Now, I would define megaphobia as an irrational fear of megas. As we know it is inherent in some of the leading lights at Linden Lab, and I wanted to lay out a few ideas about the development of this syndrome.
The culture of an organisation is one that develops over time and has its basis in the collective history which that group experiences in its development. It can almost seem to seep into the walls of an institution as a widely held, accepted, “truth” even though it may bear no relationship at all to the facts, statistics or more objective data presented to the group.
It is widely held that a complete change of staff is the only way of combatting behaviour or beliefs that have been thus institutionalised. That obviously isn’t going to happen at the Lab, nor would I suggest it is necessary.
Sometimes, however, a clear presentation of the development of the syndrome is enough to awaken the sufferers to a realisation of their plight. ... this I will attempt.
Lalo Telling, in his very well researched series of articles on the history of the grid, tells us....
"Back before the land tier and prim limit systems were implemented, prims cost $L10 each. Any time a prim was rezzed, you "paid" for it. Conversely, when you took it back into inventory or deleted it, you earned $L10. It was also possible to delete full perm items and claim their prim value (possibly a permissions bug). During the first year of SL, some older builds, such as the mansion and the old Varney Boardwalk were being picked apart for quick Lindens."
Now, it may seem like that way of paying for your SL experience has long since disappeared but, in fact, anyone who pays tier still really, in essence, pays “per prim’. It’s just that with tier you pay for a block of prims...117 for a 512m2 etc etc.
So...there was, in the beginning, and still is a direct relationship between prim and LL income.
Take then the misguided idea that somehow a mega, say a 30x30, is robbing LL of the income they could generate from 9 x 10m prims....
The actual facts, however, are that if you own a 512m2 plot you are going to use all 117 prims anyway. ... and fairly fast in my experience, whether they are megas or standard prims.
This possible cultural dislike is enhanced, possibly, by the fact that the first megas were hacks, illegal, and therefore, basically, “Bad”.... like hackers.
The Myth of Lag is one that still remains even though I have used megas in large amounts on both SL and now InWorldz.... and originally I had a poor lappy to build with... I experienced no lag as a result of building with thousands of megas.
Recently we have been told repeatedly the following “Fact” about Mesh... it goes like this, basically,..... Mesh will reduce lag because... one mesh will replace many standard prims so there will be less work for the server. .. that is never paraphrased “one mega will replace many standard prims so there will be less work for the server.”
A simple blind spot in those suffering from this subtle disease. Selective logic.
There is also an idea which is a totally stupid one about megas, irresponsibly placed, overlapping a boundary line onto a neighbours property. In my experience a 10x10 poking through a neighbours wall is just as annoying, and more common, and it is usually resolved by the parties in question. This has to be one of the lamest excuses, and a poor attempt to hide a bad case of Megaphobia.
However, the irrationality of a phobia is not one that can necessarily be argued with, especially when institutionalised. Megas are bad, and the Lab has this as their standard “view”. [The use of the word ‘view’ in these situations is usually better described as “opinion unsupported by hard evidence”]
Now, none of these defense positions have any relevance to nanoprims. In InWorldz I can scale a prim down to 0.001 m, but not in SL; I can make a prim 99% hollow, but not in SL. There is no spurious ‘lag’ argument, or ‘overhanging prim’ argument, just pure neglect of your core content creators and builders. The code might be changed in a day, if there was the will to do so.... copy and paste from any of the OS sims. TPV’s would read it.
My major joy, however, with building in InWorldz is the ability to link a huge link-set sim-wide. The current SL restriction of 32 meters, for linking, is going to have to change in SL if meshes upto 64 meters are going to be allowed, or they will be unlinkable... a crap state of affairs, making mesh both expensive and useless in complex builds. Having to use Builders Buddy or similar every time you use a mesh will not sit well with builders, it’s a pain.
Now, back to megas ... I realise that my boycotting of SL8B and LEA is not going to change anyone’s mind, I’m just a D-rate creator and they will manage perfectly well without me...... but, the NPISL (Not Possible In SL) builds that I and others are working on in Iwz will, eventually, convince enough people that you can make better, richer, more complex stuff in Iwz ..... and that MAY get the Boys to realise that the mythical 100 Million Users will soon hear of a Better Grid if the gap between SL and Iwz continues to widen. If that doesn’t instigate some changes, some care of content creators and builders, some small advances in tools, then the Lab will continue to lose market share.
[heard this on the radio this morning.....You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a-changing...]
So, my argument is this.... if you Boys can spare the time to make wobbly thighs, you can sort out this too. SL’s attraction isn’t all about sex...Duh!!
:))
Showing posts with label SL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SL. Show all posts
Friday, 27 May 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Blog stuff..... Negativity and Positivity
Now, it's easy for people, it seems, to mistake criticism for negativity.... and I hate to see naivety heralded as a virtue, or blind acceptance as being superior to a healthy cynicism.
As has been said often enough before, (Brinda comes to mind) "those that are the most critical of Second Life are often is greatest advocates"... or words to that effect. Miso is a case in point in her recent, eloquent post....but...her next post, which we have been discussing will turn all that on its head, being positive and constructive. This doesn't mean that she has had a change of heart, it simply means that the good and the bad of any situation are obvious if you look.
Things are Really Bad in a relationship when you can't even be bothered to criticise, that's The End. Like with Blue M'arse.... I have zero interest in who is CEO, it is dead. Period. Buried. and App'ed. Yawn.
There are things which have happened recently in SL which are crap, in my opinion, and nothing anyone can say will change my mind, poor noobs being called Resident is one (and Despair Names messing up Search even more), and the retrograde steps taken toward 2D interaction (FB and Marketplace) are two that spring to mind.
The mindlessness of voice morphing (being about the last thing anyone I know would put on their wish list when so much else is broken) and the wobbling about of 'bingo wings' (UK slang) and flabby thighs being another...BUT.. I am not the standard user...sooo...I accept that these do nothing to spoil my enjoyment of SL, and ignore them. Rodvik didn't use "chat repair time" for this, another team did it.....
I am, however, very pleased by two things this week, maybe more... coming from the Boys.
This is one....and, although it is missing a black guy, a furry and a dragon, oh, and a robot, it is without doubt a long awaited improvement..... let's hope they are all fully mod, unlike SpotOn3D which was a bit crap.... see blogpost....somewhere...
Now, the second piece of news is...Rodvik. He has actually been talking to people. ...people I know, not the FIC, just Tweeps. That is a sea change. ...as I pointed out before 10,000 people who have spent 3 years in SL have a common knowledge base of 30,000 years... not to be sniffed at....thats a lot of hours.
Now, as Jim reported... here.... if there is one subject that could really, really do with a rethink by the Boys and a U-turn, its the mentor programme, again, often clearly promoted by Brinda, and discussed on Twitter by Rod et al. Some very good comments and more than a little connected to my post... "Can You Save SL?"
LadySakai: @rodvik @InaraPey Good Luck on that one Rodvik. May I recomend mentors? They are amazing in InWorldz. Makes ppl feel right at home
rodvik: @LadySakai @InaraPey Thanks, I will go look see how it works.
Now, I assume that the Boys know exactly what needs to be done in terms of repairing the damage... they know how many patches have patches which are patched, and how threadbare some parts of the code are. Some of the Boys are more aware of it than their bosses, thats why the more modern companies look to, and award, employees for useful suggestions. This has not been the case with LL if Glassdoor is to be believed. That has to change, or they'll end up as a phone app too..... but according to one Linden I spoke to there is the common LL belief that Rod can do it..
What the Boys don't know, and have no way of finding out except thro their user base is how much the other grids are improving the facilities for builders and creators... because most of them can't build a rock.
Hence my ongoing nagging.
That there is a whole range of NPISL (not possible in second life) builds which will draw people to other grids is frankly stoopid.
I detailed ... here ... the details, or some of them in a straight up InWorldz vs. Second Life list. Now, even assuming that the Boys are still lost in their mental trauma of Megaphobia, the ability to hollow a prim to 99%, or size it to 0.001m could be very easily acheived. The limit on linking prims, currently 32 meters is gonna be useless when mesh comes out (the max size is likely to be 64 meters meaning you won't be able to link it to anything...) ...in IWz I can link up to 256 meters, and thousands of prims, not the 256 SL limit.
Anyway....I'll keep plugging away.
The desire to see YadNi's new Mont St Michel took me to Reaction Grid.... so I went...
Unfortunately I couldn't find it. 8 people online and no search, no map, no nothing... I gave up. Made me realise how far InWorldz has come...and again, why a single mentor would have been great. YadNi didn't choose Reaction, he was commissioned. It has a high enough prim count to make it possible, but its buggy to say the least.
Luckily YadNi is building the famous Sagrada Familia by Gaudi on InWorldz, so I'll just have to be patient, and get a guide next time I go to Reaction.
Now, in other news, and slightly at odds with the above talk of better building tools for SL, is a great post by Ener Hax who, as usual has cut through the fog to a clear comment regarding Diva Canto's blog... namely...
"Everything in Unity3D seems designed to support professional scene creations, whereas everything in SL seems designed to support amateur content." [Diva Canto]
Ener rightly points out that it's not the tools, but the content that matters... so...... tools are a minor thing in the Boys eyes, I understand most people come to SL for sex, but my wish list is none the less a relevant topic, and one I must add to..... and you are welcome to, too. If SL don't use it, maybe another grid will.
In other, totally unrelated news.....I had heard, ages ago, about IBM closing grids, so that came as no surprise... the only other bit of news that you might be interested in, seeing how much I have ranted about privacy is this piece on Ars. Maybe the tide is turning for privacy issues.... well, we can but live in hope...
The cynic in me says 'don't hold your breath'...
Have a great week.
:))
As has been said often enough before, (Brinda comes to mind) "those that are the most critical of Second Life are often is greatest advocates"... or words to that effect. Miso is a case in point in her recent, eloquent post....but...her next post, which we have been discussing will turn all that on its head, being positive and constructive. This doesn't mean that she has had a change of heart, it simply means that the good and the bad of any situation are obvious if you look.
Things are Really Bad in a relationship when you can't even be bothered to criticise, that's The End. Like with Blue M'arse.... I have zero interest in who is CEO, it is dead. Period. Buried. and App'ed. Yawn.
There are things which have happened recently in SL which are crap, in my opinion, and nothing anyone can say will change my mind, poor noobs being called Resident is one (and Despair Names messing up Search even more), and the retrograde steps taken toward 2D interaction (FB and Marketplace) are two that spring to mind.
The mindlessness of voice morphing (being about the last thing anyone I know would put on their wish list when so much else is broken) and the wobbling about of 'bingo wings' (UK slang) and flabby thighs being another...BUT.. I am not the standard user...sooo...I accept that these do nothing to spoil my enjoyment of SL, and ignore them. Rodvik didn't use "chat repair time" for this, another team did it.....
I am, however, very pleased by two things this week, maybe more... coming from the Boys.
This is one....and, although it is missing a black guy, a furry and a dragon, oh, and a robot, it is without doubt a long awaited improvement..... let's hope they are all fully mod, unlike SpotOn3D which was a bit crap.... see blogpost....somewhere...
Now, the second piece of news is...Rodvik. He has actually been talking to people. ...people I know, not the FIC, just Tweeps. That is a sea change. ...as I pointed out before 10,000 people who have spent 3 years in SL have a common knowledge base of 30,000 years... not to be sniffed at....thats a lot of hours.
Now, as Jim reported... here.... if there is one subject that could really, really do with a rethink by the Boys and a U-turn, its the mentor programme, again, often clearly promoted by Brinda, and discussed on Twitter by Rod et al. Some very good comments and more than a little connected to my post... "Can You Save SL?"
