Openlife: Simplifying Location to the Open Life Grid

Made in the OLG upload

2009-03-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

I hadn't planned to continue this blog, but something happened today that seemed to belong here -- and so the saga continues.

I've been gone from Openlife for awhile now. First in spirit and then in practice. Too many dramas, too much back stabbing. The fun had left the building. I am hoping it will return. But whether it does or it doesn't --- today was special for me.

Here's the skinny. Currency is "almost" a part of Openlife. The mechanics are in place, but no one can buy credits yet. As I understand it, a few folks had a few credits each by mistake or who knows why. They pooled their Credits here and there to make up the 20 needed to upload. And my Made in the OLG logo "appears" to be the first paid for texture on the grid. Thanks to Digi who uploaded and Mac who let me know.

It really is very important to me. I've always believed in making it new, making it different. I've taken a lot of abuse for that. So, it's good to see that someone sometime may actually use the logo I made. More importantly, they may actually believe that making goods from scratch are better than bringing in old stuff from another grid (wink).

So that's a little bit of history I thought should be accounted for.

(Photo by Digi from the forums.)

Performance Art

2009-01-25T17:39:00.000-08:00

I've been building full time in Openlife for almost three months now and I find myself at a stopping point. I've always said that I didn't know if I was making product or props -- and I still don't know. What I do understand it that it is time to let the world catch up to me.

This isn't an unusual scenario in my life, I am almost always ahead of my time. So, I am going into storage for awhile. There is really no point in paying for a sim I won't be using. I've had a glorious time rediscovering my passion for building -- watching a new world unfold. And I have a chronicle of it all which was much of the point of being here.

Artists have a saying, "It's the process that counts". That has always been true for me. Results are good, but the journey is the important part. The trip with its twists and turns and surprises is what we learn from and what we remember.

I'll still be around from time to time, much like Samara on her 512 that checks in to see what's up in Phil's world. I haven't left the building, I've just gone off to another performance.

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

I wrote the post above over a week ago. Since then the smoke and mirrors show has gone into full swing, more friends are leaving, the word elitist would show up in HUGE letters in Wordpress if it was hosting the forums. Some official forum threads are open to only group members (yes the groups are "open" but that isn't going over well with some). Posts are being deleted -- either by a moderator we don't know we have or some odd fluke of the forum coding. People are in hiding as the venom is flying in the forums which is really our only way of group communication.

The world is emptier for sure -- hence stability is up. There are lots of NEW issues however such as a first time occurrence (at least in the three months I have been there) of rezzed prims disappearing from in world. Prims don't always rez - they just fizzle, more inventory loss, prims rezzing 15 meters away and 5 meters up or so from where you told that pesky wand to put it, textures not showing up in inventory or rezzed prims. The list goes on.

There are no pokes and I have sent in NUMEROUS restart requests that somehow never get answered. Sakai is in the US for over a week and the devs are on Chinese New Years holiday it seems. Still the party line is that stability reigns and there have been very few restart requests.

So, I am packing up with a much heavier heart than I would have been true a week ago. Timing is everything and mine is usually pretty good, but I was a bit late on the get go this time. I wanted to believe. Like so many others I needed to believe. The people I trusted the most have left the building or are on their way out.

It's difficult today to tell who is who in the war we seem to be having. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Or is it an alt that my enemy made to seduce me into friendship? The Machiavellian dramas are so entrenched in Openlife that there is almost no room for real communication.

I still have hopes that the Phoenix can rise from the ashes. I'll be watching and checking in from time to time as I have observed other "oldtimers" doing. And I'm not sorry I came. It wasn't what I planned, but I can certainly say I was there in the beginning.

The landscape is getting barren with abandoned regions that still hold the names of the departed. It is an odd epitaph -- that empty rolling landscape.

Progress, Promises and Pipe Dreams

2009-01-24T07:45:00.000-08:00

I'm busy getting my ducks in a row for a new chapter -- some of you know that. Beginnings oftentimes come with reflections attached and so it is with this one. I've been looking back as well as ahead and then of course there is the middle.

What progress has been made in the three months I have been in Fantastic?

We can now usually log into to world -- sometimes even to the region we are aiming for -- without having to spend a lot of time in the chat room asking which regions are up. We even sometimes get shuttled to an alternate region if the one we are trying to reach is down.

After two plus months, the new forums have been introduced to the website. True, rich text editing isn't there yet and we have lost the ability -- so far -- to send personal messages to each other using the forum interface.

The world is more stable -- at least it seems so from the layman's perspective. We often walk with our feet in the correct angle and on terra firma, on a good day we can get up from our couch (if the script engine is working) and not fly into the ethers.

We have an updated viewer with less intrusiveness and more security.

All good.

A lot of "promises" haven't come to pass.

The Foundation Residents meetings which have been going on since the beginning of Openlife and will continue -- have not. Four no shows in a row by Sakai was enough for some people to leave the world. There have been hastily called "casual meetups" and a few spur of the moment (???) group meetings, but those that chose sims on the mainland especially to be a part of this long time process are still waiting for it to resume. Instead we have P.O.O.L (People of OpenLife) which DOES manage to have two meetings a week. Is it the same? No. But for some people it works.

Currency, groups and permissions -- all to be fixed "soon" are not implemented. Indeed, they seem further away than when I moved to Fantastic -- or that may just be my more realistic point of view. We were told in November that currency would be online and functional around mid December. It is now the end of January and the next scheduled roll-out is for the end of February ( See this article. )

The article states in part: Steve says that this was decided after a careful consideration: “We found the general consensus amongst users is they didn’t want the implementation of credits to affect the goodwill amongst the grid. One of the mechanisms in place to keep the balance will be the exchange of credits for real dollars only being available to region owners.”

I guess I've missed something along they way or this decision was made long before I came, but there has been a lot of discussion -- as early as November -- about the landowner only clause. I can't say I felt it was "a general consensus" by any means.

It doesn't take too long a stay in Openlife to become aware that things simply don't move as fast as planned / promised / possible. So most of us aren't expecting the currency, groups and permissions to be functional by this next announced target date.

All that is really OK. Those of us here understand it. But what about the people newly joining?

When I came during the first rush ( late October - early November), it took a few days to a few weeks to get your mainland or private cluster land. Most of us assumed the delay was because of the huge influx of people. Hence that 24 hours after set up confirmation note was not correct.

Note: I had a screenshot here, but decided it might be against the TOU to use it, so your just going to have to trust me on this one or go to THIS page.

PCs are still often taking a month to deliver (this from numerous forum posts). 24 hours in indeed a pipe dream. People ARE willing to wait patiently, but not when they are given incorrect information. I can't tell you how many times I have answered a query with the theme of "so sorry but that 24 hours still on the website is incorrect and it is taking up to a month. Please be patient. Yes, they need to change that graphic."

Some people came to Openlife because of the 3D mesh avatars that will supposedly be integrated. That keeps getting pushed back also. There are a lot of things that need to be worked on. There is only so much time in a day and so much knowledge in a mind. There are new devs in the new China office now and hopefully that will spur thing along.

Meanwhile it is good to remember that things move more slowly than "promised", so adjusting your plans with that in mind will lead to YOUR greater stability :D

No Guarantees

2009-01-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

The big news on the street is that Linden Labs bought both OnRez and XStreetSL -- the two online shopping experiences for Phil's place. Samara at Phil's will have one new prim for her 512 soon as OnRez will be closing down and her OnRez box can be deleted.

So what does this have to do with Openlife? Maybe not much. Maybe a lot. People are wondering if Linden Labs might buy out Openlife to stop any future competition. Is this a possibility? Hard to say. Would it be a bad thing? For all the folks coming to Openlife to get away from "Linden control" it certainly would be.

If we spin out some possible scenarios we see that this certainly could happen. We have no TOS in Openlife -- a topic I covered with way too much text and an absence of pretty pictures some time ago. The TOS question is being revisited on the blogs and forums. So, there is no "I promise not to sell out" clause anywhere (wink). People who have purchased clusters at a fair number of dollars are the ones with the most to lose of course. And if Linden Labs decided to make Openlife just like SL(R) -- not a stretch by any means -- they could reinforce those nasty prim size limits. If they did that most all of my builds might fall apart or disappear. So content creators could at risk also.

We have no reason to believe a buyout is in the future. We also have no reason to believe it is not. Anything can happen and small companies get swallowed up by big ones every day. In some cases that was the whole point of making the small company in the first place :D

Some folks are a bit trepidacious with this news following on the heels of the 16.2 viewer mandate and the locking down of the grid from Second Inventory. Add to that the vicious personal attacks still going on in the official forums and the atmosphere is a bit grim. Some people still have faith it will all work out -- and it certainly may.

But again, there are no guarantees -- or TOS.

Working the Angles

2009-01-20T15:56:00.001-08:00

We spend our time mostly building on the N-S-E-W axes. (Yep that's the spelling of the plural of axis. I had to look it up to make sure.) We create our prims with those defaults, we pull our prims with the arrow and eventually -- when our builds are finished we rotate that comfy lounge chair into a corner setting.

But sometimes the family of 90 degree angles won't work for us. One of those times is building inside a torus with a sphere floor and cylinder walls :D

Today I added a circular pond of water around the atrium. Yes, you could call it a moat, but that has a fairly unfriendly connotation and that is not the purpose of the water. The purpose is to be surrounded by life and flow and never ending cycles. The energy inside the biosphere is special, but with it comes some building challenges. One is alignment.

It's easy enough to make those corners match and prims meet when you are only moving in one direction at a time, but when you are building at an angle you have to adjust TWO directions in order to accomplish your task. In the photo above, I am aligning the steps to the bridge. The bridge was also built on an angle. In order to get the prims in the correct place, I needed to move the pieces with both the red and green arrows. A lot of back and forth movement and close examination with the camera controls gets the job done.

If you haven't done this and want to try, just set up a small experiment. Make a box and turn it at an angle. Then pull another box from it. Line them up using the red and green arrows a bit at a time. It's a good skill to master.

No More Second Inventory in OL

2009-01-20T10:17:00.001-08:00

The word on the official forum is that Second Inventory no longer works in Openlife.

There were a lot of problems over the weekend including teleports from landmarks crashing sims (reportedly fixed and speedily). Add to that the many versions of viewers that can access the Openlife grid and stability issues went ballistic.

There was even word of Second Inventory crashing sims. Since this isn't a new concept, it is likely so. Perhaps all the new folks coming in this weekend -- and I met some of them on Orientation Island -- were testing the ability of SI to upload. Who knows?

So the Powers That Be have made the choice to only let the newest OL viewers access the grid. This apparently cuts out the ability to upload items using Second Inventory -- the primary way people have been decorating the Openlife landscape :D

This was ALWAYS the plan. It was mentioned in a weekend meeting in November. It is just now coming into fruition. Sakai has stated that he believes in making new goods. He has many plans to further that ideal.

It is a long road to originally designed goods for the OLG. But this was a good first step.

Moderation

2009-01-19T18:58:00.000-08:00

There are some people you don't want in your real life.

There are some people you don't want in your virtual life.

At the moment I am out of the maelstrom, but others are still in the whirlpool. Some have left the forums, some have left Openlife. None of this is good.

There are personality conflicts -- and there is overt evil. I have had brushes with both. I have done well. My fear is that others will not.

At Phil's place long ago there was a saying about people with "no payment info on file". You never knew if it was a second, seventh or seventieth persona of someone. When someone uses alts to further their ego, ranking or esteem it is sad. Sad for all of us.

I hate to admit it, but I am now in the beware of new folks without land category. I will treat them politely and answer their questions, but they will need to prove themselves to me. There are too many people in the world who are not what they seem.

Disturbingly so.

I set a few things in motion today which may help solve some of our world's current problems. May they take root. May they hold.

Knock Three Times and Ask for Joe

2009-01-18T17:10:00.001-08:00

It's not often that something with so much potential to cause harm turns out to be so great. I've never been much for secret societies. I would never have done well in the ivy league under the cloak of darkness.

But we are having so much fun! Not everyone is under the spell of our forum guard. Some people like their freedom, their ideas, the belief that they can HAVE their own beliefs without instantaneous and often unwarranted attacks. Some people play the game. Others do not.

Sorry, but you can't just join the club -- and yes, of course it has a name, but you can't know that either. Just like those cloak of darkness tribunals, you have to earn your right to be here. If you have that right, let one of us know. If you have that right, you KNOW who we are. And we are quite a few so you should be able to find us easily.

Knock three times and ask for Joe. You already know the secret password.

Week in Review

2009-01-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

Well it is only Monday but it seems like awhile I did this, so let's review.

Notes to Self:

The update while not great, wasn't as bad as it could have been; I did get a lot of tutorials done. The sim was working OK this afternoon. I didn't TP however.
People are using the tutorials and writing thank you notes.
Blog traffic is up .
I got to work on the biosphere and do some art.
I survived the onslought of attacks from the ****s and came away knowing that the best way to keep my happiness level up is to simply NOT to read any of their posts. That is working wonderfully and amazingly not difficult at all. And two plus months of attacks is enough.
My friends list of people I actually AM friends with is growing.
And the soap opera that is Openlife is definitely entertaining -- sometimes in a comedy of absurdness.

