and comfortable. The definition of comfortable simply varies.



Here is the prim shoe (no sculpties as I don't do that) showing the invisiprims. There are three in all and I added the scripts AFTER I had completely linked the shoe. So it's good to know that's possible. At least TODAY it was (wink). They are simple, classic and 22 prims as I do believe that low prim garb is best in a new world. The metal details were made using the TINY prim possibilities in OL. That was VERY cool




Not everything always goes smoothly when you are building. I crashed in that OhI'mNOTReallyHereEvenThoughItSeemsLike it mode to find all my fitting work on shoe 2 was gone and it was sitting on my shoulder. Ah well, one more time. I now have ONE pair of heels and making the other colors is just time and energy. Yeah.





To celebrate I made a hammer for my workbench. It's important to PLAY a bit. All work and all that jazz. BAD BAD BAD. I can go there. Don't want to do that.

So -- the plan is to have a hammering animation and a hammer and shoes and boxes and all in the work corner of my shoe shop. Ah those unlimited prims. WOOT! So I started with the hammer. I normally build things the size they will be. Once you've done shoes and jewelry, making a life sized hammer is NOT a big deal. But to demonstrate that you CAN make items large and then shrink (except perhaps for those mini prims and the giant revert mentioned in the giant Shuz post) it works.

I also decided to start a section with building tips and things. Nothing formal, just taking pictures as I work. That might help the new builders along the way. No one is very enthused about my Community Region School project so every little bit of help is good.

The hammer shrank beautifully and is now on the work table with some shoes. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some boxes and crates made for effect. And some more shoes of course.

Note: Today I tried the Edit Linked Prims feature while my shoe was on my foot. It worked just as it should. So that other repeatable fiasco (in two sims) must have been a server code oops or something techie. Glad it isn't the norm. Trying a NEW shoe each time you make an adjustment is indeed a pain.

On the history front, the art center is coming along well and I put up the new Made in The OLG signs with hammer in the shoe and skins shops. Me likey! The hammer sort of says it all I think. Working with your hands on the grid. Works for me.

History: Made on the OLG

So I felt it would be good to paste this comment in from the official forum. After all, this blog may outlast the archives there. I've seen those old post disappear before (smile). But before I hit that Ctrl + V, here is a bit of history as I will most likely forget all this by the time I reread it as a memoir - LOL. Those old brain cells may not last. Ya never know.

Here's the history FOR the history section of this blog. I have not posted these thoughts in any public arena. You come here, you read what I actually think. So that's how it is.

When I first arrived on the OLG I was like everyone at that time -- red and gray and even less desirable looking than Ruth. I think the fellows ended up in the same avatar which makes it even worse :D. Not long after my arrival someone gave me a landmark and I ended up at a freebie store. I was VERY grateful to have something else besides my red and gray garb. But just a few minutes after I started opening free boxes I was faced with SL public domain goods. Not only full perm shop stuff but things that I actually WORE (and they were old then) over two years before.

I was SO not willing to go back there. I quickly looked up some clothes files and made my own. Goody for ME, but not everyone had a lengthy list of already made clothes textures. None of this probably matters if the new person is really NEW to virtual worlds, but if you are an oldtimer in SL it was not a happy occurrence -- at least not for me.

So not long after I got things together I uploaded my first skin and put out some "original" freebies for people. Then the permissions problem happened and I wasn't willing to make my things public domain in SL so I took them offline for awhile. Then I made some beach shoes and boxed them and put them out in Take a Copy form and urged others to make some original content for the stores (sometimes their own stores). Many folks were already doing this, but there were still more places with not so new items.

Some folks decided (or declared) that they wanted to make their items to give away and for sale here rather than import them. They embraced the Made on the OLG idea and it grew into a retail model of sorts. A model of CHOICE certainly. Does it mean that stuff made here is BETTER? How could you say that categorically? It does mean that people took the time and made the effort to make things HERE on their new world. I, personally, think that matters.

I have absolutely no plans to be a retail baron here. If I can manage to pay my rent to Sakai each month, I'll be a happy gal.



And that leads us to the post:

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Lots of points in a tiny post.