LadySakai: @rodvik @InaraPey Good Luck on that one Rodvik. May I recomend mentors? They are amazing in InWorldz. Makes ppl feel right at home
rodvik: @LadySakai @InaraPey Thanks, I will go look see how it works.
Now, I assume that the Boys know exactly what needs to be done in terms of repairing the damage... they know how many patches have patches which are patched, and how threadbare some parts of the code are. Some of the Boys are more aware of it than their bosses, thats why the more modern companies look to, and award, employees for useful suggestions. This has not been the case with LL if Glassdoor is to be believed. That has to change, or they'll end up as a phone app too..... but according to one Linden I spoke to there is the common LL belief that Rod can do it..
What the Boys don't know, and have no way of finding out except thro their user base is how much the other grids are improving the facilities for builders and creators... because most of them can't build a rock.
Hence my ongoing nagging.
That there is a whole range of NPISL (not possible in second life) builds which will draw people to other grids is frankly stoopid.
I detailed ... here ... the details, or some of them in a straight up InWorldz vs. Second Life list. Now, even assuming that the Boys are still lost in their mental trauma of Megaphobia, the ability to hollow a prim to 99%, or size it to 0.001m could be very easily acheived. The limit on linking prims, currently 32 meters is gonna be useless when mesh comes out (the max size is likely to be 64 meters meaning you won't be able to link it to anything...) ...in IWz I can link up to 256 meters, and thousands of prims, not the 256 SL limit.
Anyway....I'll keep plugging away.
The desire to see YadNi's new Mont St Michel took me to Reaction Grid.... so I went...
Unfortunately I couldn't find it. 8 people online and no search, no map, no nothing... I gave up. Made me realise how far InWorldz has come...and again, why a single mentor would have been great. YadNi didn't choose Reaction, he was commissioned. It has a high enough prim count to make it possible, but its buggy to say the least.
Luckily YadNi is building the famous Sagrada Familia by Gaudi on InWorldz, so I'll just have to be patient, and get a guide next time I go to Reaction.
Now, in other news, and slightly at odds with the above talk of better building tools for SL, is a great post by Ener Hax who, as usual has cut through the fog to a clear comment regarding Diva Canto's blog... namely...
"Everything in Unity3D seems designed to support professional scene creations, whereas everything in SL seems designed to support amateur content." [Diva Canto]
Ener rightly points out that it's not the tools, but the content that matters... so...... tools are a minor thing in the Boys eyes, I understand most people come to SL for sex, but my wish list is none the less a relevant topic, and one I must add to..... and you are welcome to, too. If SL don't use it, maybe another grid will.
In other, totally unrelated news.....I had heard, ages ago, about IBM closing grids, so that came as no surprise... the only other bit of news that you might be interested in, seeing how much I have ranted about privacy is this piece on Ars. Maybe the tide is turning for privacy issues.... well, we can but live in hope...
The cynic in me says 'don't hold your breath'...
Have a great week.
:))
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Objects, Identity and Advertising.
I can fully understand that there are times when you get bored of social life, I do. I have relationships with objects, of a sort... I make them, paint them and sell them. I call them plants etc. .. my generic term is Flora Virtua Exotica, a term Kaltusaran and I thunk up for our first shop.
I find objects called baby, bunny, horse..etc. a difficult one. I would not personally be happy with keeping a baby in my invent. I find it creepy. I don't have any problem with people that do. I also have two good friends who were Bunny Addicts, and I blogged about them, sometime. Now, my friends weren't happy about keeping their animals locked up in their invents either.
The latest edition of Sandbox, LL's Attempt To Make SL More Interesting, should be renamed Litter Tray as it is featuring animals as the New Thing. Now luckily LL's advertising is so poor that it probably won't succeed. I say 'luckily' because if 100 people a day start a bunny collection (other creatures are available) which multiplies to 10 creatures (as bunnies do), then by the end of the year SL would be the proud owners of 365,000 lag making bundles of fun (not the fast kind).
SecondLie suggested that LL was trying to increase concurrency by increasing lag so that everything takes longer to do inworld. Breedables could achieve that.
..but, seriously folks, Crap has a wonderful set of adverts on his blog, here. .... not sure why humour is so missing in the lab. Anyway, Paisley blogged something similar at the same time....here..... suggesting that the Boys draw on the huge pool of talent available instead of half-assed attempts.
This is all very reminiscent of the podcast that Toxic, Chantal and Phaylen did..... tho it does seem that while the sims and prims of LEA are still locked in a few elite hands, the LEA will host a machinima event... I feel like I should say "about time".
However, the more I think about VWs and the reason so few stay, the more I am gravitating towards the psyche rather than the viewer. By that I mean the reasons are psychological rather than technological.
There are people who cannot stand the idea that their avatar cannot be the same height as their RL bio body. This is not a handful, many share the same angst..... I blogged about this post a good while back. I believe the author and those commenting, bewailing the height problem, are just the tip of the iceberg.
This was bought back to me while reading the huge number of comments about Kitely on Eners blog of last week, where Gaga pointed out that FaceBook is for those more comfortable in their RL personas..... or words to that effect.... This lead me to wonder if this was the reason for such a marked clash of opinions between those for and against FB connection to VWs.
It takes a particular type of psyche to enjoy role play, and all avatar based platforms are role play, even if you think you are playing yourself. The so-called RL persona is a construct, one fabricated over decades. To leave that behind and start again is an act of courage I think, which demands a certain confidence.
If, and like all theories it doesn't exclude other views.... if all fear (like death and/or going mad) is basically the fear of disintegration of the Self, of identity, then I could see how clutching to "Real Life" is important. The height of my avatar could be important, and making my avatar as Real as possible would be vital....BUT.... a person truly insecure in their own identity would never, ever, enjoy living an avatar life.... nor role play, nor fancy dress...
Now, as I said, it's just a theory. However, if there is an element of truth in that, then no amount of advertising is gonna help. Not even the Labs last attempt "Become Your Avatar" (a philosophically illogical concept, except in the film 'Avatar' which entailed killing your RL self....slightly dramatic and not, surely what LL was advocating ).
If even partly true.... VW's are a niche market, and the Boys should abandon The Myth Of Ten Million Users.
Making SL into an extension of FB's FunnyFarm is doomed to fail.... remember Avatars United? yeh, me neither.
Why can't they just accept the numbers and make it profitable...
:)))
I find objects called baby, bunny, horse..etc. a difficult one. I would not personally be happy with keeping a baby in my invent. I find it creepy. I don't have any problem with people that do. I also have two good friends who were Bunny Addicts, and I blogged about them, sometime. Now, my friends weren't happy about keeping their animals locked up in their invents either.
The latest edition of Sandbox, LL's Attempt To Make SL More Interesting, should be renamed Litter Tray as it is featuring animals as the New Thing. Now luckily LL's advertising is so poor that it probably won't succeed. I say 'luckily' because if 100 people a day start a bunny collection (other creatures are available) which multiplies to 10 creatures (as bunnies do), then by the end of the year SL would be the proud owners of 365,000 lag making bundles of fun (not the fast kind).
SecondLie suggested that LL was trying to increase concurrency by increasing lag so that everything takes longer to do inworld. Breedables could achieve that.
..but, seriously folks, Crap has a wonderful set of adverts on his blog, here. .... not sure why humour is so missing in the lab. Anyway, Paisley blogged something similar at the same time....here..... suggesting that the Boys draw on the huge pool of talent available instead of half-assed attempts.
This is all very reminiscent of the podcast that Toxic, Chantal and Phaylen did..... tho it does seem that while the sims and prims of LEA are still locked in a few elite hands, the LEA will host a machinima event... I feel like I should say "about time".
However, the more I think about VWs and the reason so few stay, the more I am gravitating towards the psyche rather than the viewer. By that I mean the reasons are psychological rather than technological.
There are people who cannot stand the idea that their avatar cannot be the same height as their RL bio body. This is not a handful, many share the same angst..... I blogged about this post a good while back. I believe the author and those commenting, bewailing the height problem, are just the tip of the iceberg.
This was bought back to me while reading the huge number of comments about Kitely on Eners blog of last week, where Gaga pointed out that FaceBook is for those more comfortable in their RL personas..... or words to that effect.... This lead me to wonder if this was the reason for such a marked clash of opinions between those for and against FB connection to VWs.
It takes a particular type of psyche to enjoy role play, and all avatar based platforms are role play, even if you think you are playing yourself. The so-called RL persona is a construct, one fabricated over decades. To leave that behind and start again is an act of courage I think, which demands a certain confidence.
If, and like all theories it doesn't exclude other views.... if all fear (like death and/or going mad) is basically the fear of disintegration of the Self, of identity, then I could see how clutching to "Real Life" is important. The height of my avatar could be important, and making my avatar as Real as possible would be vital....BUT.... a person truly insecure in their own identity would never, ever, enjoy living an avatar life.... nor role play, nor fancy dress...
Now, as I said, it's just a theory. However, if there is an element of truth in that, then no amount of advertising is gonna help. Not even the Labs last attempt "Become Your Avatar" (a philosophically illogical concept, except in the film 'Avatar' which entailed killing your RL self....slightly dramatic and not, surely what LL was advocating ).
If even partly true.... VW's are a niche market, and the Boys should abandon The Myth Of Ten Million Users.
Making SL into an extension of FB's FunnyFarm is doomed to fail.... remember Avatars United? yeh, me neither.
Why can't they just accept the numbers and make it profitable...
:)))
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Sunday Blogwatch.
The Lab, FB, sex and Avatar Rights....... in no particular order.
Well, actually, let's start with the Boys.... no Lab-Bashing (not much, anyway) but the suggestion, first mooted here at the time of the buy-out rumours, namely that the best owners of SL would be it's citizens, us. Kanomi has presented this idea in a sensible manner rather than my glib, throw-away-line-style of blogging....here, and the idea was taken up by NWN later in the week.
However, with the SLCC 2011 now being held in San Francisco, rather than in London (a rumour I am sure I heard somewhere...) I wouldn't expect a huge number of peeps from the Old World. It is about as far away as it is possible to get from us.
...and still on the LL meme, a new blogger, Emma Geraln, has voiced her opinions on the First Hour Experience... good to have a new voice in the debate.
Talking of debates, there has been a very heated one on iliveinsl about Kitely. Now, reading the 87 comments kept me up way past my bedtime...so...to summarise..
1) a bunch of people hate FB and see that as a major hurdle..
2) the PR machine/bloggers have got people interested before Kitely had stocked its shelves properly
3) some people just like to argue.
My own comment got eaten by the system and as it was late at night, I gave up... discussing the idea that FB is the Best Thing Since Elasticated Panties... I commented...
"Where does this myth come from? The one that states that more is better? TV has more users than FB ... so should we go for a remote control VW on TV?
130,000 people 'liked' SL because they could not access the site before they 'liked' it.....and what good will 130,000 Likes do for me, or any other SL user? 10,000,000 users too stupid to download a viewer will not improve SL, or any other VW .... sorry, I don't buy into 'the more the merrier' myth.
When you make something easy to do, like producing music at home for example, you get an exponential growth in the weight of crap music around. How may of the trillians of photos posted online should have been deleted?
Easy does not equal good...... it just equals more.....and, really, like Kitely, SL is not ready to take more, it can't even service the 'few' users it already has."
Posted here as the whole FB myth is alive and kicking in LL too.
So...to sex/gender.... Tateru has bravely started a discussion, via BitMob, on the role of girls and women in warfare games.
My position on this has been posted before as I am firmly of the belief that their is a smaller difference between the genders than is culturally supposed, both biologically and psychologically we are close, very close. Semenya, the South African athlete was a case in point, she ran too fast to be a woman...Duh!!.... where's the logic in that.
Lastly, a developing discussion on avatar rights as outlined by Ralph Koster...here.... is developing on The Lawbringer's blog which might be worth keeping an eye on.....