Woot!

Earthy Art

2009-01-18T15:10:00.001-08:00

When my frustration level gets too high, art is a good way for me to unwind. So while waiting for Fantastic to come back online today, I started a new series of 2D art to go with a large sculpture I did some time ago. The new series is called "Earthscapes" and will be in these same colors.

Always good to create in a different way.

Biosphere Stage 2

2009-01-18T14:19:00.000-08:00

I worked on the inside of the biosphere today which was a lot of fun. I am very happy with the corridor floors which are layered. I may make some special textures with shadows and light to add to that later, but for now it is fine.

The corridor beyond the doors is very wide and suitable for a variety of uses. I haven't decided really what they might be, but I'll figure that out.

The observation pod is close to finished. The new teleporter needs to be installed and tested, but with teleports still causing crashes, the actual use most likely won't be happening soon.

Until then I have the dome up above open and I can of course move the glass globe down if needed.

The biosphere was purposefully placed at a low altitude so there would be more atmosphere. It seemed fairly boring up really high. That may change of course, but for now, I like the clouds and the sun. You can see the ground below and the sky is fairly clear of building platforms at the level I am on.

There are lounge chairs with animations in the observation pod. The stars are lovely at night. The building platform will not be in evidence when I am done of course.

Actually I have a pretty cool plan for the area around the biosphere. Will see if the building tools and I can get it accomplished -- with the help of my graphics program and some particle scripts.

That may be in the works for tomorrow -- or not.

It was good to get back to Fantastic after almost two days. The sandbox is good but there is only so much you can do there. And there is always the chance that you won't be able to get back to retrieve your build if you crash. Linking is handy for partial builds, we know that -- but not so good HERE yet.

10-10-10 Unknown

2009-01-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

10-10-10 Unknown is getting to be a way too familiar destination these days.

I got into Fantastic for a very few minutes last night and put out the ice cream cone but forgot the lamp. Since no one can get to Fantastic -- in theory -- it matters not :D

Scripts and animations, at least in the furniture, were working at that brief moment in time so that is a plus. I sent in another "can't access" support ticket, so maybe in awhile I can work on the biosphere. One can hope. Landmarks appear to be breaking regions when used to teleport. I haven't given out many landmarks but people can of course make their own, so that might be part of the problem. Popularity has its costs.

Yesterday was an odd day in many respects. I either spent it completely alone on the sandbox or amidst a knot of people at orientation island. I did manage to help a few new folks while I was there and give away some skins and shapes. So that was something. They were THRILLED to see people as they usually ported into the serene palm trees and no humanity.

I can't remember seeing any "Friend A is Online" type messages at all yesterday when there were tons before. So either friends is broken again or people simply gave up. I have to admit it was a lot of work just to get to a sandbox.

So perhaps a day off which is OK. I have other things to do after all.

And that's the way it was in mid January on the frontier :D

Building 107: Ice Cream Cone

2009-01-17T18:09:00.000-08:00

Building 107: Ice Cream Cone

Learn about sculpted prims, patterned textures, the eyedropper tool and attaching objects to your avatar.

Building 106: Simple Lamp

2009-01-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

Learn about tubes, the lighting feature and stretching

Building 106: Simple Lamp

Weekends and Dreams

2009-01-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

I finally got back into Fantastic this morning via Openlife Island. Server has been replaced it seems but scripts are down. So I hope to do a tutorial on the sandbox. We'll see how that works.

Happily it is a new day after a great night of dreams that included a cute and charming guy, French pastries and gardens. It doesn't get much better than that. The Universe can be very thoughtful at times.

Thanks to all the folks that sent IMs and PMs about the latest forum attacks -- and those that actually wrote to the forum too of course :D. I'm simply not reading posts by the triad. That solves things for me. I do appreciate your kind thoughts however. No need to stew about it all. I am not.

Onward with the day. Go forth and create!

Free Store

2009-01-16T12:28:00.001-08:00

I got to thinking that I had made items for the building tutorials that could be of use to people. Having a copy of the finished item might help those that are building. And even for those that don't care to learn -- some simple furniture might be just what they need for their first apartment or home.

So, I turned one of the village shops into FIRST STEPS free store. Right now it has the five items that are in the tutorials as well as the clothes for women.

Find the shop at FANTASTIC 233, 69, 81.

I will be adding tutorial builds to the shop as they come available. Please enjoy!

Building 105: Simple Table

2009-01-15T11:48:00.000-08:00

Learn about camera controls, texture rotation and multiple copying.

Building 105: Simple Table

The Causal Arrow Of Time

2009-01-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

Within each moment a future is born -- whether real or virtual. We can glimpse the probable future. We can plan. We can hope. But we are not the only one in charge.

Other forces, other entities push at our own moment in time and the unfolding is sometimes what we never expected -- what we never dreamed.

It is almost impossible to say where you and I and our world will be in a year from now-- in a decade. We can stretch our minds beyond their current grasp and hope to touch a bit of reality, but it often fades into the wind.

So best not to plan. Best to let the future simply unfold.

Did You Know?

2009-01-13T15:10:00.000-08:00

I am not a video embedder. In fact, this is my very first. So that tells you how impressed I was with both the message and the medium. Imagine that in the not terribly distant future, things that we only have in our virtual worlds may become part of our real life ones.

There is so much happening. We probably think we are paying attention, but I bet you really DIDN'T know :D

Observation Pod

2009-01-12T17:11:00.001-08:00

I only spent about an hour in Openlife today, but during that time I enhanced the observation pod at the bottom of the biosphere. With my accent on night as the theme of the build, I took this photo. The stars are lovely there. Click the picture for a larger view - well of course!

Losses in Space and Time

2009-01-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

So we have established by now that I like obtuse titles for my posts (wink). They DO make sense eventually. You just have to get to the end of the story.

The official Openlife Forums are back up after a week or so of "coming tomorrows". People seem to be happy they have returned. It is one way of keeping connected with those not in your time zone.

I did note that while the old posts are still available, they are NOT a part of the new system. This most likely has a technical reason or two. I can think of several. We also lost three or four days of posts, however and that seems a bit odd. Amidst these posts (and some of the last on the old forum) were ones about inventory and texture losses and permissions that still weren't working even though the rumor mill had them fixed. In my personally prescribed role as record keeper of both the positive and negative growing pains, I find it a bit odd. Just something for thought.

The new forum style is clean and there are certainly some pluses. We have lost rich HTML, links, pics and lots of features however and posting is not at all friendly in Firefox; the code is asp so that figures. Anyway, I will adjust but may not be there as much. After 220 posts in two months on the old board, I have no giant desire to start over. Still, that super-helpful part of me will no doubt kick in and I'll probably be back sometime soon.

I have no intention in playing the "I can post more than you" game though. I've already be queen of some boards. The first time is always the best? Well maybe the most memorable anyway - LOL

Aloneness - The Empty Map

2009-01-11T16:09:00.000-08:00

I don't spend a lot of time gazing at the map of the world, but I was having trouble teleporting and so I thought I would type in the coordinates and see if that helped. It didn't, but in the process I noticed that Nara was EMPTY.

I got Samara into Phil's and contacted Eku there. Long conversation which was private, but she is sadly gone -- at least for awhile. People are coming and going and I suspect that is normal. It's sad to see people that you are used to talking with leave. Even if you aren't the very best of friends, they are part of your virtual landscape.

Take away the people and the world isn't very exciting. Take away the trees and the vista is oftentimes harsh. Take away the oceans and rivers and there is no blue to meet the sky. We are all a part of the world. It hurts to lose a piece.

Retro Heaven

2009-01-11T12:24:00.000-08:00

Whether you remember the 60s or have only seen the decade portrayed in the movies, the colors can drag you in. I made some meditation pods today -- shiny and sleek on the outside with a n post modern feel -- and immersing on the inside. The patterns of course MOVE; that is the point after all. They are a good place to escape and be with yourself.

A Rainbow of Colors

2009-01-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

Building Tip:

Once your have your items made -- be it a flower, a chair or a bracelet -- it's fairly simple to make a variety of versions of the product. Even it you have made items for yourself, it's nice to have things in a rainbow of colors and textures. Items such as furniture that is not attached to your avatar is quite easy, but the act of attaching makes it a little more complex. Here are some hints. NOTE: There are other methods to do this, but I have had parts of items disappear or lose their attachment orientations using them. So this is one way -- and one that I have not had any issues with :D

Make a copy of the item you want to change. Rename it to its new name. So, for example, "Gold Bangle Bracelet Jade" would become "Gold Bangle Bracelet Rose Quartz".

Attach the new item. Since you have made a copy of presumably the already fitted item, you should be able to just choose WEAR and have the prims attach in the correct spots.

With the Build menu open, choose Select Textures in the Texture Pane. Then carefully click on each piece you want to change to a different texture or color -- holding down the shift key. In this case I wanted to change the texture on each of the 20 bead colors in the bracelet.

Camera controls are needed here and it may take you days (weeks - months) to get REALLY comfortable with the panning around. My suggestion is to start out with something simpler than 20 beads attached to an avatar's arm :D.

When you have ALL the prims you want to change to ONE specific color and/or texture, go to the texture window and choose the new tga or png from your inventory. You can also open (or upload) a texture and drag it onto the texture window in the build menu.

With the texture changed, detach the item and then wear it again. This let's you test that all is OK and "sticking". Beware that textures can revert to the old pattern now and then. This is not an Opensim problem per se as it happens at Phil's also. I haven't seen it happen in OL yet, but it probably will, so be prepared for one bead turning back to it's old color for example.

Inventory Tip:

An odd thing happened to me today that I want to pass on. I had just finished filing about 200 or so textures and 20 products in appropriate folders in my inventory. The sim abruptly crashed; viewer closed, no warning -- you get the idea.

When I got back into world I found those bracelets back in their old spot rather than where I had moved them. Not enough time for the viewer to take note of the change perhaps? Whatever the reason all 200 plus textures were also in my Textures folder rather than "wood", "metal", "misc" etc. So I was sort of bummed.

BUT -- just by accident I found that left clicking on each object or texture put it back in the folder where was supposed to be -- it's planned place in my estimation anyway. THAT was a relief and so cool. So I wanted to pass that along.

NIRVANA

2009-01-09T15:36:00.001-08:00

After my morning flying and building in the great outdoors this morning, I spent a little time in the jewelry store and then went back to the biosphere to build. It's NICE there :D. I made a meditation area (not shown) as well as some mandalas and meditation cushions. They just have a simply pose at the moment. I will be adding other animations as times goes on. The mandalas were great fun. Bright colors and complex patterns. So many choices.

It's both peaceful and seductive walking through your own complex -- even if it is virtual. I remember that feeling from long ago in Gembong. It's been awhile though. It was both exciting and comforting to revisit those emotions as I strolled from Nirvana to the storage room. Yep, I was a very good girl and packed copies away.

Building Big

2009-01-09T15:25:00.001-08:00

There is a certain thrill that the building of giant things gives you. There is a new skill set involved -- or a least a modification. Building a 90 meter environmental pod 600 meters above the ground is not the same as building multi-primed high detailed jewelry. Each experience contains its own reward.

I remember the first time I moved a skybox up into the atmosphere. That must be 2.25 virtual years or so. It was HARD. I did the drag it up and fly a bit deal and managed to get it to 250 meters or somewhere around there. Now we can be at 4000. The air seems a bit thin up there for me though. I like being able to look down at the ground if I choose. So the biosphere is about 600 meters up. Not point in keeping that a secret; it's a bit big to hide.

So I added a bit more this morning. That circular finial at the bottom is actually a viewing pod. From the inside it is clear. It is small and it is tricky to work in there. And, if you notice, I don't feel all that secure working without a net so to speak, so I left my building platform up while I am working. Nice to be able to stand on "terra firma" while gazing up at that huge torus - LOL

Wardrobe Renewals

2009-01-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

It seems like I've been wearing the same outfit for-e-ver. Today I decided I deserved some newness in my life. After refitting all seven or eight colors of Spectator 2 boots, I was really tired of looking at those. So I spent some time in the new biosphere making some new shuz! And I like them. This are based on the Spectator 2s bottoms but have scuplty tops and the thinnest, tiniest trim details (I so love our nanoprim options).

And with new boots, came new clothes. I uploaded textures from the Downtown set including a new coloring of the sweater. With some sculpty cuffs and collar they are tres chic :D

Woo Hoo!

Inventory Safekeeping

2009-01-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

We all hate to lose inventory. I have to admit that people -- at least those that write in the forums -- seem to be working on keeping a better handle on theirs. We can only do so much of course and clothes and shapes and skins and textures are simply not "solid" in our virtual worlds.

What we can do -- and what many are doing now after the December mishap (still possibly rectifiable but personally I have little hope) is to rez our products and keepsakes. Store owners don't really have a problem with this. We have stores after all. We can put our goods out and keep them safe. But sometimes we have personal prims -- things that are not products, things that are simply OURS.

Well, hey. This is our world and we have tons of prims. So, I am doing just what I would do in real life -- and in effect it is giving my apartment a more lived in look. I now have wig stands for hair #1 and #3 (#2 went into database lalaland). I also have some shipping boxes full of odds and ends and today I put out my new boots.