First of all the original idea WAS about the freebie stores. Then people starting picking up the idea in relation to the items "brought over" as you say. This is in NO WAY a marketing label or gimmick or anything like that -- at least not from my point of view and not my plan. As I have said many times, this is NOT my thing. People can do whatever they like with the idea. It will no doubt change and become what it will become. Some folks asked for logos for their websites and vendors and such. I simply posted mine. There is absolutely NO reason anyone needs to use mine. Just if they do, it needs to be on goods made here.

I personally AM making all my goods in world and not bringing over items from other worlds -- with that being said TEXTURES have been uploaded by hand into OLG and I have remade clothes. Not trying to hide anything here. This is my choice and my ethic. People certainly have a right to work in whatever way they choose. I am happy with the decisions I have made re retail and I assume that they are too. They may think they are smarter to use Second Inventory to get their products here and they certainly HAVE a point re ease and time expended. No argument there.

Love your logo. I originally suggested people send in logos. I see no reason really that there needs to be only one logo or one movement with the same goals.

I'm sorry but I don't really understand the following paragraph of your post so I can't really make any comment on that. I'm sure that if I was writing in Spanish you wouldn't be able to understand my ideas readily -- even if you were a native speaker (wink). As far as I am concerned, if it works for you that's great.

If the abouve is true, i`ll be asking people and shop owners for OLG freebies the moment I have some thing built to place and give out those items, but, have them with a reference to their OLG store and if needed to their SL store to confirm that they are TRUE OLG freebies with a logo to add to their item texture.

And I have no idea what my original idea will become. I, personally, have put a small Made in the OLG logo on my company logo as I am proud of the extra work I went to and happy of the new designs I have made so far. I have signs in some of my shops also. If that makes me elitist, then perhaps I am. It's simply what I believe in.

We all need to do what we feel good about doing. This is what feels right for me.

All my best on YOUR plans. May they lead you where you want to go.

Who SAYS We're in Beta? Woot!

Yes, I know this will be known as my "big butt" picture. I simply don't care as I'm on a euphoric high! I logged OFF five times today.

There is the logging ON thing of course and I did that too, but the operative word is OFF as I didn't CRASH ONCE! Woot! Woot! Woot! I even tped from the sandbox to home and made it in one try. I sent a note to tech support with a big thank you saying Fantastic was doing Fantastically today. It had been down almost constantly of late so this is a big deal. Maybe they fixed what was going wrong. Fingers crossed.

So aside from some odd gray fog color issues with the color picker this morning, all went swimmingly. I got sandals finished and pictures taken (with big butt pose which does a fine job with the FEET part - LOL). Lookin' good.



That floating animation problem is still in effect and I am wondering whether it is the server code as both SL and OL have the same problem but it in slightly different manners (worse in SL). Anyway much to do so I'm letting that go for now and will install Poser when all the OTHER stuff is done -- like December maybe? :D

So this afternoon I started building an art center area. Had no plan when I started except that it should coordinate with store buildings. So far so good. It is two stories and a rooftop garden area for Charlie assuming I actually get him over here. His name is saved anyway. That's a start. So lots of room for other artist and that will be nice. We'll see how it goes.

The building is huge by my standards. That's me by the front window -- floating and building in the air. Lots of fun.

A good day.

Building 101: The UNDO function!

Luckily this isn't MY build, but it looks a bit like my kiosk when I first tried my hand in the sandbox. The undo button (CTRL+ Z) works fine on ONE prim that has no friends. If you have any rotations in a build however it can be VERY dangerous. It is not your buddy OR your savior here -- at least not for now. So beware. ALWAYS take a copy before trying to undo. Most likely you will need it (wink).

Really BIG Shuz!

HMMMM! This was NOT the plan -- although I sorta suspected the outcome and had MANY saved copies of the giant shoe (lifesize version) in my inventory. Eku told me you could stretch to infinite. Well almost infinity -- and that may be the case in some builds, but when you are using the tiniest of prim sizes (grommets in the shoe) then stretching or shrinking gives you a GIANT object.

I am not sure how it decides how big the object will be -- and honestly I don't care. Just BEWARE the resize tool (wink). Of course I have a nice giant shoe now. Too bad that wasn't the finished model. Still I know how to get one if I need one.