That should keep you busy if you feel the need to catch up ... or just log on and chill...
:)))
Well, actually, let's start with the Boys.... no Lab-Bashing (not much, anyway) but the suggestion, first mooted here at the time of the buy-out rumours, namely that the best owners of SL would be it's citizens, us. Kanomi has presented this idea in a sensible manner rather than my glib, throw-away-line-style of blogging....here, and the idea was taken up by NWN later in the week.
However, with the SLCC 2011 now being held in San Francisco, rather than in London (a rumour I am sure I heard somewhere...) I wouldn't expect a huge number of peeps from the Old World. It is about as far away as it is possible to get from us.
...and still on the LL meme, a new blogger, Emma Geraln, has voiced her opinions on the First Hour Experience... good to have a new voice in the debate.
Talking of debates, there has been a very heated one on iliveinsl about Kitely. Now, reading the 87 comments kept me up way past my bedtime...so...to summarise..
1) a bunch of people hate FB and see that as a major hurdle..
2) the PR machine/bloggers have got people interested before Kitely had stocked its shelves properly
3) some people just like to argue.
My own comment got eaten by the system and as it was late at night, I gave up... discussing the idea that FB is the Best Thing Since Elasticated Panties... I commented...
"Where does this myth come from? The one that states that more is better? TV has more users than FB ... so should we go for a remote control VW on TV?
130,000 people 'liked' SL because they could not access the site before they 'liked' it.....and what good will 130,000 Likes do for me, or any other SL user? 10,000,000 users too stupid to download a viewer will not improve SL, or any other VW .... sorry, I don't buy into 'the more the merrier' myth.
When you make something easy to do, like producing music at home for example, you get an exponential growth in the weight of crap music around. How may of the trillians of photos posted online should have been deleted?
Easy does not equal good...... it just equals more.....and, really, like Kitely, SL is not ready to take more, it can't even service the 'few' users it already has."
Posted here as the whole FB myth is alive and kicking in LL too.
So...to sex/gender.... Tateru has bravely started a discussion, via BitMob, on the role of girls and women in warfare games.
My position on this has been posted before as I am firmly of the belief that their is a smaller difference between the genders than is culturally supposed, both biologically and psychologically we are close, very close. Semenya, the South African athlete was a case in point, she ran too fast to be a woman...Duh!!.... where's the logic in that.
Lastly, a developing discussion on avatar rights as outlined by Ralph Koster...here.... is developing on The Lawbringer's blog which might be worth keeping an eye on.....
That should keep you busy if you feel the need to catch up ... or just log on and chill...
:)))
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Transubstantiation opens today....whenever...
I actually hate being told how to look at stuff... but for those of you who like to play with their windlight, these are the settings I used when building.... just sayin'...
Midnight, water reflections on, if your graphics card will take it... and..
Well, I put this together in 48 hours as I didn't have ages to play around, I have the sim for just one month....
oh, yes...it's here.
I hope you enjoy it... more stuff on the philosophy...in previous post.
:))
Midnight, water reflections on, if your graphics card will take it... and..
Well, I put this together in 48 hours as I didn't have ages to play around, I have the sim for just one month....
oh, yes...it's here.
I hope you enjoy it... more stuff on the philosophy...in previous post.
:))
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Why Philip Left .. (Pure Speculation)...
There are, of course, so many elements that need to work for a business to become and remain successful that it would be a little stupid of me to begin to tell LL what has gone wrong and how to do it better, not that that has stopped me, ever, from voicing my half-baked theories and opinions. With no possibility for us to vote or otherwise be heard by the Lab, then blogging and commenting is our 'pressure release valve' and, by the gods, we need one.
["I hear you" and "we are listening" are euphemisms for "you are wrong"]
Tateru Nino's post on the problems some people are having paying LL is not the first I have heard of it by any means.
Aliz told me of a friend last month who had troubles, and since then I have heard of several such problems. Well they lost peoples billing information... the list must have slipped down the back of the sofa along with the remote, I guess....
This follows on the back of Eners blogging of the basic turmoil involved in working for the Lab. I read quite a lot of Glassdoor which, as someone said, is like Linden Labs WikiLeaks. Now, at the time I thought that maybe the bad reviews of working for the Lab and the good ones maybe sorta cancelled each other out to a certain extent.
But... there are a couple of points from these two posts which have stayed in my head.
1)...from Tateru's.... [question to the Lab]“if the billing system is down, can I be assured that my sim won’t be taken offline due to non payment?”
[Reply] ”I can not assure you of this at this time”
2)... from Ener's..... [ex employee] "Business folks view technical must-do’s as things to negotiate. Since the business folks are the ones setting development priorities, and developers tend not to be good negotiators, this leads to cutting corners, resulting in fragile software with poor performance." [my highlight]
Now, with a smaller grid, like InWorldz, if someone were to cock up, then someone would be online to apologise ... I blogged this before... in a post called "A Good CEO" , and as Tateru points out, and would be obvious to us all, silence is the worst course of events.
However, by admitting you cocked up you are liable... so the Legal Dept. may have advised silence.... and so the slide continues... [they really need a Rapid Response Task Force, don't they]
Now, the quote via Ener..(2)... just reinforces what we have all suspected for a long time, namely, that the Bean Counters are running the show and it makes no difference how brilliant your staff are if they have, ultimately, no say in what happens.
Now, ranting at LL is more and more like shooting fish in a barrel, and I am actually starting to feel sorry for the Boys (a bit, not much). They had the best, the only, show in town, but they are heading towards an "..Also Ran" status.
A Benevolent Monarchy as Brinda calls them is actually less efficient than a Benevolent Dictatorship which would, really be the best outcome....
....but more and more it is looking like the Impotent Monarchy and, obviously (to most of us), the reason for the chaos and dissatisfaction rather than a passionate and engaged User Base.
Did Philip realise that.. and turn to Lurvvv... ((he was always a bit smarmy, mind you))...
:))
["I hear you" and "we are listening" are euphemisms for "you are wrong"]
Tateru Nino's post on the problems some people are having paying LL is not the first I have heard of it by any means.
Aliz told me of a friend last month who had troubles, and since then I have heard of several such problems. Well they lost peoples billing information... the list must have slipped down the back of the sofa along with the remote, I guess....
This follows on the back of Eners blogging of the basic turmoil involved in working for the Lab. I read quite a lot of Glassdoor which, as someone said, is like Linden Labs WikiLeaks. Now, at the time I thought that maybe the bad reviews of working for the Lab and the good ones maybe sorta cancelled each other out to a certain extent.
But... there are a couple of points from these two posts which have stayed in my head.
1)...from Tateru's.... [question to the Lab]“if the billing system is down, can I be assured that my sim won’t be taken offline due to non payment?”
[Reply] ”I can not assure you of this at this time”
2)... from Ener's..... [ex employee] "Business folks view technical must-do’s as things to negotiate. Since the business folks are the ones setting development priorities, and developers tend not to be good negotiators, this leads to cutting corners, resulting in fragile software with poor performance." [my highlight]
Now, with a smaller grid, like InWorldz, if someone were to cock up, then someone would be online to apologise ... I blogged this before... in a post called "A Good CEO" , and as Tateru points out, and would be obvious to us all, silence is the worst course of events.
However, by admitting you cocked up you are liable... so the Legal Dept. may have advised silence.... and so the slide continues... [they really need a Rapid Response Task Force, don't they]
Now, the quote via Ener..(2)... just reinforces what we have all suspected for a long time, namely, that the Bean Counters are running the show and it makes no difference how brilliant your staff are if they have, ultimately, no say in what happens.
Now, ranting at LL is more and more like shooting fish in a barrel, and I am actually starting to feel sorry for the Boys (a bit, not much). They had the best, the only, show in town, but they are heading towards an "..Also Ran" status.
A Benevolent Monarchy as Brinda calls them is actually less efficient than a Benevolent Dictatorship which would, really be the best outcome....
....but more and more it is looking like the Impotent Monarchy and, obviously (to most of us), the reason for the chaos and dissatisfaction rather than a passionate and engaged User Base.
Did Philip realise that.. and turn to Lurvvv... ((he was always a bit smarmy, mind you))...
:))
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Some Thoughts on the New Basic Viewer.
In a committed attempt to improve Noob experience the Boys have released the New Basic Viewer, as Tateru says.."from its first development build to a live beta in just one day, apparently with its basic bugs still intact."
I groaned. Those that do not learn from history are, of course, doomed to repeat it. The V2 ("spewer" as Brinda calls it) is apparently just about usable, 12 months after it was released.... the same could well happen here....(that it takes 12 months of frustration to get the bugs out.)
[ a brief aside here... I have read a number of V2 supporters argue the following line..; "people are still criticising V2 without realising that V2 can now be customised to make it very like the 1.XX viewer, so their continued dislike is unfounded."
There is a basic flaw in logic here.... I don't go buy a Ford and try to make it look like a Nissan. I buy a Nissan....(well.. I wouldn't drive either, but the logic is correct)]
To get this very clear from the beginning... I have nothing against a slimmed down version of the UI... IF IT WORKS.
Anyway...the details are ... here.
...and the very well mannered and intelligent comments on the new civilized forum are...here.
I have still a few basic reservations... based on my own Noob experience, a long time ago, granted... namely... I had no problems with the UI. I clicked Chat to chat (it used to work), Search to search (yes, it used to work), and Fly to fly. I did not think to myself, wow, that was difficult, glad I mastered that! My Inventory held my stuff and my Friends list worked mostly (at times it didn't.... I remember, with affection, that it said, instead of ???, "Hippos"... which I loved), and the map was useful. No problem as far as I could make out.
Now, if it is believed that user retention will be improved thro having no Inventory, no money, no photography, no map, no LMs...etc... well, we will see, as I am want to say. I have my doubts, but then I usually do.
The combination of a poor and limited representation of SL thro this new viewer, with very limited clothing, (no shopping), combined with Facebook pages, seems to be the New Idea for improving SL. It does zero for me, personally. Neither 500,000 Facebook 'likes' and prods, nor a million non-spending noobs is gonna help the economy and, thereby, justify the 1300% price differential between SL and Iwz.
This has absolutely nothing to do with a reluctance to see change happen because this has to do with policy decisions being made which have no positive effect on me. I am the customer. I am always right... as you are, of course, Dear Reader.
I thoroughly recommend Botgirl's recent posts tracking the source of (SL) consumer dissatisfaction.. here... and hope she continues this meme. She is charting the Fall as Lalo charted the Rise of Second Life... they should do a book together...you know the title...
Anyway... anyone who downloads the V2 will automatically get the new Basic Viewer too, so many will have a chance to try it.
I hope the time spent developing it has not meant that repairing Chat or Search has been delayed....
:))
I groaned. Those that do not learn from history are, of course, doomed to repeat it. The V2 ("spewer" as Brinda calls it) is apparently just about usable, 12 months after it was released.... the same could well happen here....(that it takes 12 months of frustration to get the bugs out.)
[ a brief aside here... I have read a number of V2 supporters argue the following line..; "people are still criticising V2 without realising that V2 can now be customised to make it very like the 1.XX viewer, so their continued dislike is unfounded."
There is a basic flaw in logic here.... I don't go buy a Ford and try to make it look like a Nissan. I buy a Nissan....(well.. I wouldn't drive either, but the logic is correct)]
To get this very clear from the beginning... I have nothing against a slimmed down version of the UI... IF IT WORKS.
Anyway...the details are ... here.
...and the very well mannered and intelligent comments on the new civilized forum are...here.
I have still a few basic reservations... based on my own Noob experience, a long time ago, granted... namely... I had no problems with the UI. I clicked Chat to chat (it used to work), Search to search (yes, it used to work), and Fly to fly. I did not think to myself, wow, that was difficult, glad I mastered that! My Inventory held my stuff and my Friends list worked mostly (at times it didn't.... I remember, with affection, that it said, instead of ???, "Hippos"... which I loved), and the map was useful. No problem as far as I could make out.