It's fun to see things out and about. And hopefully, it will help keep things a bit safer.

Biosphere Beginnings

2009-01-08T17:21:00.001-08:00

After a productive if boring morning getting the rest of my boots refitted and ALL the vendors filled again -- work courtesy of the December Database Disaster :D -- I really needed a change. I had been thinking about building something in the sky -- something other than a giant building cube - LOL. And, in that quiet place between sleeping and waking I decided I would like to build a biosphere.

In my head I maneuvered prims and cut tori into interesting shapes. Alas, they don't really cut the way I wanted them too. Perhaps someday with Klee's new third cutting option, but not yet. I did manage to get a start however and we'll see where it takes me. The torus is 90 meters by 90 meters and has a glass dome and shiny metal surface. Both insides and out will of course have many more details before I am done.

In truth, I have no real plans for design or use of this space. It feels good though and that is a start. I also noted that you can see the stars through the dome at night. I almost always have my environment turned to day for building, so it was an unusual experience to notice the dark energies. I think I will plan on designing THIS space for the night. It won't be that dark as there will be lights in the halls, particles here and there -- and who knows what else. But I will take note of the night and work with it more than usual.

We'll see.

Note to-from Self :D

2009-01-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

Note from Self: "Thanks for making those signs for Fantastic. Now new folks understand (hopefully) that there is no money -- hence no shopping. Good job!"

Note to Self:

People seem to have come out of their apathy -- or maybe it was just a eery quietness. They want to know about their inventory. Mine is pretty much replaced now except for the SKIRT that I so don't want to make over and will no doubt put off -- and off and off -- and hair #2 which I won't miss much now that I have hair #3 which I really like.

I do think the subtle complaints (now) and the more likely rantings (a bit later) are healthier than passivity. We really only have two main choices in whichever virtual world we reside in. We can stay or we can go.

And, right now and for me -- even on a problematic day -- I am for staying. I haven't built all the things I want to build. I haven't used up those 45,000 prims. I'm not sure that is a true goal and they obviously won't all go on the ground unless I REALLY get into jewelry or hair - LOL. Still, I have some interesting ideas for the higher elevations, so we'll see.

I have always been good about paying attention, knowing when I am "on the path" as I think of it. And even though I sigh from time to time and get discouraged when work disappears, breaks etc. , I still really feel like I am "on the path" and that all of this is good in the very long term picture.

And I, indeed, am a long term gal.

Building 104: Flexi Plants

2009-01-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

Learn to make flexi plants that move gently in the wind.

Building 104: Flexi Plants

Easy Chair Heaven

2009-01-06T11:30:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was a good day with gold stars in both RL and VR. In the Openlife arena I made new easy chairs. These puppies have NINE ANIMATIONS -- that I made of course -- and NO pose balls. You click on the arms to cycle through the animations. I am patting myself on the back here as I am so proud I got the scripting worked out. Will wonders never cease?

They come in regular and tall sizes. I decided not to be sexist cause I've seen some gals that would definitely need the longer limbs version. Right now they come in four colors. Since I can't sell them anyway, I'm moving on to another arena.

Charlie promised to fit my boots for men that were lost in the great database melt down and then I plan to photograph them and get them in vendors AND storage. We can only do what we can do. Then, maybe jewelry or some work on the new store in the village called Nirvana. It's not even noon yet, so I'll see where the day takes me.

Dancin on the Rooftop

2009-01-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

I added a dance floor to the lounge this morning along with more trees and some couple's seating.

It will be fun to make some new dances for Debbie's dance machine. On my list but not too close to the top. I need to get my music working. Since the same settings that were working at Phil's are no longer working there either, I am guessing that the web server is down. Hope that is it. You could actually have several machines with different dances for alternate genres of music. What fun.

This was a good break in the project list of the day! I'll probably add some fantasy lights and more details soon, but this works for now.

Bulding 103: Simple Chair

2009-01-05T09:27:00.001-08:00

Learn to make this simple chair suitable for indoors or outdoors.

Building 103: Simple Chair

NEW + FREE + STUFF

2009-01-04T15:20:00.001-08:00

click for a larger picture

So a LOT of things happened today on my two month anniversary at Fantastic. Long stories are simply long, and I don't really need to remember all the details (mostly I'm just tired and don't want to type forever :D) but the bottom line is that while I will continue NOT to sell things yet in OL no matter how many people would like me too :D -- I am going to give away clothes for gals.

Partly this is because I DO understand how frustrating it can be not to have anything you want to wear. Partly it is because that with permissions still not right and so many things moving so slowly, clothes may not be a product by the time we HAVE products.

Anyway, I've put some of my "second line" goods out for free. These are transfer only. Not my first choice in many ways, but what I decided on in the end. So feel free to stop by -- gals only -- although guys are certainly welcome to come visit.

I do realize that for all practical purposes I have made these almost full perm items. I decided that I can live with that. Don't expect any exclusivity in your apparel -- just a widening of choices. It's been a very long week for most of us on the OLG and some good news and good deeds will brighten the mood a bit. I'm hoping so anyway.

And "D" -- our conversation had a LOT to do with this decision, so I hope you find something you will feel comfortable in. No latex or corsets here :D Go girl!

PS. Please let me know if any items revert back to "New Shirt" form. That happens a lot and certainly NOT my intention.

Two Months in Fantastic

2009-01-04T08:38:00.001-08:00

Statistics:

Prims used: 8460 (up from 4199)
Monetary System: no
Groups: no
Player: R 16-2

In Review:

It's a lot greener in Fantastic this month with more trees and lots of new grass. Only one new building was added -- a Homestyles store. The shoe store is still in the sim, the draw distance can't quite get everything in :D

Most of the month has been spent filling up stores in the village as well as the home and garden store. That is coming along well. I have been working on a bit of everything and not really concentrating on finishing any area.

Yesterday I made a great waterfall environment which I am happy with. My apartment is getting furnished little by little with things I make for it and the other apartments going in various stores. I've turned one of the shop buildings into a store room which I think it quite fun.

New items added this month included light sculpture lights, jewelry (much fun) and a prim florist area. I made couches and chairs and dining room furniture as well as remaking a couple of my best selling items from Phil's. The new models are much better and that works for me. There is the beginning of an art gallery and the start of a lounge on the rooftop at The Art Experience.

I have to say -- just so I'll have an historical record -- that my heart is a bit heavier this anniversary. We had a major database loss a couple of weeks ago, a lot of down time with not to be seen improvements. There may be improvements, but things pretty much seem worse except for the teleporting which may be fixed now. I've had problems I never had before and some of the old hole in the ground issues are very prevalent. This may all get fixed with a patch. I hope so.

So I am working along, perhaps not at a frenzied pace. I found a large problem with permissions today for shapes. I'm not sure if that will be fixed, but I am not making over a couple dozen shapes no matter what kind of great compliments I am getting from window shoppers (wink). Not fun and if someone can make a copy and put their name on it SO easily, there is simply no point.

That's the world of Fantastic at the two month point. Onward.

Waterfalls and Fireflies

2009-01-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

It was a long day on the frontier with textures disappearing and reappearing and way too many caches cleared, gray bodies, missing prims and the like. I did finally get back into my OLD clothes (I really was going to change today, but the asset server had different ideas).

AND I made a lovely waterfall environment. It isn't quite done, but almost. This is a photo taken at night with the glow of the waterlily lamps floating on the water and the fireflies in evidence. It's very peaceful and that is how I wanted to end my day.

It is so fun to look at this and look at my waterfall environment from two years ago. I was SO excited making it and it was very nice for the times, and I sold tons of them. This one, however is leaps and bounds ahead of it. It's nice to know we really do improve.

Tomorrow is my two month anniversary in Fantastic. Yeah!

PS. Note to myself. Make a sign for the shops explaining there really is no money yet and hence the things are not available for purchase. A lot of folks seem to thing that "I" am just not ready (wink). I'm pretty sure I will be when the time comes.

Until then, waterfalls work.

The Grid Came Back ....

2009-01-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

That very afternoon :D

Alas, no returned inventory but it was good to be back. I uploaded about 250 textures -- some new and some to replace those lost. Being a gal who has gone through WAY too many inventory meltdowns the last few months, I carefully packed them away in crates (yes really) as I uploaded them.

That was an ohsosmart thing to do as the grid went down after about an hour -- and with it all my uploads. The good news was that I had them all in the crates and simply clicked and said "Open > Copy to Inventory" and they were back. Others were not so lucky.

So in one sense this is pretty depressing as I have been finding (a chore) and uploading textures that I lost in the last melt down (burp - LSD overdose whatever ) of the asset server / database (who know?). The good news is that my plan to pack everything up in prims for safekeeping seems like it might work. I think I mentioned it before, but here's the drill.

Building Tip:

For texture, clothing, notecards, sounds, animations or whatever that you cannot simply place in world for safekeeping -- rez a BRAND NEW PRIM, texture if your aesthetics keep you from admiring plywood and fill the contents with what you want to keep. A prim seems to be happy to hold about 100 things. More than that may be overkill.

Remember we have almost unlimited prims. You can store these boxes at 1000 meter or at 10,000 meters or like I am in a real life storeroom (how quaint).

Don't copy boxes over; don't use items you have previously made like books or chests etc. That SO didn't work at Phil's so I suspect it would be a problem here too.

That's my tip for the night.

May tomorrow be filled with FUN as I am so tired of this work "stuff".

A Sea of Calm

2009-01-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

It is day three or so of the Openlife Grid being down for update. Our last poke (status) message was a day ago or so. Sakai is listed on chat so he is-- in theory-- still in the building :D

What amazes me about all this is how calm everyone seems to be. Me included. A couple of weeks ago we had a similar downtime. It wasn't as long and there was a loud outcry -- many outcries. The bottom line was a need for better communication and we seem to have that. There were many announcements about the coming update and until yesterday there were poke notices every now and then so the populous new what was going on.

So we asked for better communication, we got it, and we seem to be getting gold stars for patience. Who'd a thunk it? :D

My next tutorial concerns textures so I don't want to do it at Phil's. I'll wait until the grid is up. Meanwhile, it looks like a good day to work on animations maybe.

Openlife Building Tutorials

2009-01-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

These tutorials are meant to be done in order, hence the numbers associated with them. Each builds on skills learned in a previous lesson. They are best viewed in an 800 wide window. If you have a wide screen high resolution monitor you may be able to run them in side by side windows. That is my intention anyway.

Enjoy!

Building 101: Photo Frame

Building 102: Enamel Planter
Building 103: Simple Chair
Building 104: Flexi Plants
Building 105: Simple Table
Building 106: Simple Lamp
Building 107: Ice Cream Cone

Building Tutorials

2008-12-31T17:49:00.001-08:00

I'll be posting building tutorials from time to time during 2009. I made the first and most basic one today while the OLG went through major update. True, it was NOT Made On the OLG, but I suspect the budding builders will forgive me. It was photographed on Phil's beta grid where it is often so calm and peaceful.

I made a new blog for the tutorials as I am guessing many of you wouldn't care about them at all and shouldn't have to scroll through them to get to what you did want to read. So I will post the links here and they will link to the tutorial site. I think that should work well.

I'll be reposting this again tomorrow so that it will show up in 2009, but since I made it this eve, I figured for history's sake, I'd put this up now.

Building 101: Photo Frame

Happy New Year!!!

Endings and Beginnings - Inventory Loss

2008-12-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

Much of life is about ending and beginnings.

I went over to Gembong in Phil's domain today to delete my buildings -- and turn those damn tier post to mute. I had NINE of them writing me once each day with messages both in world and in email. That was definitely too much information even when I was there -- let alone after I had gone. I left a Peace on Earth poster and hunt globe there for the last of the thousands of hunters, but deleted everything else.

It was an eery feeling, that emptiness. I was the second person to buy on this sim well over two years ago. It was empty then too, but empty with promise. Now it may have a second chance at a new beginning, but it may just as easily disappear into the ethers. Only time will tell.

So I am firmly footed in my new world. All bridges burned behind me; a tiny 512 foothold to call home when I am there sorting through textures and scripts and things that might be useful in my new land.

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

Things were smoother in Openlife today. No new inventory appeared so I started uploading once again some textures I knew had vanished.

BUILDING TIP:

For those of you that have never lost a bunch of inventory, including textures, the results are odd. Certainly you realize that things are missing, but in the case of textures, it's hard to tell as we usually have hundreds if not more.

Here's what happens. You click on an object you have made -- looking at the texture tab. You might want to change the texture or simply find out what texture was used so you can use it again. Even though you are LOOKING at the object you made WITH the texture on it, the building tool cannot figure out what the texture is because it is no longer in your inventory. The eyedropper will not work either.

If you recognize the texture and have a copy of it on your hard drive -- assuming it wasn't SO long ago that that computer has gone into the recycle system -- you can upload the texture again. BUT, clicking on the same object will still not show you the texture as the original texture on the object was uploaded at a different time and has a different UUID. So, if you want to try and keep consistent and if you believe that the inventory loss won't happen again (wink) you can retexture with the newly uploaded graphic.