Later Edit:

Fantastic went down a few more times today but I found that actually reporting it as Sakai mentioned in the meeting, got it back on line in an hour or so. That's pretty good with all they have to do.

It's been down again but I did get sent over to Welcome Island and put the rest of the skins together and one set of sweaters. Boring but I am getting faster. Somehow I ended up in the sandboxes and finished the shoes up. So one charcoal pair all done and the other colors will be easy. Yeah!

The animation and sit problems are not going away. Animation appears to be the free program so I'll check that soon. I may have to live with strategically camouflaged pose balls for awhile. Oh well.

Signs and Shoes and -- Oh my!

It was a tough day on the frontier and all I managed this morning was to make a new sign for the kiosk and About Land info. It took until mid afternoon before I could actually GET to Fantastic, but then things worked well. Ah the magic of a rolling restart.

So, sign made and transparent, resizable logo for adding to signs etc for anyone who might embrace that Made on the OLG idea. Will see. Works for me anyway.




I have been working on some animations and stools for my workbench. Some issues there and I haven't figured out if they are OL issues or other issues. Will experiment a bit more. Meanwhile I got the start on some new heels for the shop. It isn't too hard to make original content for Openlife. Once you use some of the tinier prim settings, you HAVE original content as you couldn't remake the item in other worlds anyway. An interesting thought.

Animations 101

It all started because Sam had NO poses. VERY boring pictures with no poses. So I installed qavimator for the second time. The first instance I simply hated it. I had just quit my "day job" which was mostly Flash animation and perhaps it was simply too CLOSE to that to seem like fun. But today was different. Yeah.

Things went smoothly and well and I have a lot of maybe I can use them someday poses like tai chi - LOL etc. Somewhere along the way I got snagged by the muse and started an animation. I had absolutely NO plans where it might go but after a few frames I decided it looked like someone smoking and so continued along that vein. Sam has never smoked and neither has the person behind Sam, but I have to admit it WAS sort of relaxing. I made a quicky cigarette (no smoke or embers) and we had ACTION.



I'm not sure if virtual bad habits are addicting. I guess they could be. But I guess I'll take my chances -- AND work on some modeling poses sometime soon. It was a FUN afternoon. You just never know where your virtual day will takeya.

Democracy in Action

While not quite democracy -- and actually I have never been sure that TRUE democracy works anyway -- the Foundation Residents weekend meeting with Sakai was both well attended and informative. That's me in purple -- standing by an "away" Osiris (wink). These are my impressions and thoughts -- simply as a historical reference for myself.

The meetings have been going on since the beginning when they first held them under trees and sitting on the ground as that was the only choice at the time. They will continue as a way for the people IN world to have a say in what happens on the OLG. That is the intent anyway and hopefully that will be the historical record.

Money is planned to come on line in a test form in about two weeks. Then after a couple weeks of testing and if everything is going OK the money spent will be "rolled back" and we will have a real currency exchange. I am a little confused here, but it will be spelled out on the website so I am sure we will all be smarter soon. Only landholders will be able to take money OUT. This may simply be because we already have financial info on file.

Avatar 2 is still planned and the direction we are heading in. The new 3D mesh avatars may be implemented during the first quarter of next year. A personal note here -- there seemed to be a lot of underlying text in the discussion as Avatar 2 right now really doesn't seem to be ready. For one it is ugly as sin and admittedly difficult for new folks to grasp. These things will need to be worked out for it to come into its own.

I, personally, see some problems here. The software used to make the meshes (unless there is some freeware that I haven't heard of) is terrifically expensive and reportedly has a huge learning curve. After learning Flash and refusing to do sculpties I doubt I will venture into that design area. This moves me from content creator and leaves me an end user.

I have no problem with that role, but I am wondering how many content creators will actually be able and willing to put in the time and the expense to make both clothes and "skins" and things for the new model. LOTS of folks have Photoshop or a clone of sort and there is GIMP when needed. No giant expenditure is required. While I agree it may be good to move away from the LL model, I am wondering whether Avatar 2 will actually be a viable alternative for a year or so.