Now, if it is believed that user retention will be improved thro having no Inventory, no money, no photography, no map, no LMs...etc... well, we will see, as I am want to say. I have my doubts, but then I usually do.
The combination of a poor and limited representation of SL thro this new viewer, with very limited clothing, (no shopping), combined with Facebook pages, seems to be the New Idea for improving SL. It does zero for me, personally. Neither 500,000 Facebook 'likes' and prods, nor a million non-spending noobs is gonna help the economy and, thereby, justify the 1300% price differential between SL and Iwz.
This has absolutely nothing to do with a reluctance to see change happen because this has to do with policy decisions being made which have no positive effect on me. I am the customer. I am always right... as you are, of course, Dear Reader.
I thoroughly recommend Botgirl's recent posts tracking the source of (SL) consumer dissatisfaction.. here... and hope she continues this meme. She is charting the Fall as Lalo charted the Rise of Second Life... they should do a book together...you know the title...
Anyway... anyone who downloads the V2 will automatically get the new Basic Viewer too, so many will have a chance to try it.
I hope the time spent developing it has not meant that repairing Chat or Search has been delayed....
:))
Sunday, 13 February 2011
The Culture of Creative Content
We all know how easy it is to fall in love... and this can happen without any logic, at a distance, with little real information.
Philip was heralded as the New Messiah, it seems only recently, and our hopes and dreams were projected onto his shoulders. Fast, Easy, Fun was not derided as a pile of manure, but heralded as a new insight into the way SL should market itself to people too stupid to download a viewer.
So, obviously, as my memory is longer than some peoples, it seems, I am not gonna be subjecting Rodvik to my transference, knowing how illusory words have become and knowing that the president of a company or a country may still be the glove-puppet of the Bean Counters.
Notwithstanding, however, it is encouraging when your eyes meet across a crowded room, and a stranger speaks some sweet words, like...
“I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity.”
Sounds good to me... someone who sees the value of privacy being determined by the user.
Likewise when he extolls the virtues of Content Creation, the gods know how often I’ve talked about the need to improve tools (the sooner the better).... however...
We have had promises before, and the recent offering from the Lab, the terrible “Improving Lines of Communication with The Community” ... (here) .. is both badly written with poor english and poorer ‘feel’ ( as commented on by Tateru...here).. and seems to me to point to the Great Improvement being “Do It Yourself”. By this I mean it looks like yet another job which the Boys should be doing is being farmed out to us.
Instead of customer support.... just ask another ‘resident’ ... use the Forum, use SL Answers, or the email lists... (here).....I read this as saying....”the less we have to do with you lot, the easier or lives will be”.
Which brings me round to Content Creation, and that great new aim of Rodvik to improve life for builders, so we can continue to make a great new world. ...User Groups... (here)... now am I stupid, or blind? It looks to me like there is no User Group dedicated to Builders, Content Creators or Artists..... and on the email list I am having the same problem.... erm.... maybe I missed it. Or, maybe, like the Artists Endowment to the Lindens, it’s still in a development stage (is it over a year ago that was announced??)...
So, I’m not falling in love with Rodvik just yet, though I have heard from an employee that he is very popular at the Lab too. I guess it’s that english accent (girls swoon) and the interest in Soccer (guys bond). If he wants me to go weak at the knees though...I’ll be wanting a few new tools.
A very good post on this whole subject I thought, comes from the talented pen of Lalo. As usual an insightful realisation, namely that whereas it took visionaries to build this space platform we call SL, it is now the colonists that run and control its future.
The culture we have built and the environment we have created is a tough one. We have regularly been disappointed, disillusioned and dis-spirited by the messages emanating from Planet Linden. They have sent malfunctioning software, idle spin, and increased taxation to us as we orbit Earth in this flimsy craft.
Adversity has tied us close together.
Having no Communication with those in control has tied us close too.
We know how it is to live here, we know what we need, and while we may be wooed by soft words, we have become a group who will need a bit of convincing.
So..me... I’m still waiting to see something useful come out of the Lab.
:)))
Philip was heralded as the New Messiah, it seems only recently, and our hopes and dreams were projected onto his shoulders. Fast, Easy, Fun was not derided as a pile of manure, but heralded as a new insight into the way SL should market itself to people too stupid to download a viewer.
So, obviously, as my memory is longer than some peoples, it seems, I am not gonna be subjecting Rodvik to my transference, knowing how illusory words have become and knowing that the president of a company or a country may still be the glove-puppet of the Bean Counters.
Notwithstanding, however, it is encouraging when your eyes meet across a crowded room, and a stranger speaks some sweet words, like...
“I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity.”
Sounds good to me... someone who sees the value of privacy being determined by the user.
Likewise when he extolls the virtues of Content Creation, the gods know how often I’ve talked about the need to improve tools (the sooner the better).... however...
We have had promises before, and the recent offering from the Lab, the terrible “Improving Lines of Communication with The Community” ... (here) .. is both badly written with poor english and poorer ‘feel’ ( as commented on by Tateru...here).. and seems to me to point to the Great Improvement being “Do It Yourself”. By this I mean it looks like yet another job which the Boys should be doing is being farmed out to us.
Instead of customer support.... just ask another ‘resident’ ... use the Forum, use SL Answers, or the email lists... (here).....I read this as saying....”the less we have to do with you lot, the easier or lives will be”.
Which brings me round to Content Creation, and that great new aim of Rodvik to improve life for builders, so we can continue to make a great new world. ...User Groups... (here)... now am I stupid, or blind? It looks to me like there is no User Group dedicated to Builders, Content Creators or Artists..... and on the email list I am having the same problem.... erm.... maybe I missed it. Or, maybe, like the Artists Endowment to the Lindens, it’s still in a development stage (is it over a year ago that was announced??)...
So, I’m not falling in love with Rodvik just yet, though I have heard from an employee that he is very popular at the Lab too. I guess it’s that english accent (girls swoon) and the interest in Soccer (guys bond). If he wants me to go weak at the knees though...I’ll be wanting a few new tools.
A very good post on this whole subject I thought, comes from the talented pen of Lalo. As usual an insightful realisation, namely that whereas it took visionaries to build this space platform we call SL, it is now the colonists that run and control its future.
The culture we have built and the environment we have created is a tough one. We have regularly been disappointed, disillusioned and dis-spirited by the messages emanating from Planet Linden. They have sent malfunctioning software, idle spin, and increased taxation to us as we orbit Earth in this flimsy craft.
Adversity has tied us close together.
Having no Communication with those in control has tied us close too.
We know how it is to live here, we know what we need, and while we may be wooed by soft words, we have become a group who will need a bit of convincing.
So..me... I’m still waiting to see something useful come out of the Lab.
:)))
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Textures won’t load?
If, like me, you have experienced a wobble in the Force recently with the basic functions of SL not functioning properly then you would be feeling exactly like Juanita in her recent post.... confused and frustrated.
Now... I got this message for 3 days...
“.......The server is experiencing difficulties... uploading texture...xxxxxxxxx...please try again later.”.. well, something similar.
The implication in this message is “ the server has a life as hard as a wing-mirror spider and you are just overloading a poor unfortunate creature through your unceasing demands, please show some restraint.”
Anthropomorphism is a great word, however, we know that the server experiences nothing. It doesn’t know a difficulty from a fish cake. It only “experiences” either a 1 or an 0.
So, the truth is..one of two things...
“We have sacked so many people we can no longer provide basic services”
or
“Our machinery is so old and borked we can’t coax them into working properly anymore.”
Were I permitted to reply to the person who sends out this message, I would say...
“I am totally disinterested in your feeble excuses, do your job or I will take my custom elsewhere.”
The Lindens have, however, issued two pieces of “good news” to take your minds off this collapse of basic facilities, namely the news about Display Names and the news about Mesh.
So...don’t worry about the present, just think how good The Future is gonna be.
...and bear a thought for those poor noobs who have had their first experience of SL over the last 3 or 4 days.
Grey.
:(((
Now... I got this message for 3 days...
“.......The server is experiencing difficulties... uploading texture...xxxxxxxxx...please try again later.”.. well, something similar.
The implication in this message is “ the server has a life as hard as a wing-mirror spider and you are just overloading a poor unfortunate creature through your unceasing demands, please show some restraint.”
Anthropomorphism is a great word, however, we know that the server experiences nothing. It doesn’t know a difficulty from a fish cake. It only “experiences” either a 1 or an 0.
So, the truth is..one of two things...
“We have sacked so many people we can no longer provide basic services”
or
“Our machinery is so old and borked we can’t coax them into working properly anymore.”
Were I permitted to reply to the person who sends out this message, I would say...
“I am totally disinterested in your feeble excuses, do your job or I will take my custom elsewhere.”
The Lindens have, however, issued two pieces of “good news” to take your minds off this collapse of basic facilities, namely the news about Display Names and the news about Mesh.
So...don’t worry about the present, just think how good The Future is gonna be.
...and bear a thought for those poor noobs who have had their first experience of SL over the last 3 or 4 days.
Grey.
:(((
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Why not us.....??
Well, it's a rhetorical question, "why not us?"....as this is NOT a video taken from SL where anything from BL (ex) to music events would benefit greatly from being able to have 1000 avatars on a sim. No, SL once again is being left behind, this from ScienceSim...full report and links here.
Then the development of the Hypergrid is gonna be the next big thing, with the possibility to tp from grid to grid being possible already, having a bank account that works in 14 grids already (OMC its called) will turn tourism on it's head. LL could have used the L$ to gain this sort of market reach if they hadn't lost their minds chasing the fictional millions of Microsoft-baseball-capped geeks who think SL is crap...
....and not even a mesh in sight....but hey....big announcements coming up at SLCC where, I predict, LL will throw projects they haven't managed to develop themselves to the Free Workers of Open Source to do the work for them, and meshes might be one...we will see.....certainly Search seems too difficult for Sea Linden and her tiny team..(does she have one, or is she It?)....maybe The Free Workers could tackle that too while they are at it.???
Viewer 2.whatever will be thrown hooklineandsinker to the Freeworkers, but that's not new news. The aim is obviously to remove the stench of rotten code by calling it Kirstens S20...as an example...but rubbish is rubbish however it is named (to paraphrase Shakespere)..and Kirstens S20 is crap.... e.g. you can't have camera controls and movement controls in use at the same time....either look or walk??
Anyway the continued push to make a viewer that supports their future plans for selling advertising space and that we don't totally reject will certainly continue apace... I wonder if anything of any importance will be announced...??
Oh, yes, am I the only person who remembers talk of flexible sculpties...or is that meshes...I mentioned them 13 months ago on these pages ..........
"So...thats the Trouble With Linden Labs.... :))) Scientific Survey Statisics steeped in stupidity are called "listening to the community"... DUH! read a few blogs and comments instead!!
Give us scalable mega prims, give us shadows, give us flexible sculpties ....advertise SL in RL ... lower tier.... stop fannying around.... any one of those would be cool......with the amount of (my) money they have ...all of them are possible."
I am not holding my breath.
":))
Monday, 15 March 2010
mega prims
Well, I was, as usual 'listening in' to the chat on Builder's Brewery and the subject of mega prims came up. Not for the first time I heard a number of Old-Wives-Tales about how megas cause lag etc, etc.
So, I thought I would try and get to the bottom of it having lived and built with megas for over two years now and, with a 128 graphix card, I, more than many others, should be a fair judge of the lagging effect of megas.
I went to the LL webpage, (sorry, silly me, they are all Wiki now, not webpages), here... and, under the subject title ...