In many ways I am lucky. While I lost a lot of textures, they are all on my hard drive as I had JUST uploaded them. I may end up with copies in some cases, but since uploading is free and I am slightly p*ssed (American not Canadian version of the term), I really couldn't care less. I plan to upload new files and ones I have lost. If they miraculously appear in another week or a month, I'll have copies. It is too hard to work without the tools you need.

Strangely enough -- and I am surprised -- there are very few comments about our still lost inventory on the boards and forums. I can't be the only one missing things. I can't be the only one keeping track of what they uploaded, so why isn't there a bit more frenzy? There was plenty last week and now it is all quiet. That puzzles me in a sociological way and puzzles are good. They keep us thinking.

I did do some building today and will share that along with a project very soon -- tomorrow maybe. But its past my beauty sleep hour and time to retire.

I wish you all sweet dreams.

State of the OLG - End of December

2008-12-29T19:49:00.000-08:00

It's been almost two months since I joined the Openlife grid. Much has improved. Much is still problematic. I wanted to keep a record of the trials and tribulations and the gains. It is the day to day events that become a blur as history moves into the future.

On the plus side:

We can now log in most of the time rather than typing in a huge number of sims trying to get into world -- let alone our sim. A big plus.
The viewer and website are now all on UTC time and there is even a clock on the Poke (status) page so we can see what is going on easily and don't have to convert that time if we don't happen to live naturally on the UTC meridian.
We can IM between sims I am told (I haven't tried this) and we can see if friends are online as long as they are NEW friends (since the implementation) or if we defriended and refriended them :D
We have events on the website.
I'm sure there are other goodies I have forgotten.

On the not so good side:

The lost inventory hasn't all reappeared yet after about a week and a half. Some of mine has however and that is a hopeful sign.
Physics have been iffy again but seem better this eve so keeping fingers crossed.
Asset server issues popped up again today. This will most likely be an ongoing battle. Lots of textures were GRAY, I ended up as a cloud for awhile and inventory items of even yesterday would not rez. Again, more or less OK at the moment. The world is in flux and we are riding the maelstrom.
We don't seem to have an actual Terms of Service and that is still a bit bothersome to me.
Communication is getting better but meetings have been missed, spur of the moment meetings called and generally a blur of what on earth is going on.
EDIT: Much (or at least some) of these problems appear to have been from a faulty server which was replaced the evening of this post and things are much better. I now also know that I am region #163. I am SO proud :D

In world issues:

One of the biggest current problems seems to be that anyone TPing to a sim that happens to be down will most often crash the sim they are in. Since many of the new folks as well as the old don't know this, your region is always in jeopardy of crashing.
Permission problems are still very evident and perhaps more involved that laymen can understand.
Money appears to be down the road as the permissions problems need to be solved before currency (credits) are implimented.

All in the Details

2008-12-29T19:40:00.000-08:00

I'm a big believer in details. A great mountain cabin is a lovely thing, but without that bearskin (fake of course) rug, cozy plaid couch and hot steaming coffee, it is just a building.

So after finishing up the sectionals today and making a few more animations, I decided to work on some details for the decor - accessories shop and of course for ME.

I love magazines as accessories, but most of the ones floating around Phil's were VERY much copyright infringement. I mean you can't just grab a copy of a cover of "Sunset" or "Sailing" or "Cooking Light" and put it on a prim. A no-no for sure. AND, this is a virtual world so we need virtual magazines :D

So, when my DSL folks called to say they were turning me off for a bit too see if they could really get my speed up to the 13mps they promised, I opened up my graphics program and went to work. I got permission from one of my iheartsl.com sisters and took some pics from her prolific blog and made them into magazine covers. So, no, they aren't really OL magazines. That will come later, but they ARE virtual and they are legal. Both things count in my book. They also have very nice back covers if you flip them over and appropriate spines.

So that's the news of today.

In the Hood

2008-12-28T22:28:00.000-08:00

I SO broke my pretty pictures and short text rule in that last post, that while it is important to Openlife residents, I just had to post something short and with a picture or two. So here it is.

What's up in the hood? The hood being my lovely sim of Fantastic :D

I've been working on jewelry the for a couple of days and have a nice assortment in my (Sam's) style. It may be sold someday. It may not, but I'll be well dressed anyway - LOL. That makes four stores in the village with goods. I have a friend who may fill a couple of shops so that will be good.

Also, this week, I have been working on a giant set of sectional pieces. They are made with sculpties and have a large assortment of animations (I so love making those) to choose from. It may look like a movie theater but those are the different pieces that people could mix and match to make a seating area of their choice. They can pick out the animations that work for their size of avatar. There are male, female and unisex animations. Many are subtle as I have found that having too many busy animations in one piece of furniture can be distracting. It works fine if it is just one or two people and you pick the animations to fit your mood, but for a big group, simpler is better.

And this morning I made a lounge on the art gallery rooftop. I had made the rooftop usable all along but had no plans for it until I saw that Debbie T was giving away dance machines to club owners. I am guessing that a lounge will qualify. I hope to add a piano with animation and some fairy type particles in the trees sometime soon. I am not a big party girl but its nice to have a fun place to hang out with friends and other folks that stop by.

And that's what's been happening in the hood.

TOS and the LCO Drama

2008-12-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

I guess I went over to the that double Aquarian anarchist place tonight. I read on the Lindenland fashion feed about Legend City Online stealing a bunch of content and that didn't sit well for me. So I posted the question about Openlife Terms of Service (which seemed lacking and which people had asked about before on different posts and blogs) on the official forum. Luckily, Sakai answered right away and of course I replied to his answer. Here is the reply.

If nothing else, I learned a lot including that no one that was complaining about LL losing ALL OUR STUFF in the inventory had any right to complain as we had somewhere along the line click through on a new TOS (oh my I am guilty too) LOL. So THAT was good to know and I'll pass that along.

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

Sakai Openlife wrote:
Actually Terms for the use of the Openlifegrid.com WebSite & Virtual World have been available since conception and can be found at the footer of every page of this site.

(see down the bottom click terms.) or if you feel like being scrolless ->http://openlifegrid.com/Main/tabid/36/ctl/Terms/Default.aspx

Thanks oh great leader but aren't those mostly the terms of USE for the webpage? I did find those as mentioned above. That looks very much like the "standard" webpage terms of use and it doesn't say anything about Terms of Service which is confusing to a lot of folks and was not where I was sent a month or so ago :D (That could have been in error of course). There is one section that seems to relate to what people are asking about.

Here is the part that seems to relate to the grid and content creator rights if I am correct: (my bold)

MATERIALS PROVIDED TO Openlife Grid OR POSTED AT ANY Openlife Grid WEB SITE & VIRTUAL WORLD

Openlife Grid does not claim ownership of the materials you provide to Openlife Grid (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input or submit to any Openlife Grid Web Site & Virtual World or its associated services (collectively "Submissions"). However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your Submission you are granting Openlife Grid, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses including, without limitation, the rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission; and to publish your name in connection with your Submission.

No compensation will be paid with respect to the use of your Submission, as provided herein. Openlife Grid is under no obligation to post or use any Submission you may provide and may remove any Submission at any time in Openlife Grid's sole discretion.

By posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your Submission you warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to your Submission as described in this section including, without limitation, all the rights necessary for you to provide, post, upload, input or submit the Submissions

If in fact those are the Terms of Services, doesn't it say that you (company) can "take our stuff" which is pretty much what people are worried about ? :D

However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your Submission you are granting Openlife Grid, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses including, without limitation, the rights to:

copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce ...

I am just the designated messenger. People are asking these questions.

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

This is the VERY disturbing text from LCO:

b ) You agree that any content downloaded into or created items in world give Legend City Online automatic rights to use, produce, and or distribute within our services and this content is royalty free, worldwide and carries no balance for fee. Furthermore, you agree that you have the right and are authorized to grant us such content under these conditions).

I think it would be a good idea (IMHO) to have a Terms of SERVICE page separately and, if it still isn't working, to get the link you click on when signing up to go to the appropriate page and not a 404.

I'm not sure that I personally feel a whole lot better after reading that statement. No reflection on you, personally, of course.

Thanks for the superquick reply :D

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

OK. In the interest of really doing my homework (which I try to do), I went back over to Phil's and looked through there PAGES of TOS. Along with a very disturbing paragraph that says, "we can delete you stuff and any time -- HOHO with no recourse by you" (paraphrased), I found THIS:

3.2 You retain copyright and other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create in Second Life, to the extent that you have such rights under applicable law. However, you must make certain representations and warranties, and provide certain license rights, forbearances and indemnification, to Linden Lab and to other users of Second Life.

Users of the Service can create Content on Linden Lab's servers in various forms. Linden Lab acknowledges and agrees that, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you will retain any and all applicable copyright and other intellectual property rights with respect to any Content you create using the Service, to the extent you have such rights under applicable law.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (i) use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service, and (ii) use and reproduce (and to authorize third parties to use and reproduce) any of your Content in any or all media for marketing and/or promotional purposes in connection with the Service, provided that in the event that your Content appears publicly in material under the control of Linden Lab, and you provide written notice to Linden Lab of your desire to discontinue the distribution of such Content in such material (with sufficient specificity to allow Linden Lab, in its sole discretion, to identify the relevant Content and materials), Linden Lab will make commercially reasonable efforts to cease its distribution of such Content following the receipt of such notice, although Linden Lab cannot provide any assurances regarding materials produced or distributed prior to the receipt of such notice; (b) the perpetual and irrevocable right to delete any or all of your Content from Linden Lab's servers and from the Service, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and for any reason or no reason, without any liability of any kind to you or any other party; and (c) a royalty- free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing and/or providing support services in connection with the Service. Further, you agree to grant to Linden Lab a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable right and license to exercise the copyright, publicity, and database rights you have in your account information, including any data or other information generated by your account activity, in any media now known or not currently known, in accordance with our privacy policy as set forth below, including the incorporation by reference of terms posted at http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php.

You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service. You further agree that you will not make any claims against Linden Lab or against other users of the Service based on any allegations that any activities by either of the foregoing within the Service infringe your (or anyone else's) patent rights.

You further understand and agree that: (i) you are solely responsible for understanding all copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret and other intellectual property or other laws that may apply to your Content hereunder; (ii) you are solely responsible for, and Linden Lab will have no liability in connection with, the legal consequences of any actions or failures to act on your part while using the Service, including without limitation any legal consequences relating to your intellectual property rights; and (iii) Linden Lab's acknowledgement hereunder of your intellectual property rights in your Content does not constitute a legal opinion or legal advice, but is intended solely as an expression of Linden Lab's intention not to require users of the Service to forego certain intellectual property rights with respect to Content they create using the Service, subject to the terms of this Agreement.

We all know I'm not in the Phil camp. I closed my half sim main store and sattelites there last week. Their text does seem to be a bit -- clearer?. It is very interesting to note that is says in here too, that if they loose things, too bad. So the people complaining can't really complain as loudly I guess. :D I simply left! LOL

Smiles.

EDIT: Here is the reply to my reply which happened while I was posting this:

i perhaps a little plain english can help here.

Obviously even more than the just the text above the example will be how the provider uses such a disclaimer and that's most likely the real proof in the pudding so to speak.

Openlife Grid does not claim ownership of the materials you provide to Openlife Grid (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input or submit to any Openlife Grid Web Site & Virtual World or its associated services (collectively "Submissions"). However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your Submission you are granting Openlife Grid, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses including, without limitation, the rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission; and to publish your name in connection with your Submission.

I think from the above statement it's important to note the first opener 'we do not claim ownership of the materials you provide'... This is important it's user generated content and needs to be received in that context, including to a non creator.

The second half about things you input or submit let's take the example of a texture is also important... 'copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission'...

Because we need to retransmit this data to other users, ie someone comes into your region and views a texture. First you uploaded it, at that point we did the 'reformat' part of the statement, and stored it in our database, without the other mentions just listed we wouldn't be able to provide it to other users.

I hope that information helps, basically our Terms of Use are pretty vanilla and nothing out of the ordinary, including when compared to almost every website you visit on the web today. We haven't asked for a 3rd mortgage or your 2nd child, just to be able to conduct the world in safe & legal manner.

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

I did get a laugh out of that which was good. Do I feel "safe and secure"? Not so much. This isn't a safe a secure world after all, but it was good to bring it all up and see where things landed. We have it for posterity now. Let's hope it holds.

Community

2008-12-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to make a quick post this evening. People often ask what the difference is on the Openlife grid. Why should they come? What is better than some other grids? You get the idea.

The BIG answer is that the Openlife isn't for everyone. It is new, it is buggy, it is an adventure and you are often ecstatic if you can log in and doubly so if your script engine is actually working.

What is DOES have -- for better or worse -- is a fairly close knit community. It is much like living in a small town. I've always liked small towns and I live in one now. Really small :D What comes along with that is recognizing names from the forums, meetings and casual get togethersl; running into the same people on the sandbox whether you were PLANNING on going to the sandbox or orientation island or not (wink), and knowing your neighbors.

Today I was having trouble with the script engine being down again. This is an ongoing problem for me and Sakai wrote to validate my suspicion that it was "my neighbor". Now I have no idea who that neighbor is, but I know which ones it isn't as their sims stay up when mine crashes - LOL.