The companies website states that they will be "enhancing the realXtend avatar. This project phase is scheduled to be finished in June 2008." HMMM. I know not the plans of the inner circle. I don't need to know. I don't want to know. Still, right now no RL woman is going to be happy looking like the current Avatar 2 models. They are downright horrible and pretty much hairless (wink). So we'll see. I'm not deleting any of my texture clothes and prim shoes yet.

The M+15 designation came up again with some folks still not getting it even after an explanation. No overt sexual images in any public places was the message. There seem to still be some gray areas and that may very well be because the LAWS are very gray. No news there.

There are lots of things in the works in the background that we don't see including work on Groups (which will be BASIC for now). I got the sense that you would be able to use them to rent land etc. with group members being able to place objects etc. but that not all the functions available in other worlds would be implemented now.

Land in clusters can be divided and sold right now by contacting support with the particulars. In the future (not too distant) that will be automatic. Mainland regions cannot be sold but can be divided if needed. Again contact support with your request (and I think the reason you have for wanting the division).

An important point was that if you have any of the "group can do" boxes checked in the About Land Tabs that the GROUP right now is ALL the citizens so basically you are saying anyone can build even if you think you have that turned off (and it is showing that on the viewer toolbar). So some housework might be in order. I did mine. Autoreturn doesn't work but manual return is supposed to. (Note: It did NOT work for me at the beginning of the month and I had to find and click and return or delete each object, but that may be fixed now.)

The meeting went well, the sound streamed beautifully and aside from some of us getting caught under the floor as we entered, it was like a real meeting. And of course -- it WAS (wink).

Made on the OLG logos

Here are some possible logos - flags etc. for the Made on the OLG movement - LOL

I made them as pngs as that works for both web and in world. I made them orange to go with the new R 16 viewer colors. And they stand out. Click the images to get the correct sizes shown under the logos. Blogger automatically makes pics smaller.

EDIT: Newest versions up top. I made them active with no white background edges so Mortus has less work. As it turns out, transparent pngs are much less "weighty" than transparent TGAs. A good thing to know. Yeah!

On transparent background

128 x 128

512 x 512

512 x 256


You can get copies of this orange logo without the white background edge from Mortus HERE. Thanks :D

This is an active file with TRANSPARENT background. Gray here only so you can see the white text :D Use it on your store logos, signs or whatever.

this thread on the official forum.

Adding Color

Well it WAS awfully GRAY in Fantastic (wink). But no longer. I added two shops today -- one for clothes called Sam's Closet and one for skins and shapes and shoes called Bodyworks and Footworks. There are two doors in each shop and a partial wall in the shoes - skins one. They are large and light and STILL very low on prims. I just can't get over the unlimited number of available prims! I'll be adding some flowers and decorations soon, but it's a start.

From the blogs, I found a solution of sorts to the disappearing landscape -- both things I have built and simply the land. Just fly in from a few sims away and everything loads. I guess the packet loss has calmed down by the time you actually get to where you are going. Whatever the reason, it's good to know that works. Yeah!

Also on my got-it-done list today was the second sets of makeups - tones of my new skins. Me likes them (smile). Can't wait to take some photos but I will probably do that at Phil's as I have poses and lighting and Windlight settings and bodylights ----- all the creature comforts.

So that's my report for the history section.

Building Flowers

So the good news is that the database gods have given me back my shape and I have been "me" for a couple of days now. Yeah! I got in world a couple of times today, uploaded a lot of textures and skins as I sat in a meeting chair at The Island and then luckily got home and had some time to build.

Building -- while challenging at times -- BE CAREFUL OF UNDO and UNLINK all previously linked modules before linking in one final object -- on the OLG holds so many possibilities. I haven't made anything grand at all, but playing is fun. Today I overcame my prim counting issues and realized that I didn't have to make photo flowers, I could make real ones.

Notice the THIN petals? That a 99 percent hollow. Such fun.

Eventually I'll make some more styles and have a real flower garden in the park.

We also have LIGHT now in some areas of Fantastic as streetlights are in place.