Prim density and lag
The following was written
"Using a mega prim instead of multiple regular prims (for a wall, a floor, etc), decreases the number of faces which need to be drawn by the viewer (or, depending on how "smart" is your graphic driver, the number of occlusions to calculate so to avoid drawing hidden faces) can be reduced dramatically. "..
.. OK, so rather dodgy grammar, but the point is, as I suspected, that there is no known relationship between lag and megas, they can possibly reduce lag.
but.... there may be downsides....
1. "Very large mega prims will not be rendered at all sometimes by the Viewer. The only approach to fix this would be to increase draw distance, therefore increasing lag. " ... sorry, Boys, that is complete BS. The draw distance I use is never dependent on the presence or absence of megas. That is only ever going to be a building issue, never a day-to-day one.
2. "Some problems with mega prims are obviously related to their huge size. They can reach far beyond parcel borders and disturb neighbors with their presence. Residents might not even recognize that it is a mega prim which is hindering them, since they might be inside the mega prim and therefor won't be able to see it." ....sorry...I'm not buying that excuse either. That point relates solely to very mega megas, not to anything under 50 meters in size.
In fact, the objections and excuses are ALL related to huge megas, there is, as far as I can see no good reason why LL has dragged their feet on resolving this issue.
Other grids have scalable prims.
So...the history is such.....
"In a Town Hall discussion at December 20th 2006, Linden Lab announced that they were going to allow the use of mega prims on private estates."
It was further discussed in 2007, 2008 and, even last year 2009 there was talk about owners of 'private estates' being allowed to use them, again...boringly enough, the huge megas were used as an excuse...
"While Linden Lab is still not supporting or endorsing the use of mega prims, developer Andrew Linden talked about future plans on what he called the "liberation" of mega prims. He is planning to
Allow parcel owners/managers to move (or maybe just return) objects that overlap their parcels.
Provide UI feedback to the Resident when moving their objects, indicating whether they overlap neighboring parcels.
Maybe provide real-time enforcement of parcel permissions. That is, allow parcel owners to set a paranoid bit “I don’t want anyone, or these specific people, from putting stuff on my parcel”
He noted that "once that is done then perhaps we will allow you to make prims/objects as large as you want as long as they fit on your parcel."
Now, that is just not good enough.
There is nothing to stop LL from increasing the scalable size of megas bit by bit. The next viewer could easily allow a 12x12 meter prim....the following viewer a 15x15 meter prim...etc...etc.
Bettina Tizzy has been campaigning for years on the NPIRL blog for scalable prims with no success. I will not be starting a crusade, I have better things to do with my time..... but, I do have to say that I think it is totally negligent of LL to dismiss, ignore, and sweep this topic under the carpet.
There is no excuse.
Shame on you, Boys.
:))
So, I thought I would try and get to the bottom of it having lived and built with megas for over two years now and, with a 128 graphix card, I, more than many others, should be a fair judge of the lagging effect of megas.
I went to the LL webpage, (sorry, silly me, they are all Wiki now, not webpages), here... and, under the subject title ...
Prim density and lag
The following was written
"Using a mega prim instead of multiple regular prims (for a wall, a floor, etc), decreases the number of faces which need to be drawn by the viewer (or, depending on how "smart" is your graphic driver, the number of occlusions to calculate so to avoid drawing hidden faces) can be reduced dramatically. "..
.. OK, so rather dodgy grammar, but the point is, as I suspected, that there is no known relationship between lag and megas, they can possibly reduce lag.
but.... there may be downsides....
1. "Very large mega prims will not be rendered at all sometimes by the Viewer. The only approach to fix this would be to increase draw distance, therefore increasing lag. " ... sorry, Boys, that is complete BS. The draw distance I use is never dependent on the presence or absence of megas. That is only ever going to be a building issue, never a day-to-day one.
2. "Some problems with mega prims are obviously related to their huge size. They can reach far beyond parcel borders and disturb neighbors with their presence. Residents might not even recognize that it is a mega prim which is hindering them, since they might be inside the mega prim and therefor won't be able to see it." ....sorry...I'm not buying that excuse either. That point relates solely to very mega megas, not to anything under 50 meters in size.
In fact, the objections and excuses are ALL related to huge megas, there is, as far as I can see no good reason why LL has dragged their feet on resolving this issue.
Other grids have scalable prims.
So...the history is such.....
"In a Town Hall discussion at December 20th 2006, Linden Lab announced that they were going to allow the use of mega prims on private estates."
It was further discussed in 2007, 2008 and, even last year 2009 there was talk about owners of 'private estates' being allowed to use them, again...boringly enough, the huge megas were used as an excuse...
"While Linden Lab is still not supporting or endorsing the use of mega prims, developer Andrew Linden talked about future plans on what he called the "liberation" of mega prims. He is planning to
Allow parcel owners/managers to move (or maybe just return) objects that overlap their parcels.
Provide UI feedback to the Resident when moving their objects, indicating whether they overlap neighboring parcels.
Maybe provide real-time enforcement of parcel permissions. That is, allow parcel owners to set a paranoid bit “I don’t want anyone, or these specific people, from putting stuff on my parcel”
He noted that "once that is done then perhaps we will allow you to make prims/objects as large as you want as long as they fit on your parcel."
Now, that is just not good enough.
There is nothing to stop LL from increasing the scalable size of megas bit by bit. The next viewer could easily allow a 12x12 meter prim....the following viewer a 15x15 meter prim...etc...etc.
Bettina Tizzy has been campaigning for years on the NPIRL blog for scalable prims with no success. I will not be starting a crusade, I have better things to do with my time..... but, I do have to say that I think it is totally negligent of LL to dismiss, ignore, and sweep this topic under the carpet.
There is no excuse.
Shame on you, Boys.
:))
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
How to be a Wizard
Many thanks to White for this transcript..... Wizzy did say to me that there are a few bits missing, I don't know, I just publish and be damned.....I'm sure if you have an serious, or silly, questions, then you can talk to the Wizard....
So....for those of you/us who missed the talk..
--- Wizard Gynoid: Precision Art Sculpture -----------------
Class transcript
The class took place February 22nd, 2010 at 6pm on the platform above the Burning Life Afterburn Art Project plot.
Wizard Gynoid prepared a display of various math sculptures to illustrate her lecture material. You can see some pictures of what was shown here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/white_lebed/sets/72157623480682604/
Also Wizard brought very useful free building tools which she was using to create her sculptures - various rezzers and scripts.
Those will be available till March 1st here
Go grab them while you can!
-----------------------------------------------
[18:02] White Lebed: Hello, Everybody! Welcome to another session of Burniversity. Many of you have admired Wizard Gynoid's perfect math sculptures but never knew how she could make them. Today we will have a chance to learn a few secrets and find out more about one of the most interesting art styles - math art. Please, wellcome - Wizard Gynoid!
[18:02] Benski Korhonen: Clapping!
[18:02] Wizard Gynoid: yay
[18:02] Corcosman Voom applauds
[18:02] Tomkin Euler: Yay!
[18:02] Miso Susanowa: can we use calculators?
[18:02] Nickola Martynov: claps
[18:02] White Lebed: from this point point the chat log will be recorded for publishing
[18:02] Scottius Polke: Applause!!!
[18:02] Scottius Polke: Applause!!
[18:03] Wizard Gynoid: I have quite a few of my own objects scattered around here, some with VERY high prim counts.
[18:03] Wizard Gynoid: If you are having a hard time with lag and it's taking a while to rez everything, you have the option of setting your draw distance down to the minimum and your computer won't have to work so hard to render them.
[18:04] Wizard Gynoid: I'm about to get chatty about my own passion in Second Life, that is to say building precise artistic sculptures from geometric objects.
[18:04] Wizard Gynoid: Have you ever seen Scope Cleaver's architectural builds?
[18:04] Tomkin Euler: Nay..
[18:04] Corcosman Voom: Yes
[18:04] Wizard Gynoid: Scope's impressive non-linear architecture has been featured at Burning Life and on the Princeton sims and elsewhere.
[18:05] Wizard Gynoid: Have you had the pleasure of seeing Seifert Surface's mathematical objects?
[18:05] Corcosman Voom: Yes
[18:05] Tomkin Euler: yep..
[18:05] Wizard Gynoid: If not, check them out on his sim “xyz”.
[18:05] Wizard Gynoid: Have you seen the big perfect geodesic domes at Burning Life?
[18:05] Wizard Gynoid: Have you wondered how these things were built?
[18:06] Wizard Gynoid: Perhaps you have tried to build simple geometrical objects, using nothing more than the Second Life viewer UI (User Interface) and more specifically, the Object Editer.
[18:06] Wizard Gynoid: Have you tried to make things like this?
[18:06] 3d2 Pintens: o yes
[18:06] Corcosman Voom: Yes
[18:06] Tomkin Euler: yes..
[18:06] Nickola Martynov nods
[18:07] Tomkin Euler: well, no, actually..
[18:07] Nickola Martynov: the operative word is 'tried'
[18:07] Wizard Gynoid: Or these:
[18:08] Wizard Gynoid: If you have tried to make objects like this by hand, like I have, then you know how difficult it is.
[18:08] Wizard Gynoid: First of all, you have to have incredible patience.
[18:08] Wizard Gynoid: You have to have a basic knowledge of plane geometry.
[18:09] Wizard Gynoid: You have to be able to calculate angles, and determine the placement of x number of faces.
[18:09] Wizard Gynoid: You have to create the faces and place them in the proper location, with the proper “rotation.”
[18:10] Wizard Gynoid: A Dodecahedron
[18:10] Wizard Gynoid: This is not a trivial task, to say the least.
[18:10] Wizard Gynoid: How do you make that pentagon face? And how do you place 12 of them in perfect alignment and rotation?
[18:11] Wizard Gynoid: Once you've spent countless hours struggling to build these objects by hand, then you would no doubt gladly accept the help that scripted rezzers can give you.
[18:11] Corcosman Voom: Indeed
[18:11] Wizard Gynoid: I'm going to chat about some of those tools and how they can be used by artists to create sculpture.
[18:12] Wizard Gynoid: This is Nand Nerd's Radial Noob Rezzer.
[18:12] Wizard Gynoid: Nand Nerd is one of Second Life's best geometric scripters.
[18:12] Wizard Gynoid: #rez
[18:12] Tomkin Euler: woo hoo..
[18:12] 3d2 Pintens: ooooo
[18:12] Wizard Gynoid: I'm just demonstrating a simple geometric rezzer here.
[18:12] Nickola Martynov: wow
[18:13] Wizard Gynoid: delete
[18:13] Wizard Gynoid: Nand once rezzed a 256 meter, sim-sized 6,000 prim sphere. I've seen pictures.
[18:14] Oberon Onmura: Does Nand make that available to artists?
[18:14] Wizard Gynoid: you can ask him oberon.
[18:14] Oberon Onmura: nice
[18:14] Wizard Gynoid: Cadroe Murphy is one of SL's oldest geometric scripters. He has a couple of helpful rezzers that have been around for a while.
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Sides: 8.000000
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Radius: 4.000000
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Height: 1.000000
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Hollow: 0.000000
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Z Offset: 0.000000
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Mode: Ring
[18:14] RingMaker1.03: Color: <0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000>
[18:15] Wizard Gynoid: This is Ring Maker.
[18:15] Wizard Gynoid: Ring Maker will rez objects in a perfect ring, hence the name.
[18:16] Tomkin Euler: huh..
[18:16] Wizard Gynoid: Ring Maker is a freebie tool and is over there with my buddy Philip Linden.
[18:17] White Lebed: many of those rezzers are available on xstreet for minimal fee or free - they are very easy to find, you just need to know what to look for
[18:17] Oberon Onmura: I've played with it a bit
[18:17] Wizard Gynoid: i have a bunch of these rezzers available for free next to Philip Linden over there
[18:17] Wizard Gynoid: The Cadroe Lathe is above my head.