The whole script engine scenario doesn't matter all that much. What matters was that the head of the company actually wrote to me. This is not the first time that has happened. While communications are still a problem, there is definitely a more intimate sense of connection to the powers that be and the tech team.

And THAT is one reason why the Openlife is "better".

Being New

2008-12-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

The picture above was taken yesterday when my friend Whyy actually got into world. She looks pretty much like I did when I was stuck in my reoccurring but not me shape a couple of months ago :D That's because I gave her all the gear to get her out of Ruth mode. She will be perusing the freebie places next week I am sure and working on getting her familiar shape back -- a good thing for most of us.

I've been talking to quite a few new folks lately -- people who have just dropped by for whatever reason. Their comments seem to fall into the same categories so I thought I would answer a question or two and clear up some misconceptions for those people reading this that are just -- or thinking of -- coming over.

1. There is no money! It looks like you have money? Yep it does.

That wasn't a sign up bonus though, it was more like a placeholder for when money is turned on and a test amount for those working on the feature. The currency is set up on all the regions now, but there are numerous permissions problems to overcome before it is wise to turn it active. Content creators that didn't know there was a problem would loose control of their designs and that isn't good. So pretend you don't see that $2500 at the top of the screen. On the plus side, uploading is still free, so no need to worry about that $20 coming out of your bank account. It never does.

2. I want to BUY things! I want hair (clothes, shoes, AOs -- the list is lengthy). Can I buy things now? Can I buy things in SL for delivery here? Can I GET stuff?

We all want stuff (well most of us anyway). We are used to a material world in real life and in many cases the "other" grid. You can shop at the freebie stores that abound. It is much like starting over when you were new at Phil's if you remember that. Not a good feeling for many of us. If you are a content creator, you can upload your textures for free and make clothes. If you know how or want to learn how, you can make your own shoes, hair, skins, animations etc.

I am betting that most newcomers fall outside the compulsive creativity realm though. For those folks it is mostly a waiting game. People ARE selling goods in SL for delivery here, but there are major permission problems that they apparently don't know about as their goods are not protected. Mostly it is a waiting game. And it can be a game. Find the best of the freebies or make your own goods if you can.

When I arrived a couple months ago I was desperate for hair. I so wanted some good hair. I also wanted better skin. I ended up making both as well as animations. So now I have three new skills and a nice look. I actually am so happy with the me I am becoming that I am thinking my goal in Openlife might just be to never spend any money. If I can't make it, I can't have it. An interesting plan that I don't expect any of you to follow - LOL.

3. Where can I unpack my freebie stuff?

While a few freebie stores let you unpack at their places, you will most likely need to go to a sandbox region. There are four official sandboxes, Sandbox Island 1, 2, 3 and 4. The are in the Northeast section of the content on the edge by the water. There are many private sandbox areas also, but these change as the landholders change. You can ask around for current places. And remember to clean up your messes :D

That's a start. I'll post more as time goes on.

Welcome to the Openlife Grid!

Lovely Lindens - $$

2008-12-27T08:47:00.000-08:00

After a comment from Mac I decide to see if I could get more info on the misty area of using Lindens for Openlife purchases. I am still waiting on a chat window with Frontier Linden :D It's been about a half an hour now and when I went to try and get another operator in another chat window, I again get Frontier so that wasn't too helpful.

Meanwhile I started reading the headlines of all the support entries under "legal" and "linden dollars" and did find this, which seems to imply that it is OK to use Lindens.

So I thought I would post it here as I doubt I will hang around this support portal much longer (yawn) and since we have lots ofpermissions issues to deal with before it is safe to sell anything (this from Sakai yesterday) it is sort of a moot point.

Anyway, here is some info from the Support Center at LL.

I want to sell real-life items through Second Life.
Consider the following scenario:

Bob Avatar encounters, inworld, a store called CompuBuyPlace selling computer equipment. He finds a kiosk with a picture, taken from real life, of a nice wireless optical mouse, which he decides to buy. The Kiosk asks him to pay L$1,000,000 and supply his real-life address. Bob Avatar pays the million Linden Dollars and enters his address. Sure enough, two weeks later, a box arrives at Bob Avatar's real-life apartment from CompuBuyPlace containing the nice wireless optical mouse.

Can this actually happen?

Nothing in the Terms of Service prohibits this, but you should be aware that Second Life generally isn't designed to be a platform for "real world" business transactions, as Linden Dollars aren't designed as a "currency" or currency substitute. You therefore take these steps at your own peril, including potentially subjecting yourself to potential fraud (such as fraudulent L$ exchange), and subject to any relevant tax, licensing or other laws. Further, Linden Lab doesn't own, operate, or insure third parties like the one described above, and therefore will be unlikely to be able to resolve any disputes that arise. If you have any other questions, you may wish to consult an attorney.

Virtual Dollars

2008-12-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

The theme of using Linden dollars for payment of goods on the Openlife grid has come up a time or two in the last few days. People have contacted me in Phil's domain wanted to know if they could pay me for goods in Lindenland and get delivery in the more Open grid :D

In fact, that was an original plan of mine long before permission issues raised their head. I was then warned by Sakai-- almost two months ago -- that I could be in jeopardy of loosing my account at Phil's if I took Linden dollars in exchange for virtual goods, land, rent etc. Others who had been in Openlife awhile chimed in with the same song and so of course I paid attention.

Some of you coming over to our not ready for prime time grid may have this same plan, so I thought it prudent to warn you. I did a bit of researching on the Linden Labs website and while I did not find any particularly pointed "don't do this" comment, I did find this bit of info:

Linden Dollars represent a limited license right to use a feature of the simulated virtual environment â€” namely the commercial aspects of Second Life. L$ derive value in their ability to be redeemed by other Second Life Residents who have a desire to engage in these commercial activities. L$ will retain their value as long as there are Residents interested in using them.

That quote comes from THIS PAGE.

Now I know people are using Lindens for payments on the Openlife grid. It works. It can be done and I doubt that Phil's sleuths are going to worry about each and every occurrence. Still, if you l have ties in Phil's world that you value, it might make good sense to use Paypal as many others are doing or simply wait until we have our own currency.

Just a thought :D

Prim and Proper

2008-12-23T18:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough day in my real world and now I find the M-W.com (dictionary) is no longer free (sigh). The long list of tiny things going wrong could fill a few screens (well not really but it feels like it). On the PLUS side there was the great hair of the morning :D

I worked in a couple of the shops today adding inventory or props depending on how the currency and permissions issues play out. Either is OK with me I guess. Then late in the afternoon I asked myself what would make me feel BETTER with the day and found that making some jewelry for the heretofore empty cottage would do the trick. It did. It was fun and it was EASY - primarily because of that .001 option in the size parameters. YEAH! BIG YEAH!

So I have three nice pairs of fairly simple loop earrings -- one with amber stones and I'll make some other versions. All that and a couple of coincidences led me to this post. Here's the skinny.

I decided that it would be safer to have items IN world rather than just in my inventory. This from the latest database meltdown which we are still hoping gets rectified. I didn't lose any of my in world objects other than some missing poses in a daybed. So that was good news.

After making up the earrings and placing them on a "black velvet jewelry tray" -- well we can imagine it as that -- I decided some cute little jewelry boxes would add a nice touch to the shop in progress. So, with those .001 measurements ringing in my brain, I made some very delicate boxes. I didn't worry about prims. Prims are not an issue.

Then this eve as I was perusing the fashion feed at Phil's -- an activity that is happening less often these days -- I noticed some VERY cute boxes from Curious Kitty. They were ONE PRIM sculpty boxes for gift giving (or for decoration as I have sold a lot of boxes for that in the past). They are so cute. And then I took a pause and thought, "but prims don't matter here". HOORAY!

So I just wanted to remind myself -- down the road in space and time -- what the thrill of not having to worry about those prims felt like. It felt GOOD!

And now Sam has some earrings to go with her new hair. It will be lots of fun creating jewelry here. I don't really like super delicate things, but I do like some accessories from time to time. And the real world is a better and happier place with Sam (and Samara) happier too. LOL

A Prim at a Time

2008-12-23T09:38:00.001-08:00

My sim was down this morning. Yes, please DO come visit but don't try TPing out as it most often kills the sim. Passing that info around will keep the grid up longer. When you attempt to TP to a sim that isn't online it often kills the region you are in. :D That will change eventually of course. Meanwhile as I waited for restart I worked on some hair.

Girls are vain and most often we are vain about hair! So it's no surprise that our avatars are just as wound up in those shiny locks.

Since I am still missing version 2 of my hair in the inventory meltdown, I decided that a good perk me up would be some nice new and different hair.

I patterned this after a few of my favorite styles. It still isn't flexi and that might be a good thing as flexi and transparency both add to our avatar rendering costs. I do love the color and texture and by the time I was finished I was a happy gal with a new do.

Building tip:

When remaking, adding too, adjusting any complex object I find it works best to do it a prim at a time. So in this project I unlinked the bun (a torus shape I knew I was going to be using a lot on the remake version) and made a copy. I then placed the bun in its new position, made a copy of the already textured prim and changed that new prim to be the next prim in the series. I linked as I went a long -- one at a time or sometimes two or three in series (still linking one prim to the main linked object) as I worked. I took copies often as I was in the sandbox and that is always a bit tricky. I fit the hair as I went along also and then worked on the last saved shape, deleting the old one from the work area.

I have never made hair before and I can't say I love it, but I am happy with my hair. I like the unevenness of the design and it is nice to have something that is definitely unique.

Permissions Issues

2008-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Content Creators - this post is for you. If you are about to join us on the frontier (and we are expecting many of you at the end of the month) then you need to know about current permissions issues. This has been on the forum for weeks now, but as new folks you will likely miss it. It is wonderful to be generous with your goods, but you need to be informed also. I have a few things floating around out there from my first weeks in Openlife. I did mean for them to be gifts. I didn't mean for them to be full perm items :D So - be generous in your new land, but be true to yourselves also.

There is still a very large permissions problem in Openlife. I think the Powers That Be understand it and I know some folks do, but others -- according to the official forums -- are having a problem getting the idea that it IS a problem.

For those of you who do not understand why it is a big deal (and I certainly didn't until I went through all the steps a week or so ago) here is a visual aid. I am a firm believer in visual aids. Going through the motions yourself makes an even bigger impression :D

Step one: Find a non full perm item in your inventory -- one a friend will make up for you for this experiment is most likely best. In this case Sam is putting a pair of pants given to her by a friend into a box. It is a copy only item.

Sam set the box to be Take a Copy by checking the Allow anyone to copy box.

Step 2: Samara logs in (she's the hairless one on the left) and takes a copy of the box. The permissions on the box read (no mod - no transfer). She cannot give this BOX to Sam via profile.

Samara goes to the sandbox and places the box. It is still Take a Copy. She opens the box and gets the pants which still have no mod - no transfer permissions.

Sam and Samara have successfully transferred items that were not meant to be transferred by the original creator. I did check with the creator about this experiment and she said it was fine. The box was removed from the sandbox.

So, in effect, the Take A Copy feature can negate permissions applied by the creator of the item.

I suspect that most of us intend to sell just one item to one person when we make a sale -- not make it available to the whole grid :D Until this is fixed, keeping anything we want to set permissions on is most likely the wisest choice.

From a post by Sakai on Dec 9 in the forums:

The transit of items from non-creator and non-respective permissions will be addressed shortly. -> Note Openlife does not have an in world credits system at this point while there are still permissions issues to address.

I hope this step by step pictorial helped make the problem clear. Again, I think the people that need to fix it, understand. I just know that others are having a time getting the concept and being aware of the consequences.

Cheers.

Windlight Migration

2008-12-22T10:06:00.000-08:00

A brief comment on the forums by Sakai Openlife sent me back to pondering over Windlight settings. I lost all the new ones I had made in the Openlife viewer when I updated to R 16. Hence I was a bit unsure about updating to R 16.2. I thought that I could probably replace the new settings with my old ones, but I still had a lot of settings I hadn't transferred over.

click picture for larger view

WARNING: Always make a backup before you work on computer files. I know you know that :D. I also know we all sometimes get so excited about trying something we forget. If this makes perfect sense to you, then give it a try if you like. If it seems complex, then it would be be better to leave it alone.

Step One: Find your Windlight settings on your computer. Mine were in Second Life (R) but yours could be from another virtual world.

Copy one or more of the files you want to include in your Openlife viewer. In this case I moved Cuba.xml.

click picture for larger view

Step Two: Find the Windlight settings in the Openlife viewer. Paste in one or more of your settings. Note that Cuba is showing up in the list. In my operating system it put the file at the bottom of the list and I had to refresh to see it in its alphabetical place.

Start your Openlife viewer and see that the setting has been added. Yeah! That's lots easier than copying down all the numbers and translating them over.

Note: I have noticed that at least on my computer, the Windlight settings in Openlife do not have the same look as they do in Second Life (R). So you may need to do some slight adjustments to get the look you want.

At the Top - Woot!

2008-12-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note of thanks to all my Openlife supporters -- those that have linked to this blog, those who have RSS feeds of my blog on theirs, those who have sent me personal notes of encouragement and those who have laughed and shaken heads over the virtual dramas and the egos of our fellow avatars.

I never really expected so many people to be reading these words. The posts started primarily as a record so that I could look back in a year or two and remember how things were.