Becoming Sam

Somewhere along the line I thought it would be good to have "Sam" look like "Samara". OL didn't agree and while I have a Samara shape, I guess I will just need to send it to the Samara in OL who is not even out of her pod yet -- just holding the name for the future. You never know when you might need that same name.

So, not terribly comfortable with Sam in her current state and not exactly sure how she got in that state as it seems to be a morphing of several shapes but it is STICKING no matter which of the great hints I try to get back to "Samara" -- I pouted for about two seconds.

I decided that the Universe has a plan as always and I determined a new skin that would go with the shape would help. I had fun today and of the several looks I made, this one seemed best. And I have other looks uploaded for the store and new templates to play with when I have time again. So, this is Sam on November 7 about 10 days out of her pod.

For the record as I am sure to forget, she is wearing Callie - clubbing - violet with latte lipstick. And what I wouldn't give for some prim eyelashes. On the list.

Building on the Frontier

Whatcha gonna do when you arrive home and find that you can actually SEE all that you have accomplished? No missing prims? No holes in the ground? No colored alphas? Why you're gonna take a PICTURE of course.

I wanted to do that earlier but between grid downtime and ghost prims, it was not an option. So here, for the history section is a picture of Fantastic at present. I covered the whole sim with shiny granite hoping that would solve the holes in the ground problem. Alas, the granite disappeared too at times and the giant holes were still there. It does HELP depending on how sad the server is, so who knows if I will leave it or not. I am currently making a nice park in the north central part of the sim (good feng shui).

I have a path of sorts leading to eku's oriental castle. There's not much there now, but eventually it will be grand. At least the pictures of the building she is copying is definitely that. And a moat is on the way? That should be interesting.

Ah the DRAMA :D

Twas an interesting day to say the least and it all turned out marvelously in the end so no complaints there. Slightly new plans. Just a shift with some support from new friends. It is amazing how fast you can turn things around when the impetus is there (big wink).

Onward!

Historically, today was a day of new skin making, some new gift items out and a lot of HOLES in the ground which would not go away no matter what I tried. So platforms are king and my neighbor will most likely need a taller wall for her oriental build.

First Land - Woot!

Well my first land in OL is definitely different than my first little 512 at Phil's over two years ago. Both held the same excitement though. And actually the energy in the neighborhood was even similar. Lots of camaraderie, lots of "how do I do that" comments and the like.


A whole sim is a lot of land. Funny that by the end of the day it didn't seem so vast as at the beginning. I haven't had time -- well I simply had different priorities -- to fiddle with my Windlight settings so these shots are simply for historical reference. No lovely sunsets over the kiosk - LOL or anything like that.

They'll do.



It was a good day. I learned quite a bit about the difference in the physics here, learned how to jump aboard a wayward mega prim and ride it across the landscape. I discovered that landmarks seem to go to ground level rather than where you have set them (sigh). I finally figured out how to make a vendor that delivers a folder rather than a box. Yeah.

The rules are a bit different here as you might expect. Experience is helpful as long as you aren't to set in your ways. A nice fellow stopped by and explained the SIT phenomenon (see earlier post) and I will work on improving THAT little problem in the not too distant future.

In the meantime I appear to have the first active retail shop in Openlife. I like being first. I have been there big time before on the WWW, but no stories as some of you may actually be old enough to figure out who I am in real life and I like to keep that separate.

If my retail idea works -- that's great. If not, I am having a great time and that is the important thing.

PS. The foundation land in Alice is gone now -- at least until the first of the month when rents are due and people may leave. The land around me was apparently for sale and hasn't been transferred over yet, so the landscape will certainly change. It will be interesting to see how.

Over 1000 new orders at Openlife

I guess I should add a preface here for those that don't know about the change in pricing and policy of the mini sims in Second Life (R) (low prim region estates) that goes into effect I believe at the beginning of the year. There was a lot of fist waving, name calling and finally an ESCAPE of sort for many folks to the one year old Openlife grid. It's been a fast paced week for many individuals. Regions on the Openlife mainland were selling as fast as they were added. Estate clusters were being ordered in GREAT demand it seems. I didn't realize HOW much land had been sold until this evening when an official person was in the Openlife chat.

I thought this would most likely be of interest for some of you.