[18:18] Wizard Gynoid: Watch this basic object being rezzed.
[18:19] Tomkin Euler: Goo...
[18:19] Wizard Gynoid: lag doesn't seem to be too bad
[18:19] Wizard Gynoid: knock on prim
[18:19] Corcosman Voom: famous last words
[18:19] Corcosman Voom: : )
[18:20] Romper Lohner: ty for the tools Wizard
[18:20] Wizard Gynoid: The Cadroe Lathe is only $500L, and can be found here: http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=56642
[18:20] Wizard Gynoid: btw, i don't have a deal with cadroe. hehe
[18:21] Wizard Gynoid: The Cadroe Lathe is only $500L, and can be found here: http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=56642
[18:21] Wizard Gynoid: Cadroe made a more sophisticated rezzer, called the Shape Maker. That is above my head, and above the Lathe.
[18:21] Oberon Onmura: wizard - do you drop the object to be rezzed into the lathe?
[18:22] Wizard Gynoid: no, you define what you want to rez with the settings
[18:22] Wizard Gynoid: Watch as I rez a torus with it.
[18:22] Oberon Onmura: I mean, the pieces out of which the object is made ...
[18:22] Wizard Gynoid: i love this part
[18:23] Wizard Gynoid: Any Comments or Questions while that is rezzing?
[18:23] Romper Lohner: !how many prims when done/
[18:23] Oberon Onmura: I'd want to use prescripted units
[18:23] Tomkin Euler: it's like vacuum deposition.. spitting chemicals onto silicon wafers..
[18:24] Wizard Gynoid: the number of prims depends on the settings you define
[18:24] Wizard Gynoid: a sim-sized sphere can be 6000 prims
[18:24] Wizard Gynoid: i think i might have the record with my 6,672 E8. ;-)
[18:25] Takni Miklos: whats an ee ate?
[18:25] Wizard Gynoid: you try sculpties. that saves prims. but this lecture isn't about sculpties
[18:25] Areal Loonie: will any just move pre-existing prims? or do they all rez new prims?
[18:26] Wizard Gynoid: they rez new prims
[18:26] Corcosman Voom: You've done some things on Reaction Grid....I presume all your scripts worked there?
[18:26] Wizard Gynoid: i've tried doing sculpties, but so far they don't turn me on.
[18:26] Wizard Gynoid: most scripts work on Raction Grid, open sim, with a few minor fixes
[18:26] Tomkin Euler: for an instant, it's a 'shroom..
[18:27] Romper Lohner: it would make a good mold for sculpty creation "note' to self
[18:27] Wizard Gynoid: The Shape Maker is a freebie and I've put it over by Philip Linden there for you to pounce on.
[18:28] Wizard Gynoid: that worked pretty well.
[18:28] Wizard Gynoid: Seifert Surface has made a few sophisticated rezzers.
[18:28] Wizard Gynoid: two of them are here
[18:28] Oberon Onmura: is there a set menu of shapes? or is it open-ended?
[18:29] Wizard Gynoid: seifert's torus and tapering torus rezzers
[18:29] Wizard Gynoid: ha i didn't know seifert was here.
[18:29] Wizard Gynoid: yaya
[18:30] Wizard Gynoid: ok, so let's demonstrate seiferts torus rezzers
[18:30] White Lebed: those tools are pretty useful for architectural builds - and as you know the 2010 Burning Life theme is Metropolis :)
[18:30] Wizard Gynoid: it's a bit laggy but they seem to be working
[18:32] Wizard Gynoid: now, i like these because you can scale them. you can take pieces and use them in sculpture
[18:32] Wizard Gynoid: scope uses these i think in his architectural builds
[18:33] Wizard Gynoid: the tapering is finishing up
[18:33] Wizard Gynoid: Pieces of these shapes can be used in bigger sculptures.
[18:34] Wizard Gynoid: seifert has very graciously made these available to this class.
[18:34] Corcosman Voom: Three cheers for Seifert : )
[18:34] Oberon Onmura: :-)
[18:34] Sabrinaa Nightfire: thank you, Seifert
[18:34] Wizard Gynoid: This is Seifert's Parametric Surface Rezzer
[18:35] Corcosman Voom: Hehe
[18:36] Oberon Onmura: Seifert - are these Mono scripted?
[18:36] Oberon Onmura: just thinking about the Mono rezzing bug
[18:37] Wizard Gynoid: i love this parametric
[18:37] Oberon Onmura: hehe
[18:38] Wizard Gynoid: All of these rezzers have scripts and settings that can be tweaked to create great non-linear shapes, that can be made into sculptures.
[18:38] Wizard Gynoid: You can go directly into the scripts and change settings, or you can read the README files in the Contents for instructions.
[18:38] Wizard Gynoid: These shape rezzers are the virtual painter's brush, the virtual sculptor's chisel...
[18:38] Takni Miklos: and where do we find those rezzers and scripts?
[18:39] Wizard Gynoid: Now, there are other kinds of tools, other kinds of rezzers.
[18:39] Wizard Gynoid: Perhaps you've seen the rezzers that will rez the major stars in the immediate vicinity around the Earth, or the rezzers that will rez a molecule.
[18:39] Tomkin Euler: I've seen lots of graphs.. stock values..
[18:39] Wizard Gynoid: These rezzers are creating spheres at defined points in a grid around the rezzer.
[18:40] Wizard Gynoid: I would demonstrate but that would be messy here.
[18:40] Wizard Gynoid: And for good demonstration purposes we need to have a convenient “kill/die” command to aid in easy cleanup.
[18:40] Wizard Gynoid: Some of these rezzers have one, but most don't, so you have to delete by hand. And that would be difficult here.
[18:41] Explorer Dastardly: all the old hippies can make a geodesic dome, lol..
[18:41] Wizard Gynoid: Around us I have placed some examples of what I think are some of my best creations.
[18:41] Wizard Gynoid: Most of these were built with a rezzer that first identifies the points where those spheres go.
[18:41] Wizard Gynoid: These are called the “vertices.”
[18:41] Wizard Gynoid: The rezzer reads the positions (the coordinates) of the vertices from a notecard, and then places a sphere on that point.
[18:42] Wizard Gynoid: Various mathematical formulas can be used to determine these vertice points.
[18:42] Wizard Gynoid: The software program Mathematica has been helpful to calculate the vertices of some of these objects.
[18:42] Oberon Onmura: how do the coords get onto the notecard?
[18:42] Wizard Gynoid: cut and paste oberon
[18:42] Oberon Onmura: hmm
[18:42] Wizard Gynoid: The next step is to “connect the dots.”
[18:42] Wizard Gynoid: How do we do that?
[18:43] Wizard Gynoid: We do that with a script that sends “intelligent” struts out to connect a pair of vertices.
[18:43] Wizard Gynoid: The strut is “intelligent” because it contains a script inside it.
[18:43] Wizard Gynoid: A notecard identifies the vertex pairs, and a script inside the rezzed strut shapes, orients, rotates and sizes the strut to fit between the two vertice points.
[18:43] Oberon Onmura: cool
[18:43] Wizard Gynoid: Some of these rezzers are based on work by Lionel Forager and Catherine Omega Heavy Industries.
[18:44] Wizard Gynoid: An example of this can be found here: http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=LibraryBezierCurveDemo
[18:44] Tomkin Euler: handy.. I have always wanted a board stretcher in firstLife..
[18:44] Wizard Gynoid: My own work has been largely dependent on the scripting genius of Desdemona Enfield.
[18:44] Wizard Gynoid: With a rezzer of this kind, we can draw “lines” between points.
[18:45] Wizard Gynoid: Desdemona has been generous enough to make one of these rezzers available to the public domain.
[18:45] Wizard Gynoid: And I will demonstrate it here and now.
[18:45] projection - v1a: By your command: version=28Aug08, free=7301
[18:46] projection - v1a: rezzing 27 points
[18:46] projection - v1a: rezzing 216 lines
[18:46] Wizard Gynoid: This particular objects starts with 27 point/vertices.
[18:46] Nickola Martynov: oooo
[18:46] Wizard Gynoid: The script then connects the 27 points with 216 line segments, for a total prim count of 243.
[18:46] Wizard Gynoid: Note that the finished object is not a linked set.
[18:47] Merlin Gray: and to thing we used to have to use toothpicks and a ton of glue
[18:47] Wizard Gynoid: This is similar to the technique I used to rez my 6,672 prim E8 Polytope – vertices connected by edge lines, an earlier example of which is displayed close by to the West, just across the sim line.
[18:47] Wizard Gynoid: Next to that E8 is a 2,889 prim Klein Bottle. The same basic principles were used – vertices connected by edge lines.
[18:47] projection - v1a: lengths in mm: [1236, 1070, 1902, 2000]
[18:47] projection - v1a: counts of lengths: [60, 60, 36, 60]
[18:47] projection - v1a: By your command: version=28Aug08, free=7301
[18:48] White Lebed: I guess we need another class - how to find 6000+ prims in SL to play with
[18:48] Wizard Gynoid: The script to rez the Klein Bottle is open source and available here: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/2889-working-with-very-large-linksets-in-opensim/
[18:48] Wizard Gynoid: Desdemona's rezzer is also available free of charge over there by my friend, Philip Linden.
[18:48] Oberon Onmura: the link limit is what? 256 prims?
[18:48] Corcosman Voom: How To Cozy Up To Sim Owners, White
[18:48] Wizard Gynoid: true oberon. altho not true in open simulator.
[18:48] Oberon Onmura: aha
[18:48] Sabrinaa Nightfire: lol
[18:49] Wizard Gynoid: i have linked this 2889 prim object into one object on Reaction Grid.
[18:49] Oberon Onmura: cool
[18:49] Wizard Gynoid: Questions before I move on?
[18:49] Wizard Gynoid: ha, sure way to crash a sim free
[18:50] Wizard Gynoid: For artistic purposes, sometimes we like to create textures on the surfaces of the faces of these geometric objects.
[18:50] Wizard Gynoid: These textures can be animated, so the entire sculpture comes alive.
[18:50] Wizard Gynoid: An example of a great SL artist who uses this technique is my friend Glyph Graves.
[18:51] Wizard Gynoid: Glyph likes to create geometric objects and then applies animated textures to the surfaces, with lots of alpha (transparency).
[18:51] Wizard Gynoid: Let's take this one step further.
[18:51] Wizard Gynoid: We already have a rezzer that creates wireframe sculptures.
[18:51] Wizard Gynoid: What if I want to apply FACES to the wireframe?
[18:52] poly projector - v4g: [0]: By your command: version=3Dec09
[18:53] Wizard Gynoid: Check this out:
[18:53] poly projector - v4g: [1]: executing: rhombicuboctahedron: vertices
[18:53] Wizard Gynoid: Note that this rezzer is rezzing the vertices, then connecting the dots with lines.
[18:53] poly projector - v4g: [2]: executing: rhombicuboctahedron: edges
[18:53] Wizard Gynoid: However, it goes one step further and places FACES between the vertices.
[18:53] Wizard Gynoid: In effect, we have made the wire frame sculpture into a solid object.
[18:54] Wizard Gynoid: or a skinned object
[18:54] Wizard Gynoid: rather
[18:54] Wizard Gynoid: Note that we are creating both triangle and square FACES.
[18:54] poly projector - v4g: [3]: executing: rhombicuboctahedron: triangle faces
[18:54] Wizard Gynoid: Faces like this can be difficult to animate textures on, but it can be done.