SL2OL has been the number one Openlife blog on Google for two weeks now -- at least every time I checked and that was more often than I would like to admit - LOL. I am sure it won't be number one forever, the web is a fickle place. Still, I will continue to do my best to keep you entertained and I just wanted to take a moment to recognize that you, my readers, are in part responsible for its success.

"Simplifying Location 2 OpenLife" means just that -- if I can give you some hints to make it easier, I will. You can accept them or discard them as you like :D. That is what freely given information is all about.

Look for a new section coming soon.

Inventory Blues - Take 2

2008-12-21T13:11:00.001-08:00

It's been a tough weekend in Openlife. The grid has been down a lot and inventories are rolled back to somewhere around two weeks ago except for textures you were wearing. At least that is how it affected my inventory and those of some folks I checked with. I have lots and lots of newish empty folders, missing textures and the like. In theory it should all be returned in a few days.

Since I still have that very bad taste in my mouth from the inventory purge at Phil's where we all seemed to lose OLDER items, I am keeping my fingers crossed. Meanwhile I can upload again and I have done that already with some things. I do NOT want to have to make that SKIRT over again though and it, of course is gone as it is new.

So.

So.

So.

:D

So what can I (and you) learn from this? One thing that has held through from the other grid is that items rezzed in world were "safer". I have a nice daybed that is named Daybed with Three Animations from Sam's Place. Guess what? It now only has one animation which was the FIRST animation I added. That post link is from the 8th so we have some clue as to the the timing of the meltdown as I added new animations to the daybed the next day. That is about the only thing I found actually wrong of the items in world. So, they definitely did better than my inventory.

Long ago and far away at Phil's, I placed copies of all my worldly goods as well as textures etc in safekeeping objects. This, I think, was a fairly good idea. What I DIDN'T understand was that the database would replace my new and improved objects (say a book I had made earlier and then filled with goodies) with the original book - an EMPTY one. So that didn't work there. What I did discover is that on the one safe-keeper object I made NEW, the objects remained.

Building tip:

So my new plan which may again do me no good in the end is to place my backups in brand new just created boxes rezzed one at a time. I can't see any better plan. Objects gone from my database at Phil's (and here so far) are the same objects missing in friends inventories. So my best guess is that my menorahs for example have left Phil's forever and are not to be seen again unless someone had a copy out on a shelf in October. Ya never know.

On the plus side (and there usually is one if you look hard enough for it) I had all my new boots out on stands in the shoe store. So I HAD them. They unfortunately are no longer "wear to fit" and so they had to be refitted. The invisiprims also mysteriously shrank in width so didn't cover the whole shoe. Have NO clue there and will need to check all the others when (oh please) they come back.

So not a fun weekend here on the frontier but hopefully it will all be a faint memory soon and our inventories will be returned in good shape. We can only hope.

I'd really like my updated hair back. It took me a LONG time :D

Content Creation - Workarounds

2008-12-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

I decided to spend some time at the Openlife wiki today since Sakai asked people to work on it. It is indeed VERY empty. So I am going to repost what I add as time goes on and it will also be a permanent Top Post link at my site. Hope you find it helpful.

What is content creation?

The Openlife grid starts as a empty landscape. It is the ability of the individual to create content that makes the world we see. Content includes buildings made of prims (primitive shapes) and textured with graphics files, as well as your avatar's skin, hair, clothes and accessories. Without content creators, we would all be GRAY shapes.

Any OLG citizen can be a content creator. To explore building with prims, you can work in one of the many sandbox regions. Openlife building tools include the ability to make 100 meter x 100 meter x 100 meter objects as well as micropims down to .001 meters. The different primitive shapes as well as the tools (profile cut, dimple, shear etc.)can be used to make an almost infinite variety of complex objects. Shapes can also be made using sculpt maps.

The original primitives take on the appearance of plywood when you are building. Textures can be added during the building process or on completion of the object. You can edit each prim as a whole, a group of prims together, or you can choose Select Texture from the list of options, click on one surface of a prim and texture JUST that side. You can set the repeats of textures and the direction. There are other choices such as Shine and features such as Light and Flexibility. There are a variety of already uploaded textures in the Library of each avatar's Inventory.

The clothes in Openlife as well as the skin your avatar wears are also made of textures that have been uploaded to the server. Once a graphics file (tga or png) is uploaded, it resides in the uploading avatar's inventory. These files can be shared with others or kept for personal use. The graphics can be made into skin or clothes by dragging textures into the appropriate slot of the Appearance window.

Current Building Issues and Workarounds

The Openlife Grid is in development stage. Current (end Q4 - 2008) building issues include:

Cannot link already linked groups of prims

Linking groups of already linked prims can give disastrous results. Workaround: Link at the very end of your building. If you need to add an already linked object to a more complex object your can use the Edit Linked Parts feature and unlink the object ONE PRIM at a time. The alternative to that operation would be to ADD the new prims to the already grouped object ONE at a time.

Cannot safely UNLINK a linked object

Unlinking a object can cause what builders here call exploding prims. This seems to happen most often with rotated objects and torus shapes. A typical group object made of boxes and set to 0 -90 -180-270 degrees will often unlink with no problems. Workaround: Unlink ONE prim at a time. Be sure before unlinking that you have a BACKUP of the object.

The Undo (Ctrl + Z) operation is not consistent

While Ctrl + Z works well to return a prim to its original position in some cases, it can also - at times - change the rotation of the object as well as simply NOT returning it to its former position. Be prepared for unusual results. Be sure you have a BACKUP.

Editing individual linked prims sometimes gives unexpected results

(Note: this appears to be getting much better :D) Editing linked prims - especially moving them - has been problematic. One result can be the disappearance of the other objects of the set while keeping the edit prim only. Editing textures currently works fine. Editing textures on several prims at once works fine. Always make your edits with a BACKUP.

Cannot take a coalesced object into inventory and have it remain together

Not all LSL scripts are implemented. Some scripting will cause the region to crash.

The Art of Listening

2008-12-17T14:28:00.000-08:00

I've always been a believer in listening to the hints of the Universe -- those quiet whispers that send you along a new path, through a new landscape. I've always believed that if you are careless and don't listen to the subtle song, a louder one appears. Still don't listen? I, personally, have always thought of the occurrence as the Universal Mallet -- somewhat like that famous computer cartoon with the duck beating his computer to death.

Well I obviously have failed to listen to the muses as that damn mallet appeared a few times over the last few days. Way too much drama for the trinity I try to keep together -- body, mind and spirit. Details don't matter. They rarely are the important part of the story. The END result is that I have abandoned my altruistic plan of free spaces. I will share with the people I know, love or at least trust :D and give up any Utopian ideals -- sadly but wisely.

So, this leaves me with many prims to use up on my own -- a daunting but not troublesome concept. It also leaves me with a fairly empty gallery. I have some more friends that may come over sometime soon, but OL hasn't made it far enough on their personal primetime meters. So until then, the Art Experience is mostly mine to fill.

The rest of the story is that yesterday, after more drama and frustration, I went to my graphics program and made some "art". Now only of few of my readers -- those who know who I really am -- are aware that long ago and far away in a land called the Real World, I was a fairly prominent and well respected artist. I gave that up almost a decade ago, not really by plan, but because of a lack of inspiration. So sitting down -- even at the computer -- to make virtual art was a fairly big step for me. One I never really expected to revisit.

It started slowly with an echo of some of my older works and by the time I finished the last piece in the series, I was actually happy with what I had created. I added a poetic artist's statement -- also an echo of other times.

So thank you Universe for bringing out the big guns. I appreciate it.

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

My new plan (assuming the Universe is in agreement) is to bypass the drama and the politics in OL much as I do in RL, to build with abandon and joy, to not worry about currency, platforms, mesh avatars and what may or may not be coming down the road. As I told my OL neighbor this morning, even if things never go anywhere, $60 a month is pretty cheap enjoyment.

Loop Rez - Where ARE You?

2008-12-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's the day after the update and some things are OK and others? Not so much. We'll see what we see. My script engine is still down. Seems like many are so most likely they all need to be fixed. I lost one texture on one prim which I fixed but no other major damage that I can see. My ugly fall trees came back AGAIN and I deleted them from the trash this time. Eventually I'll get rid of them I guess.

The borders are a bit spongy -- not dropping down but walking into jello spongy. Thing seem to be loading slower but that could be a cache issue. We'll see when I return. MEANWHILE, it's been a busy day.

I tackled prims skirts today. I've been dreading it, but it had to be done -- or rephotograph a lot of vendors and that wasn't high on my priority list either. So I got Samara high in the air in Gembong and Sam high in the air in Fantastic and they remade a skirt.

Now for some reason I thought that being at 100 X, Y an Z would make things easier. It didn't. So all you really need to do when copying over something complex is be at the SAME coordinates in both worlds. It all worked fine and honestly since it took me forever to get the Loop Rez skirt in the first place I actually took less time with this I think :D

Building Tip:

When copying over a complex object that has to be EXACT from one world to another, simply go to the same x,y,z positions in a sim (sandboxes on either end or both would work fine) and make the item over piece by piece matching ALL the fields. Linking with the same root prim is probably optional but in the case of a skirt, important as the root prim has to do with alignment when fitting.

And SO, Sam (and Samara) now have skirts! Well honestly they probably don't care much as neither are skirt gals.

I also made two basic (no scripts) photo studios and put them in the animations shop. And I made the first vendor for the poses. Since I'm working with the "less scripting is better" ethic, I have named each pose by number and people will be able to purchase from a numbered vendor. This of course assumes that script engines are up so that they can cycle through the poses.

I just couldn't make myself do the posters with ALL the poses in one. They always have seemed distracting to me -- too much on one poster. So my plan is to pick out a couple of my favorites from the set and highlight those. We'll see if that is practical.

Anyway I'm happy with how all of today's projects turned out.

I also dismantled my skybox in Gembong and took most of my personal items back into inventory. So moving on is definitely in the wind.

Update Blues

2008-12-14T22:02:00.000-08:00

The Openlife major update has been going on what seems like forever, but I think is has only been three days. Three days -- if we look at the day / night cycles of virtual worlds -- can be closer to 18 in "real" time. Well, maybe not, but it sometimes it seems that way. Time definitely moves at a different rate.

I was lucky in many respects as my sim was up until yesterday afternoon. It came back online this evening. So gone for over a day. Still, I got onto the sandbox a few times and made some outdoor furniture (all but the scripts), an upgrade to my hair (yeah), some animations and the start of a fantasy lounger that is very popular at Phil's place. So I've done enough for the day.

The frustration level is very high. Not so much with me as I have been busy closing down my shop at Phil's and doing those bits and pieces of building when I could get into Openlife, but for people who I expect are firmly entrenched in business in their physical worlds. They believe that OLG is commercial -- and it is. But it is an organization that is stretched and working hard to keep the priority list at bay. It doesn't take a seer to figure that out.

So a lot of fist shaking is going on. I can't imagine it will do any good. If I was on the other side of the computer screen (and world) I wouldn't be worrying too much about the people who can't buy into the ideology of patience -- especially when there is an overabundance of others waiting to take any vacated places. The people that can cope, breathe deeply, relax rather than rant, will be the ones to make it through the transitions of the next year. The others will most likely disappear with their fists in the air -- puzzled that their complaints and demands didn't get them very far.

There is a lot of speculation about what will happen when the next wave of "SL refugees" come to the OLG. The grid isn't ready for more folks. I think most people would agree with that statement. There are still plenty of people waiting for their clusters to emerge from the endless depths of blue. Still, the new people will come, unprepared for life on the frontier.

It should be interesting.

Shops for Free

2008-12-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

The Village Shops at Sam's Place are about ready. OLG is not however (big wink). Still it's looking pretty lonely on those streets and I'd like to see some STUFF in there. A whole sim is a lot to fill when you are building from scratch and there are only so many hours of the day.

SOOOOOOOOO - I woke up this morning in my corporeal world wondering what a plan might be. People are dropping in daily and asking me when they can buy things. This is a good sign I think and hopefully they will return when they CAN buy -- when permissions and credits are in place. Groups too -- / me keeping fingers crossed.

So here is my temporary offer for anyone who is feeling a bit antsy and wants to get their feet wet in Openlife. You don't have to be NEW, but you do need to be "landless" :D

There are eleven village shops and three village apartments. Most of them are completed and available for occupants. Since this is MAINLAND (a good thing in the long run I think but there are few land tools and no groups right now) even placing objects can be problematic. STILL, letting people see what you will be selling or offering when the time comes seems like a win win situation.

So until mainland rentals become a viable option, I am offering shop spaces as well as two apartments for free. Free is good :D

Here is how it works.

Come to the FANTASTIC sim of FANTASTIC and look around the village shops. There are several styles, some larger than others, some with display windows, some with access to the road to Nara. There are currently two shops that have apartments above. My plan is to rent these to the same people so you live above your work. They are furnished. You can reserve -- so to speak -- your future spot, have your sign out and a few empty vendors showing the goods you will sell. This will let people that are roaming around bookmark your shop so that they can find it when they CAN shop.