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OK. I just got some official info that Openlife is processing 1000 new orders -- I am guessing from the weekend but may be from the last week. Either way that is a LOT of new people there. I am among them and waiting semi patiently for my land to transfer. It is a manual thing there.

Since most ALL of this is a reflection of the pay increase of the mini sims and since most ALL the chatter in the sandboxes etc. is about LL and movement, I thought it would be of note to post this on the feed.

Since Openlife has only 256 mainland regions on the foundation continent of Alice and some of those were of course TAKEN before the great hiatus from SL, that means that there will be a TON of new islands going in.

So that is a lot of new folks since there was only one or two islands on the map before all this happened. The folks in Australia where Openlife is based (and maybe other spots as we are in a digital age) are working round the clock on orders and keeping the grid up and the like. And we are all waiting.

I moved to the mainland purposefully. One -- it is cheap by region terms at $59 a month and $30 set up fee and I sort of liked being in the pioneering region. I scored a region next to the stock exchange which has an impressive build and in theory will be a stable neighbor. And I decided I liked being more of a community gal than a separatist.

Since I would like to put forth a few thoughts for my new blog http://sl2ol.blogspot.com/ which I planned as a business blog but I think will morph into a mix of help and personal and business with labels on the side so you can find what you are looking for -- here it is.

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Here is what I see from the conversations, chat rooms, blogs etc.

• Most of the newcomers are LEAVING SL -- not exactly COMING to Openlife.
• Some of them JUMPED without looking around much and may leave soon. There is no viable economy at the moment and while there is one planned and promised "soon" -- "soon" gets put on the back burner at times when grid stability and other concerns get in the way. Rightfully so.
  
• A lot of people are planning on MOVING thier SL inventory to Openlife using Second Inventory which may be fine for builders. It seems however that most people are not reading the fine print. You need to be the CREATOR or the item needs to be full perm (and do we want that stuff really anyway?) in order to transfer. People in the chat rooms are talking about moving their "skin" over (not plural mind you and that would be a simple upload process). I asked them if the skin was full perms and they just stared blindly into virtual space (wink). So there WILL be some issues there.
• SL appears to be having a short term recession at the moment -- much like when the casinos closed. We will make it through, but I am personally glad I do not have a large "nut" to pay each month :)
• I am not convinced from talking to people that the new citizens realize that Openlife is in BETA (Alpha - Beta really as they sometimes say). Things often don't work. The grid is down a lot. For people who joined SL two or three years ago, this is just a deja vu. For the people that joined in the last six months? They have no idea what they are getting into.
• I, personally, look forward to the frontier -- the newness, the struggles and many of those early days I missed in SL. I was here long enough ago for the semblance to be obvious, but not long enough ago to be a pioneer (wink).
  

I think the past week will -- in the long run -- be good for both Phil's Place and Openlife. We cannot have another world to expand our metaverse TO , if the toddlers can't grow. They need energy and vision and CONTENT CREATORS. I plan to do my part there savoring the adventure -- and enjoy the smoother flow of things here.

That works for me.

Some Things Work!

And some don't :)

It's been a good day on the frontier. I uploaded a ton of clothes textures and made them into garments -- not as simple as you might think. We are in beta after all (wink). I met my new neighbor who had "great hair" and she gave me a copy in red - so one step up.

You will note that I am shoeless. OOps! Can't see those feet? Well hey. Pose balls and sit scripts don't work yet. And when I get up again I may end up at 50 meters. The fall won't hurt me though. No cares.

I DID find a working teleporter (free to copy) and I also figured out why it is important to build on a stable platform. At least I will hazard a guess. While waiting for my land to get transferred over I noted some GIANT holes in the land. Square holes that led to deep blue waters. I thought it was griefing but when I returned it was fixed while the clutter was still around. So I think it may be the land itself in digital upheaval. Good to know and I will act accordingly.

My sim seemed liked one of the stablest -- at least today and I could get there when I couldn't log in other places. We'll see how history verifies this.

I also scored a nice sculpty tree on the sandbox. "Clear" textures weren't working today but I suspect it will be lovely when they do.

Ya just gotta go with the flow.