[18:54] poly projector - v4g: [4]: executing: rhombicuboctahedron: quadrilateral faces
[18:55] poly projector - v4g: [5]: done
[18:55] Wizard Gynoid: yay that worked
[18:55] Nickola Martynov: bravo
[18:55] Wizard Gynoid: that's desdemona's masterpiece script
[18:55] Corcosman Voom: Interesting that it does the quadrilateral faces with triangles also
[18:56] Wizard Gynoid: Are there any Questions? I have two.
[18:56] Wizard Gynoid: Are these geometric constructions of mine Art?
[18:56] Oberon Onmura: so ... you'll texture each face individually?
[18:56] Wizard Gynoid: What do you think?
[18:57] Wizard Gynoid: God is a geometer
[18:57] Nickola Martynov: Well...it could be argued that this is just engineering
[18:57] Corcosman Voom: : )
[18:58] Merlin Gray: ....and then it could be argued that engineering is an art form by the broadest definition
[18:58] Romper Lohner: DNA is geometrical as well, beauty to the eye of those that can see it
[18:58] Nickola Martynov: ART!!!!
[18:59] Merlin Gray: DidnNickola..lol
[18:59] Wizard Gynoid: thank you very much for your kind attention.
[18:59] Wizard Gynoid: SOCK!!!!!!!
[18:59] Merlin Gray: ***** APPPPPPPLLLLAAAUUUSSSSEEEEEEE***********
[18:59] Corcosman Voom: Thank you, Wizrd. Great presentation
[18:59] White Lebed: thank you Wizzy!
[18:59] Oberon Onmura: yay wizard!
[18:59] Nickola Martynov: thank you Wizard
[18:59] Wizard Gynoid: SOCK!!!!!!!
[19:00] Merlin Gray: I was in a conversation about making Polys when your notecard came out last week..thanks for this
[19:00] Wizard Gynoid: your very welcome. i had fun.
[19:00] Nickola Martynov: Was the surface rezzer one of the freebies?
[19:00] Tomkin Euler: Whee!
[19:00] White Lebed: one more tool in your art box :) go make something amazing!
[19:00] 3d2 Pintens: where's phillip?
[19:01] Wizard Gynoid: philip is free too, but you have to go find him.
[19:01] Romper Lohner: ty wizard
[19:01] Feathers Boa: philip linden is my love child
[19:01] Sabrinaa Nightfire: thanks, Wizzy
[19:01] Miso Susanowa: "Art is not eternal, boys" - Ken Kesey
[19:01] White Lebed: after this difficult class do we deserve a recess?
[19:01] SciFiSancy Chaplynski: Thank you Wizard:)
[19:02] Lampoon Destiny: are you accepting 'tippage'?
[19:02] FreeWee Ling: I'll volunteer to be the final arbiter of what is art. Just show it to me and I'll tell you ;)
[19:02] White Lebed: during March - no classes! we will have the Porta Potty grand show
[19:02] Miso Susanowa: do we get extra credit for this one White?
[19:02] White Lebed: yes, Miso
[19:02] White Lebed: if you make a Klein bottle
[19:02] Wizard Gynoid: i'm amazed i didn't crash
[19:02] White Lebed: and fill it with something tasty
[19:03] White Lebed: no, we went well
[19:03] Feathers Boa: okies everyone
[19:03] Miso Susanowa: yes lets have a round of applause for the sim not crashing!
[19:03] Feathers Boa: have fun and stuff
[19:03] Miso Susanowa: YAY!
[19:03] Miso Susanowa: *claps!!!!*
[19:03] Corcosman Voom: I keep hoping somethng from all tese braIny folks will sink in by osmosis
[19:03] White Lebed: thank you again, guys for wearing light stuff
[19:03] Nickola Martynov: ・*゜*APPLAUSE*゜*・
[19:03] Feathers Boa: i am outta here!
[19:03] Mab MacMoragh: ♪♫♥ Applauds!!! ♥♫♪
[19:03] Tomkin Euler: fun on a bun...
[19:03] Feathers Boa blows kisses around the room
[19:03] Wizard Gynoid: bye feathers
[19:03] Nickola Martynov: Was the parametric surface rezzer included in the scripts?
[19:04] Wizard Gynoid: i think it was yes nickola
[19:04] White Lebed: someone had questions for Seifert?
[19:04] Nickola Martynov: I don't see it over there :-(
[19:04] Miso Susanowa: ack Waya got off my feet :(
[19:05] Miso Susanowa: *puts socks back on*
[19:05] Tomkin Euler: it was there when I walked over...
[19:05] Scottius Polke: SOCK!!!!!!!
[19:05] Miso Susanowa: SOCK!!!!!!!
[19:05] Waya Sion: lol
[19:05] Scarp Godenot: I think it must be some secret language they have going.....
[19:05] White Lebed: waya behave
[19:05] Scottius Polke: SOCK!!!!!!!
[19:05] DeadheadDMT Infinity: I was multitasking all the way through... I will have to read the chat history later to see what programs you used
[19:06] Scarp Godenot dodges the sock
[19:06] Kazuhiro Aridian: sock?
[19:06] Miso Susanowa: i saw it, but it disappeared, maybe it was "bought" as a original
[19:06] White Lebed: I think the kids ARE ready for a recess
[19:06] Kazuhiro Aridian: lawl
[19:06] White Lebed: looks like overheat from all this info
[19:06] Tomkin Euler: Hi, Seifert.. what were the functions?
[19:06] Miso Susanowa: Scarp: if you can dodge a sock, you can dodge a ball.
[19:06] Scarp Godenot: heh
[19:06] Tomkin Euler: sin(x=y) maybe?
[19:06] Seifert Surface: oh
[19:07] Miso Susanowa: let x =... x
[19:07] Tomkin Euler: (x+y), rather..
[19:07] Seifert Surface: i think its sin(x+y)
[19:07] White Lebed: Wizzy, can you leave the rezzers here till the end of Feb?
[19:07] Wizard Gynoid: i hope someone took pictures
[19:07] Waya Sion: if there's a recess, whats the next class?
[19:07] Waya Sion: lol
[19:07] Kazuhiro Aridian: do we get cookies?
[19:07] Miso Susanowa: the class of all classes that is not part of the given class, of course
[19:07] quadrapop Lane: I diod wiz - still am :)
[19:07] Tomkin Euler: Rocking..
[19:07] White Lebed: I will publish the transcript and some people might want to come and get those
[19:07] Wizard Gynoid: ✿⁂✿¨*:•.•:*''* KIMBA *''*:•.•:*¨✿⁂✿
---------------------------------------------------------
You can find transcripts from other classes on the Transcript Board
just click on the boxes - they have notecards.
Also I send all the transcripts to the subscribers of the Afterburn Art Program list. You can join it by clicking on the kiosk right next to the board.
-------------------
White Lebed - the Burning Life Art Department Lead; the Curator of Afterburn Art Program
white.lebed@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/white_lebed
....end of transcript.....
.....of course, having the tools helps...but you need a Wizzy brain too...
:))
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
New skin, with blue stripes.
Spent a little while making 6 different make-ups for this one too. It's not for sale yet,....IM me if you are keen.....
Again tho I am left with this problem of 'realism'. 99.9% of clothes available to buy in SL are directed at 'realistic' humanoid beings. Now, that's only natural, after all...99.9% of avatars are probably of the two legged variety.
Faeries, warlords and tinies wear humanoid style clothes... Na'vi Avatar avatars wear native american clothes... but what of the furries, dragons etc...well, dragons obviously go nakkid, as a lot of furries do....still...
....have to get my thinking cap on.... time to catch up with Gilles again... hmm.....I can feel another shopping spree coming on....
:)))
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
999,999,995,904 meters (+25)
Well, fully equipped with the necessary safety gear, Wizard Gynoid today made a third attempt on her world record.
[3:05] Wizard Gynoid: how many 0s in trillion
[3:05] soror Nishi: 9?
[3:06] soror Nishi: yes
[3:06] soror Nishi: 9
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: no that's a billion
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: 12
[3:06] soror Nishi: o
[3:06] soror Nishi: ok
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: hehe
[3:07] soror Nishi is not as good at maths as her Sis
She decimated, centimated and millimated her previous best of 2 billion meters and tped up to nearly a Trillion meters.
Although she sent a tp and I was more than happy to follow, the tp system couldn't quite handle the billion kilometer distance, which is not anything I will be posting a ticket about, after all, that isn't something one does very often.
Now, her Emerald radar shows me as being 999,999,995,904 meters away, and, I am actually at 25 meters already....so the combined height is in fact 999,999,995,929 meters.
On returning to the surface Wizzy experienced a temporary loss of vision, but examination of her eyeballs revealed no permanent damage.
She assumed, unwillingly, a horizontal pose for some minutes. It looked very much like she was kissing the ground, a bit like a pope, which she isn't.
Unwitting bystander Xeon Quartz was also a witness to this historic event and was somewhat bemused by it all. ([3:23] Wizard Gynoid: remember xeon. fame is fleeting. [3:23] Wizard Gynoid: don't let it go to your head.)
[3:19] Wizard Gynoid: how do i look
[3:20] Xeon Quartz: a bit scary ..
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid looks around
[3:20] soror Nishi: nope you look fine
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: scary? is my head on?
[3:20] soror Nishi checks Wizzy's pulse
[3:20] Xeon Quartz: not sure
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: i lost my head at 2 billion meters.
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: remember sor.
[3:21] soror Nishi: yes
[3:21] soror Nishi: you said
[3:21] soror Nishi: well...you may have grown a bit again, of course
[3:21] Wizard Gynoid: i tend to lose my head when i'm under pressure.
Convinced that she had grown through a stretching process, we checked her height ....however, she was still only 7 foot 2 inches, so the effect must have been a psychological stress-induced delusion. We have yet to see if permanent psychological damage has been done.
As this little record has been well read by the Boys, I would like to suggest to the Lab that a memorial be erected on this ground for future generations to visit. Historic events should be marked ... they constitute our culture.
Wizzy will no doubt be publishing all photos on her Flickr site.... here..
A great adventure, and one to be commemorated.
:)))
Exploring the psyche
I am often asked where my inspiration comes from and I always think, well, it comes from the same place your does. It comes from that part of my psyche that dreams come from.
Jung was amazed at an early age that he could not control his dreams and that lead him to conclude in later life that they came from the same place that the weird ideas, images and “content” that his psychotic (an old term, I know) patients were at the mercy of. He called this part of the psyche, the unconscious.
He disagreed with Freud that these were merely repressed conscious ideas (Freud dealt mainly with neurotic patients), seeing some content so strange and ‘foreign’ to the individual’s experiences and conscious knowledge that it had to be more than just repression.
Because the unconscious is not controlled by consciousness (by definition) it acts as a free agent, it is autonomous. It is not MY unconscious, that implies that my ego controls it.
As the unconscious is a part of the psyche then consciousness is not the totality of the individual. The totality of the individual is only fully manifest when both parts of this duality work together.
So... exploring this part of our psyche is integral to developing as a ‘whole’ person.
Folk tales tell of treasure to be found either in the depths of the ocean (a pearl of great price, a golden ring in a fish's mouth) or in the bowels of the earth (guarded by a terrible dragon), and these gems are things that have been buried (maybe not even by ourselves)... like stuff in a large inventory.
Now, once you start on this path, looking into the mirror, the first thing that pops up is the Shadow. This isn’t a person, but in it’s manifestation shows a trace of personality, like a being in a dream.
...and it’s enough to
“frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we project everything negative into the environment. [blame others]. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least bought up the personal unconscious.” (Jung)
...and I have written of shame and fear before in these pages.
now...why would we bother exploring?
“The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form.”
So...we have to learn to get along, not something that our traditional western culture makes very easy for us.
“It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalised into harmlessness.”
Jung says how difficult this obviously is, to forgive ourself these weaknesses but...
“Nevertheless, the account has to be settled sooner or later.”
...sounds like a good place to start...