About the future of the Village Shops:

When the shops become viable, I plan to rent them at a medium to low market rate. It is not my intent to make a bunch of money on these, I want the shops there for ambiance as much as anything. I believe in small footprints on the land -- in real life as well as virtual. So Fantastic will only have basic scripting as Openlife grows. This is not a spot for high powered, complex goods. Think of it AS a village. Small, intimate, friendly and hopefully accessible.

Since prims are not a huge issue here, I am thinking that 400 per shop should suffice. So, you could put out a real example of a sculpty shoe, but not that 350 prim necklace :D. The apartments (there will eventually be three available) are furnished but those renting the shop - apartment duo will get extra prims for their own accessories. The rates for those duo rentals will be double the shop only rentals.

Currently, I would really like people who want these shops to be making goods IN Openlife (not imports). That is just part of my ethic and it may not work, but priority will certainly be given to those people.

Beauty of Art

2008-12-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

It was a slooooooow day in OL for me. Fantastic was unavailable for 18 hours (yes, I WAS counting) -- the first time that had happened in over a week. I did put some clothes together, hence my new garb. You can do that anywhere, but it is so boring. Alright, necessary, but STILL boring.

As I got toward my personal dinner hour, the way was made clear (yeah) and I got the rest of Charlie's work placed in the gallery. Charles is primarily a sculptor, but he didn't get any work accomplished today either, so those works will get added in the near future. There is another person joining soon and yes, of course there is still LOTS of free art space available. It will remain free until after both Groups and Currency are available, so if you are an artist in need of a venue, see this updated post at OLX with the newest info.

PS. While I absolutely admire Charles, the main reason I am sitting on the ground and looking up adoringly is that my feet were a foot or more above the floor while his were IN it. Not a good photo op - LOL.

Full Perms Ripoffs

2008-12-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

It all started with HAIR! Well, all is vanity so no big surprise there.

A few days ago I ended up on the Openlife Orientation Island -- one of those you can't there from here so we'll put you THERE adventures. Other well dress (hence presumably not new) folks were chatting when I arrived --no doubt also dropped off in an unplanned escapade.

The first thing I noticed was that some of their last names were Linden (hmm). The second thing I noticed was that two of the women had Samara's other grid trademark hair. Be still my beating heart. Was my HAIR available - for trade, bribery, gray market Lindens ( who cared ) -- on the OLG?

I waffled between major happy dancing and scepticism. The hair had most likely been brought into world with Second Inventory software. That should mean that the owner was the maker, but we all know that isn't always the case. Looking at the profiles of the women in question didn't convince me all was legit. They were very ODD profiles for the OLG going on about there great stores in the other grid.

After a couple of days I actually got around to writing the maker of the hair. I had corresponded with her over the years but we really don't know each other. It turns out sadly that the hair in question was ripped about a year ago -- copybots gone mad -- and then distributed as full perms around and about. This was DEPRESSING. Not only are people bringing in their own goods with Second Inventory, they are bringing in stolen goods. And, on a personal note, the Samara at Phil's is wearing stolen hair even if she paid the originator for her copy. Not good.

Anyone who has read many of my posts, know I am not a fan of Second Inventory. I believe starting over is a good thing. So Sam and Samara will live in their homemade hair for awhile longer and eventually get something grand from an OLG maker. That's my plan.

Meanwhile, I hope the permissions problems get rectified soon so we can offer homemade OLG items to both new folks and old timers.

Drama Be Damned :D

2008-12-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

So, I finally hit a wall over all the complaining of the SL folks that are joining Openlife and I wrote this post as an answer to people who somehow seemed to believe we, in Openlife, should be on SL time. I will either be hated or applauded for this, and honestly I don't care. It amazes me sometimes that people just don't seem to "get it". Sure that is MY perspective. Doesn't need to be yours. Here is my reply:

OK. I'm going to play "devil's advocate" here simply because I seem to be in a feisty mood this eve and also because people stop by my sim and seem to think I SHOULD say what I think _ LOL. So, here it is. No apologies.

WHY should we think that the folks on the OpenlifeGrid actually WANT us SL folks? I am THRILLED they took me. I am HAPPY I got here before the real rush. I am GRATEFUL to be here at the beginning when things are happening and history is beging made.

WHY CAN'T WE JUST LET THINGS HAPPEN AND BE HAPPY WITH THAT?!?!? Yes, I know I am yelling. I honestly get pretty tired of SL people (and yes I am one in practice if not in spirit) giving their lists of wants/needs/must haves/demands. This was NOT our world from the beginning. WE JOINED IT! We can make a difference, certainly, but the world doesn't need to CHANGE for us -- we should adapt to it.

That's my belief. Others can have their own. Those who stay will make the difference.

The Cobbler's Bench

2008-12-11T11:29:00.001-08:00

My script engine is still broken but INVISPRIMS are working (yeah) and I wore my heels for over an hour with no disappearing feet (bigger yeah). So what to do today? Make a new version of my favorite boots.

Now I am not the best builder out there. I'm not big on bells and whistles and not a huge fan of sculpties that sometimes take forever to turn into something, so my shoes are fairly simple. I try to pay attention to the details and to the FITTING which is what that picture above is showing you.

Building Tip:

Making shoes is a bit tricky on any world. Prims don't exactly line up as you wish they might and you have to balance strategic details with aesthetics. When you DO get your shoes finished -- be they the simplest sandals or the most complex buckle boots, you need to FIT them. Not only do you need to fit them for yourself, if you are selling them or giving them away -- you need to fit them so others can wear them easily.

I can't tell you how many shoes I have tried on that one foot fit perfectly and the other was WAY off. There is no big mystery there. The left foot simply isn't harder to fit than the right. The designer most likely got tired of fiddling. So fit that first color of a style, go away a day, check it again and make sure it is as good as it can get and THEN make copies in other colors. No point in having to fix six pairs of shoes when you could just get the first one REALLY right :D

On the PLUS side, it seems like attachments come much closer to a real fit in Openlife than on Phil's grid. So you don't have to rotate forever to get your shoe in the general area of your foot. This is a BIG help and my thanks go out to whoever fixed that.

On the minus side, our pose stands here (and even the poses in the library) don't seem to work all that well -- or at all. I've made myself a Tpose of sorts and uploaded my own in order to fit shoes, You CAN fit them when you are just standing but that is pretty tricky and you need to be up for a CHALLENGE :D

See that piece of foot showing through the one shoe? That is what you need to watch out for. Also your foot coming through the bottom of a sandal when there is no invisiprim -- or the invisiprims not covering all of the foot you want to disappear. You also need to watch that the soles of the shoes line up with the floor and that during your maneuvering you have kept the bottoms level -- in ALL directions.

AND speaking of invisiprims, if you have problems getting the server to accept the invisiprim code, you can take a pair of shoes where the script did work (an on a good day issue) unlink it from the finished shoe and reshape it to your new shoe. Works well and gets your shoes up and running.

Meanwhile I have a whole new Fall outfit on with BOOTS and that makes me feel good!

The State of the Openlife Nation - Dec 10

2008-12-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

As always I prefice this with the disclaimer that I am not in the know. I have no inside track. I only have the posts and the blogs and the chats and such to go by. So no CREDIBILITY here, but perhaps a pulse of the nation sort of thing :D

Tomorrow is a server update - 4pm UTC

This update will bring all regions to the new 3DXServer 0.6.8 software. It includes a long list of bug fixes and improvements (to be released after update).

So hopefully we will all be happily surprised with more stability and things working that did not work before. If there is indeed a list, I will try and find it and post it here.

The "Take a Copy" permissions problem noted in this forum post seems to be a continuing problem for the moment. An important part of Sakai's message includes the note that:

The transit of items from non-creator and non-respective permissions will be addressed shortly. -> Note Openlife does not have an in world credits system at this point while there are still permissions issues to address.

SOOOO -- we won't be getting currency by mid December it seems. No great surprise and no giant loss either.

From reading other blogs and posts and chatter, it seems that we each have our "what we need" lists -- and of course they are very divergent. Are we ready for prime time? I don't think so :D Are we ready for the next group of folks from the mini sim fiasco to descend? Most likely not.

That doesn't mean they wont. And some will stay and some will no doubt leave and life will go on. As someone mentioned on a comment to a blog, there have been a LOT of improvements in the last month. The tech folks are understandably swamped with land orders, regular maintenance and the like. Stability is still the number one priority it seems and that works for me.

We will get to prime time when we get there -- and hopefully be able to embrace the journey that takes us to the forefront.

Mirror Images

2008-12-10T16:15:00.001-08:00

For those of you wondering -- that's Samara on the left and Sam on the right. Does it matter? Maybe not to us, but it might to them :D

This was so much fun to do. First I had to get Samara in world and decked out with clothes and skin and shape and such, then make the pose, them make a "mirror image" of the pose (not so easy and I decided exact just wasn't REALLY necessary), make pose balls for the poses and take the picture.

Have to admit I am enthralled. Must be a narcissistic thing. Yep, must be. And as a bonus, I have my first set of pose balls for Movements, the animation shop.

Body Doubles

2008-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Getting your shape from Second Life (R) to Openlife -

While some of us are very happy to have a whole new persona in Openlife, others prefer the familiarity of our old selves. Getting your shape from one grid to another isn't all that difficult. It simply takes a bit of time.

If you are using Second Inventory to transfer goods and you have made your own shape or have a full perms shape, you most likely can use the program to accomplish the transfer. For those of us who don't use Second Inventory, it is still fairly simple.

If your computer is up to the challange, simply open up a copy of your Linden viewer with yourself in world. Then start the Openlife viewer with the pod person avatar (wink).

THEN:

In OL - Open your inventory (Ctrl + I) and from the top menu, choose Create > New Body Part > Shape. It will be called New Shape. Find it in your inventory, right click and WEAR it. Right click on your avatar and choose APPEARANCE. This will take you to the screen shown above.

In SL - Right click on your avatar and choose APPEARANCE. This will take you to the screen shown above.

Then, tab by tab, go through all the fields filling the numbers from your original avatar to your new Openlife avatar. It is a good idea to check the field names often to make sure you aren't one slot off. This can make a HUGE difference in the final out come - well of course it can!

Save periodically. Currently there is NO point using Save As, since it doesn't work. Renaming your new shape before you are completed doesn't work yet either. The best you can do is continue to save your avatar as "New Shape" until you are all done. THEN you can change the name to "Samara Nov 08" or whatever. BE PREPARED for the shape name to revert back to "New Shape" however. Sometimes this can be very frustrating.

If your computer won't run both programs as the same time, you can take notes of your OLD shape parameters and type them into the appropriate slots in the OL appearance editor.

If you make several shapes on your way to your perfect OL shape, you could find yourself shapes shifting (literally) from time to time. This happened to me and has happened to others. Eventually, especially if you delete and purge ALL copies of shapes you don't want, the database will accept YOUR shape as yours. Hopefully this will be remedied sometime soon as it is a very uncomfortable thing to keep having to change BACK into a shape you left yourself in.

Getting an Openlife Account

2008-12-10T11:02:00.001-08:00

Getting an account and avatar for Openlife. Written for a not terribly techie friend and added to the blog for others to find as needed.

Here are steps:

Go to: http://openlifegrid.com/ which currently looks like this:

Choose the Register for Free button (see big red arrow in the screen shot above) and make an account. This is NOT your avatar's name. You make your avatar(s) separately.

After you make an account and record your login and password somewhere for safekeeping, go to the Toolbox and then the Avatar Toolbox and pick out a first and last name for your avatar. Make a password for the avatar; (this is for logging into the viewer). Choose a START location if you wish. The default is Orientation Island I believe.

You also need to download the viewer of course. Use the DOWNLOAD button (currently on the side all the time but a new website design is coming so just look around for DOWNLOAD if it has moved). Download the viewer that matches your system.

Install the viewer. Run the viewer. Put in your avatar names and password and make your first trip to the Openlife Grid.

Note: Currently you can sometimes have problems getting in - especially to Orientation Island and other new folk locations. You can type in different locations in the viewer for starting. Feel free to use Fantastic if you like. It is usually online.

Meet Samara

2008-12-09T21:27:00.001-08:00

This is Samara. Some of you may already know her, and others of you may get a chance to meet her soon. While I had no intention to have BOTH Sam and Samara in Openlife when I joined, the idea is growing on me. I am wondering just how different they are -- and I suspect that there actually ARE a few differences.

Sam didn't have a lot of time in OL today but she did manage to get some new animations made and inserted into the daybed.

BUILDING HINT: She also figured out that the sit scripts without pose balls that include rotations seem MUCH harder on the sim than the one she adjusted from Mac's code (without rotation). Part of Fantastic's "mission statement" will concern low impact living on the OLG which means -- to me -- that if a script is obviously problematic, it get's tossed. I would rather have the sim up and running (and it has been consistantly for over a week - yeah ) than have all the bells and whistles of Phil's.

SAMARA took over the computer looking for a new 512 lot for her soon to be "minimal" life at Phil's. She is vacating her old digs and moving away and onward in most respects, but will keep her free land for herself and her homeless buddies.

Expect to see her soon with her twin on the OLG. This should be fun.

Mirroring Two Worlds

2008-12-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

We have the ability to make most fantasies come true in Openlife, but sometimes our everyday real lives can be part of our perfect worlds. After an interesting but fairly stressful day out and about, I spent an hour recreating my personal daybed. It's a little different, but very close to where I repose each eve. It's nice to have a piece of "reality" in Fantastic. One copy will go in the next apartment I'll be decorating. It has one animation now, but I am planning on adding two more so there will be choices depending on my mood. Sometimes LAZY can take on new proportions.

It's fun to build outdoors with all the room in the world -- a LOT of fresh air and nice vistas for sure.

Historical Perspectives

2008-12-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

This is indeed a blog about Openlife and not Phil's domain. Samara, however, is still in Phil's world and since Samara and Sam are at LEAST twins and possibly the same person simply in different worlds, what happens to one reflects on the other -- and of course the person behind them both.

I also, have to guess that I have a few readers that are still at Phil's -- who may be simply wondering about Openlife and what it could do for them. Part of the intent of this blog was to make the transition a bit easier, so with all that being said, here is a bit of history for the archives.

December 8, 2008

A few major things happened in both worlds today. First a friend of a friend (really) who also lost a huge amount of inventory in "L" land, also got his group names changed by LL without notice, permission or any record being left (accountability). I don't know this person at all, but I was still wrapped up in his description of events. Most of us have been there in one form or another. This week I have found many textures missing from my "L" inventory and just last night I clicked to sit down on a chair (not of my making, no copy) to receive a message that the item was not in my region and I needed to move closer. The chair disappeared at that instant and hasn't returned. I have no holiday store as ALL my holiday items (part of 1,800 missing) disappeared in October.

Then my estate owner dropped by with a land issue. It related a bit to the mini sim fiasco as that impacted him and that impacted me etc. etc. etc. The details don't matter, but that fact that I so willingly typed, "I'll abandon the land if you can give me a day or so" was sort of a revelation. I already knew I wasn't embracing Phil's any longer. The thrill was long gone with the bells sounding their lament around the end of October.

I am still making money there. It pays my rent in OL and a little more. The good old days are gone for most of us it seems in many ways -- not only monetarily. So, that's the way it is. My estate owner decided he wanted me there more than I wanted to leave so I am there for awhile longer. I made no promises and expect none from him.

AND in OL, a new poster on the forums found a huge permissions problem (not the previously reported one) which let's anyone put ANY item they have with ANY permissions into a Take a Copy box and essentially transfer it to another person with a click. The permissions of the items stay the same for the second person, but they could of course create another Take a Copy box and perpetuate the transfer and copy. It looks like the no mod permission might stick. I didn't test that but it seemed to.

So, nothing is perfect in either of my virtual worlds -- and indeed of course -- nothing is perfect in the real one either. You would THINK though, with all the magic that we can preform in our digital lands that we could get a bit closer. It's an idea and maybe even a plan.

Meanwhile, I'm off to build a daybed!

Prim Plantings

2008-12-07T22:17:00.001-08:00

I spent much of the day making poses. It's sort of a restful pursuit for me and real life was a bit problematic today.

About an hour filling up clothes vendors had me counting gold stars earned and so late this eve I went back over to apartment 9 to add some flowers. I have no plant textures to upload as Phil's database gurus lost a ton of my store products as well as a lot of my textures. Since it has been over a month, it is unlikely I will ever see them again. Oh well.

So with no plant textures to use and prims aplenty, I decided on some botanical prims for the apartments. I took the leaves from earlier flowers, resized and reshaped, added some buds and voila -- indoor greenery.

A version of this -- bigger and more grand -- would look great in the art gallery area. That's another day, however.

The lighting effect is from my graphics program, but who knows? I added track lights the other eve so maybe a spotlight over the plant would be a nice addition. We'll see where the muse leads me.

Drinks Anyone?

2008-12-06T18:03:00.001-08:00

I spent the early even working on one of the village apartments. While I, Sam, am a wine drinker, it's important to have all sorts of choices for your guests -- or in this case future renter's guests (smile). So I had a great time making a champagne bucket complete with ICE CUBES as well as some nice sculpty glasses. I also made some track lighting for above the bar and now it isn't so dark in those corners. A floor lamp will give just the right glow for the other side of the room.

AND I even changed clothes finally. YEAH! (Well I changed my shirt anyway -- it's a start.)

Moonlight Fountain

2008-12-06T14:37:00.001-08:00

I sprinkled my new tree around and about the sim this morning. So much cheerier and that's always a good thing. Then I decided to work on a fountain for The Village. Now I could have remade a favorite fountain of course, but where's the fun in that? So I started -- once again -- with no plan except that the stone needed to match that already in the courtyard.

Since the fountain was going in the prosperity corner of the sim and since that is tree energy fed by water feng shui wise, I thought, "why not really go for it" and looked up the number that is auspicious for that energy. It was four. Four was simple to incorporate into the fountain and so I did just that.

I tried to make some curved benches to go around the fountain, and while I could DO that trickily, the sit script needed to make my poses work was definitely not doing any good for the sim. So, I abandoned that ideas (stability - stability - stability) and made plain benches and placed them in the grassy area already there. That works. Good to have seating options and nice to have some of my animations and poses around.

Building Tip:

Most of us have learned to "pull a prim" from one already there to keep the alignment. That works very well most of the time. There ARE times however -- like when you have texture and texture rotation and light features and the like already IN your prim -- that simply dragging a copy of the prim you want WITH all those features from another area and then aligning with the POSITION numbers is the easiest plan.

The diagram above shows how I took one of the water prims from the top of one pillar and placed it on top of another by matching the X and Y coordinates. The Z coordinate was the same in this case as the side pillars were all the same height.

I simply clicked on the top ring of the pillar I was headed for and copied those values into the water prim (highlighted in the photo). The alignment is then perfect.

Movement

2008-12-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today's theme seemed to be about movement. I spent the morning making animations to send into the pool for the new viewer. Then, it dawned on me that the creative commons license was a deal breaker for me as it seems to be an anonymity destroyer. Ah well, I had a great time and have two VERY nice animations. I also learned a few tricks, got some poses made from last night into a multipose stand that WORKS (be still my beating heart I'm on a role with scripts this week) and then -- I made a tree that blows gently in the wind and makes me feel happy.

I also started a Flickr Set for Openlife with some of my favorite pictures.

Here is the text from the tree photo above:

I made a tree today. Sort of "godlike" in one since. It isn't totally mine of course as I don't do sculpties. I took two trees apart, resized, moved, added, retextured and then added leaves a branch at a time. Maybe I really DID make that tree. Anyway, it is just what I want -- very ladylike and gentle. I may make more, this turned out so well. We'll see.

And here is the working pose stand with click through poses. Woot! This is mostly to remind myself that it WAS and DID work the first try. At least it has the "potential" to work again. We'll see. LOL.

Room with a View

2008-12-04T20:59:00.001-08:00

So I logged back in briefly this eve to see if my couch might be working again -- the animations anyway. It's been a tough day on the frontier but I spent some time on the sandbox testing poses and have five new fashion ones so that worked out fine. Meanwhile, the couch is just fine (/me patting couch on the head) and I got Charlie over to see if the animations worked OK for guys. They are almost better except that he of course sinks into the couch more. We can only do so much as animators since avatars come in ALL shapes and sizes -- just as it should be.

So, you may notice a difference in the decor from the last animation picture. "I" didn't make any changes but the disappearing wall thing is happening again and so I took this photo as is. I actually LIKE the extra openness. Since there are curtains when the windows are viewed from the exterior, I think I'll enlarge those windows a bit tomorrow and get some more VISTA here into the room.

A plan, a plan. Oh, and there is a call for animations for the viewer so I will of course participate. Love to have projects. And whoever has their work chosen, it means we will have a sit and ground ANIMATION as the default. Yeah!

Month One in Fantastic

2008-12-04T07:44:00.001-08:00

It's been one month since I moved into an empty Fantastic. A lot has happened since then. Lots of building, new skills learned and a few adventures.

I want to document the changes so that I can look back on them at my leisure in a year or two. We remember the highlights and often forget the details which gave the days their nuances of color.

Statistics:

Prims used: 4199
Monetary System: no
Groups: no
Player: R 16

In Review:

This month I started out with the kiosk I build on the sandbox, added a premade building (later abandoned as I made my own) and imported a lot of clothes textures. Then, we had an important permissions problem which made all goods given away or sold "public domain". A not so nice person could import them into other grids as their own with all rights using Second Inventory . Not good. So with lots of time and no rush, I went to work on other projects like making new shoes, shops, an art building, FLOWERS (one thousand prims worth of them) and later, the village shops and apartments.

I found some free sculpty trees and remade them adding more leaves and in some cases more branches and new textures. They have added a lot to the landscape here. And the landscape is changing. eku (missing for the last ten days it seems) has her Japanese temple and village in the works, Osiris has started on what appears to be a HUGE spaceship. The other neighboring sims remain sold or for sale but empty. They may be investment properties. It's nice to have the empty vista whatever the reason.

I dipped my toes into both skins creation and animations. While the skins was a good learning experience and turned out exceptionally well, I find I like the animations much more -- sort of like revisiting my Flash days with avatars instead of 2D graphics. Enough time has passed to make that enjoyable and I am having a great time. AND, on the last day of my first month, I finally figured out how to add animations to furniture without a pose ball (yeah). So all that is well and good.

People have been stopping by to chat. There are a few carpetbagger types around but mostly just nice folks.

In World:

While the blogs and forums were VERY busy for a couple of weeks, that all slowed down tremendously around Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if they all finally got their lands and are building or if real life holiday things are taking up time.

The biggest achievements this month that come to mind include the 45,000 prim challenge answered by Osiris. You can read the full article here.

The first viewer for MACs was released at the end of November, so that was a milestone too.

On the not so good news, there was a miscommunication problem and Sakai "went missing" for a couple of days. This did NOT sit well with some folks. Hopefully lessons were learned. Promises were certainly made and we can go forward with new insights.

The 3DX offices moved and new tech support -- promising 24 /7 is on the way. There is a Founder's Meeting scheduled for this weekend. Fingers are crossed that it happens this time.

Plans:

This month's plans for Fantastic include finishing up the Village with furniture, a fountain, some other fun details. LOVE THOSE PRIMS!

I also want to finish up the shoes. One style of high heeled boots for ladies, plus three styles for the guys are on the drawing board.

Filling the clothes vendors is NOT FUN but needs to be accomplished so I can do that between other -- more enjoyable -- projects.

I have one empty store at the moment and I think I will put animations in there -- mostly because I enjoy making them. We don't know if bvh files will be incorporated into the new avatar forms. We actually don't know when the new avatar forms will be viable. So for now, animations are a nice addition to our worlds.

I have one 10,000 meter area empty at the moment and I am thinking I will put furniture in there -- a much upgraded version of my Home and Garden store at Phil's place. I am making all that furniture for the apartments anyway, so why not.

And as we know, life has a way of changing our plans.

Until next month.

Sitting Pretty!

2008-12-03T18:21:00.001-08:00

Well I might not be DANCING a happy dance, but my spirits are there. Woot!

I started making the furniture for the apartments today. With that came the desire to actually get some of the animations I have been making INTO the furniture -- and banish those nasty pose balls into the ethers. And "By Jove, I think I have it".

Making a sculpty couch with animations in -- let's call it a mature world (as in time to mellow and work out many of the kinks) -- isn't difficult. But, we have issues here on the frontier. My scripts from Phil's wouldn't work here. The scripts from here wouldn't work for ME. The pose balls of course DISAPPEARED which is not the aim of couch cushions. They sorta like to stick around and keep us comfortable.

So, today, amazingly, it all came together. I fiddled with some scripts, added a long animation I had made awhile back, made a second one and so far (SO FAR) all is going well. I have a very nasty unlinking mishap but that happens. Didn't take long to fix. I have a third animation in the works.

Hopefully this will be complete and textures fine tuned tomorrow. Because TOMORROW is my one month anniversary in Fantastic and I plan to do it up right.

Until then.

Adding the Details

2008-12-01T17:57:00.001-08:00

So while things were a bit stressful today at Phil's, all went swimmingly in OL - yeah! I added three more shops (one a new design that opens onto the walkway to eku's) and I have only one more to go.

Now the REAL fun starts -- adding the details.

It doesn't escape me that my neighbors are building UP. The temple next door promises to be grand and definitely tall. Osiris has started what looks like a new spaceship (shiny and new) right next door. And I am all about small and the details.

So I made a coffee cart today complete with name and decals -- even on the cups. Matching napkins and international newspapers add a sense of reality. I have stools with NO POSE balls. True, they only do the basic "sit", but as scripts are VERY problematic at my sim for whatever reason -- simple is better (thanks Gitfinger).

I have coffee swirling in the cup but only saw STEAM for a second and then the texture disappeared into the ugly gray abyss. So I decided to forgo the steam and go for decals instead. Ya just gotta work with what works.

One more building on the end will make 13 so I guess I'll figure out an apartment upstairs building to make 14 in all.

The Village: Making Progress

2008-11-30T14:38:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-29T15:09:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-26T13:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-25T17:54:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-25T08:56:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-24T16:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

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.

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

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

2008-11-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-22T16:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-20T20:58:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-20T14:50:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-19T19:00:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-11-19T12:38:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-11-18T17:51:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

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.