So...VWs allow me to see my own behaviour in a totally new way because I am standing outside myself looking in. Normally (RL) I am standing inside looking out, a situation where the tendency to blame others is far easier.
Now, the shadow is the first , and most obvious of the ‘personalities’ that an explorer is likely to meet in the unconscious, but not, by any means, the only one there.
The anima/animus encounter I will tackle later as it is a far more complicated experience to blog...:)) suffice it to say that there are also positive guides, helpers and generally compensatory influences hidden in the unconscious (pearls and gems) with no other aim than to help you find balance.
Star Wars, a tale based on western christianity, presents, like many such tales a very black/white view on the Dark Side. This is unfortunate as the meeting with the shadow can be crippling in its paralysing effect. It also provides an excuse for giving up. In a previous post I try to highlight this.
And... in defense of the Dark Side ..... let me ask:
Without laziness would you not be a stressed-out workaholic?
Without pride wouldn’t you be a door mat?
Without aggression would you get stuff done/ be heard?
Without imperfections wouldn’t you be a total pain in the butt?
....and your friends love you...IN SPITE OF... or, maybe because you are as imperfect as them.
So, your shadow isn’t something to antagonise over, you can have plastic surgery if you hate your big nose, but your shadow you just have to learn to live with.
*spooky music* ........ under the carpet swept the dark things grow, they don’t die by being repressed.
...so, explore... make a really bad alt to explore your badness.......
This is a psychic laboratory, if you want/dare to use it like that.
:)))
Jung was amazed at an early age that he could not control his dreams and that lead him to conclude in later life that they came from the same place that the weird ideas, images and “content” that his psychotic (an old term, I know) patients were at the mercy of. He called this part of the psyche, the unconscious.
He disagreed with Freud that these were merely repressed conscious ideas (Freud dealt mainly with neurotic patients), seeing some content so strange and ‘foreign’ to the individual’s experiences and conscious knowledge that it had to be more than just repression.
Because the unconscious is not controlled by consciousness (by definition) it acts as a free agent, it is autonomous. It is not MY unconscious, that implies that my ego controls it.
As the unconscious is a part of the psyche then consciousness is not the totality of the individual. The totality of the individual is only fully manifest when both parts of this duality work together.
So... exploring this part of our psyche is integral to developing as a ‘whole’ person.
Folk tales tell of treasure to be found either in the depths of the ocean (a pearl of great price, a golden ring in a fish's mouth) or in the bowels of the earth (guarded by a terrible dragon), and these gems are things that have been buried (maybe not even by ourselves)... like stuff in a large inventory.
Now, once you start on this path, looking into the mirror, the first thing that pops up is the Shadow. This isn’t a person, but in it’s manifestation shows a trace of personality, like a being in a dream.
...and it’s enough to
“frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we project everything negative into the environment. [blame others]. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least bought up the personal unconscious.” (Jung)
...and I have written of shame and fear before in these pages.
now...why would we bother exploring?
“The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form.”
So...we have to learn to get along, not something that our traditional western culture makes very easy for us.
“It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalised into harmlessness.”
Jung says how difficult this obviously is, to forgive ourself these weaknesses but...
“Nevertheless, the account has to be settled sooner or later.”
...sounds like a good place to start...
So...VWs allow me to see my own behaviour in a totally new way because I am standing outside myself looking in. Normally (RL) I am standing inside looking out, a situation where the tendency to blame others is far easier.
Now, the shadow is the first , and most obvious of the ‘personalities’ that an explorer is likely to meet in the unconscious, but not, by any means, the only one there.
The anima/animus encounter I will tackle later as it is a far more complicated experience to blog...:)) suffice it to say that there are also positive guides, helpers and generally compensatory influences hidden in the unconscious (pearls and gems) with no other aim than to help you find balance.
Star Wars, a tale based on western christianity, presents, like many such tales a very black/white view on the Dark Side. This is unfortunate as the meeting with the shadow can be crippling in its paralysing effect. It also provides an excuse for giving up. In a previous post I try to highlight this.
And... in defense of the Dark Side ..... let me ask:
Without laziness would you not be a stressed-out workaholic?
Without pride wouldn’t you be a door mat?
Without aggression would you get stuff done/ be heard?
Without imperfections wouldn’t you be a total pain in the butt?
....and your friends love you...IN SPITE OF... or, maybe because you are as imperfect as them.
So, your shadow isn’t something to antagonise over, you can have plastic surgery if you hate your big nose, but your shadow you just have to learn to live with.
*spooky music* ........ under the carpet swept the dark things grow, they don’t die by being repressed.
...so, explore... make a really bad alt to explore your badness.......
This is a psychic laboratory, if you want/dare to use it like that.
:)))
Friday, 18 December 2009
Machinima Competition at UWA
Just announced, a new competition from UWA.
"WHAT: MachinimUWA : The UWA Machinima Challenge
WHEN: Submissions are open 18th December 2009 - 31st January 2010
All entries will be displayed on the University of Western Australia (UWA) Second Life Blog. http://uwainsl.blogspot.com
Winners will be announced during a ceremony in February
WHERE: In front of Winthrop Tower (Main SIM of the UWA presence) & starting point of all Machinima
THEME: Architecture, Teaching, Research & Arts on the UWA sims
THE CHALLENGE
Create a Machinima between 2 and 5 minutes in length that captures the 4 main elements thats make up the heart of the University of Western Australia SIMS. These elements are the RL architecture, the teaching, the research and the arts. The purpose would be to show that UWA's presence in SL is comprehensive and covering all these areas, creating true bridges between SL & RL for prospective students, current students, staff, alumni & the community (this is the snapshot - more details below). Note that there are 3 SIMS making up the UWA presence, namely UWA, Uni of WA & WASP Land, and this challenge covers all 3.
Method of Entry:
* Load the Machinima anywhere, and provide the link to both Jayjay Zifanwe & White Lebed (co-hosts of MachinimUWA)
Closing Date:
* Midnight 31st January 2010 (winners annouced in Mid-Feb 2010)"
so....there follows the basic idea of the machinima for exact Slurls and details get Jayjay or Quad to send you a notecard.....
OVERVIEW OF UWA (RL) - http://www.uwa.edu.au/
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a leading Australian research university and has an international reputation for excellence, innovation and enterprise. A member of the Australian 'Group of Eight' research universities, it is also among Australia's leading research universities. Sitting on the banks of the Swan River, the UWA Crawley campus is the oldest in Western Australia and among the most picturesque in the nation with its grand sandstone and terracotta buildings sitting among elegant heritage-listed gardens.
UWA Logo Texture: (get inworld from JayJay Zifanwe or Quadrapop Lane)
MORE on the CHALLENGE
As follows will link some of the key areas that could be looked at in the preparation of the Machinima. The Machinima should start with a view of the Winthrop Clock Tower & the Reflecting Pond which is an icon of the state of Western Australia. Graduation ceremonies are carried out here, and it is named after UWA's founder, Sir John Winthrop Hackett.
Start Point of Machinima : Winthrop Tower & Reflecting Pond (RL & SL location)
The rest of the following areas can be used (or not) as you see fit, and in any order you choose.
UWA Sunken Gardens (RL & SL location)
This is a place of great significance to the staff and alumni of the University. Many many people get married in this location in RL every week, and it is a place of nostalgia, and quite a few people who got married in RL at the sunken gardens, have been here looking at the SL version of the place they exchanged vows.
UWA Sky Theatre (SL only location)
This is a theatre we have created for use by Professor Wade Halvorson of the School of Business and Professor Mark Pegrum of the Graduate School of Education. Profesor Halvorson ran an entire 2nd year Bachelor of Commerce Unit using this as his primary location. It was run for the first time ever this semeter, in a unit called Electronic Communications Strategy.
UWA Square Kilometer Array - SKA (to be created in RL)
Now, these are replicas of telescopes that will be built in the Australian Outback, at a place called Boolardy station. 40 of them will be built for a smaller project caller ASKAP, or the Australian Square Kilometyer Array Pathfinder. Currently the final telescope design is presented in SL and the unique characteristic of these dishes is illustrated, namely the three rotational axes where most telescope dishes only have 2. Australia is in a battle with South Africa to secure the rights to the Main SKA, which will comprise 4000 radio telescope dishes. This will be the biggest land based science project in the history of mankind.
Visualisation Research @ The West Australian Supercomputer Programme (WASP), UWA
Visualisation Research is being run by Tranguloid Trefoil (RL - Paul Bourke). A critical component of this is the automatic representation of data in SL, rather than manually modelling. There are a number of examples of this such as the volume rendering of a human cortex. Among other things, Paul has an interest in fractals and how they may be used to describe and model real world objects. There are a number of fractal objects on the WASP land, one is the famous Menger sponge. For more information see http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/papers/cg2008/
UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge
UWA runs an extremely successful 3D art & architecture challenge, with some of the greatest artists and architects of SL displaying their works for the challenge. This has been one of the most important components of UWA's SL offering, and has been listed as an SL Destination for Arts.
THE PEACOCKS, THE DUCKS, THE GALAHS, THE RAINBOW LORIKEETS, THE PARROTS ad other fauna are a significant part of the RL campus, and these are represented on the SL campus. These are found mainly on the Uni of WA SIM
The Wonders on the Ground of the UWA SIM
Wonderful art by quadrapop Lane, Soror Nishi & Glyph Graves (seek out 'Strangers also Dance'). This is here to give the UWA presence a mixture of the RL aspects of Second life, as evidenced by the recreation of the RL buildings as well as the truly out of this world aspects of SL, as evidenced by what is found here.
OTHER AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE
The Physics Building:
Hackett Hall:
The building housing Astronomy, HR & Facilities Management:
PRIZES
A first and a 2nd Prize will be awarded for this. These prizes come curtesy of the University of Western Australia and other benefactors.
1st Prize - $8,000L + a UWA T-Shirt
2nd Prize - $2,000L + a UWA T-Shirt
JUDGING PANEL
1.Professor Alan Robson (RL) - Vice-Chancellor, The University of Western Australia
2. Professor Ted Snell (RL) - Director, Cultural Precinct, The University of Western Australia
3. A/Professor Wade Halvorson (RL) - Lecturing in Marketing, Business and Electronic Commerce, The University of Western Australia
4. Colin Campbell Fraser (RL) - Principal Adviser (External Relations and Advocacy),
Vice-Chancellery, The University of Western Australia
5. Kelly Smith (RL) - Director, International Centre, The University of Western Australia
6. White Lebed (SL) - Lead of Burning Life Art Department, Curator
7. Jayjay Zifanwe (SL) - Owner of The University of Western Australia (SL), Creator & co-host of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge
And, make sure you dont include that dying conifer pictured above....(Tut tut).... with all their contacts surely they could find a decent tree...:))
....you might need plenty of film for all these shots so make sure you've stocked up...
:)))
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Get Kissed
200 L$ in the shop now...:)) ...copy/mod.
...check out my profile if you haven't got an LM...or IM me.
:))
Saturday, 16 May 2009
New Tree, The Wizardfuit Tree
Well, this is my latest one, the Wizardfruit Tree, and you can have a look here.
Its more or less finished, I think, although fiddling may occur...:))
:))
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
new headdress
New but not revolutionary, the Flopsy Headdress is for sale in the shop
in other news.... well, I'm working on a new tree, of course, but it will be a while and then I have to find somewhere to show it, prims are getting low at my place again.
Tomorrow is my rezz day, and I am quite pre-occupied with "where do I go from here" types of questions... probably carrying on carrying on, is the best answer, but a little introspection never hurt anyone.
Still attracting new visitors to the beach which is nice because some people have never seen anything like it before, anywhere in SL. They all think I'm mad or on drugs..:))
Oh well, their stereotypes do me no harm....
Better to be mad than boring in my book...
:)))
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