Flying, and More Than Busty Chicks on Black Velvet

Yes.....we can fly over the Birthday sims (the SL5B twenty).

Clearly the 60-90 minutes I have for Second Life most days of the week, won't be sufficient to let me see everything. But them's the breaks.

I will say that my available time for being in SL is 'wee hours' in Eastern Daylight Time. And that would be a bit before prime 'log in during morning work hours' time for Europe; late evening for Pacific (= Linden Lab time). So I guess that accounts for the fact that in my two visits to the SL5B sims, there haven't been many people around. I'd guess it's been maybe 50 or so total for the 20 sims (altogether....not each), on average.

No doubt things are livelier before, during, and after 'events'.

Still, you have to wonder how they'll assess the success of this event.

Personally, I'm enjoying seeing evidence of inventiveness beyond the cliched work I saw the first night I as there. People have achieved beyond the Busty Chicks On Black Velvet ideal!!

I was annoyed that the postcard I tried to send myself from inside the Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass exhibit, didn't arrive. (I've sent myself, and others, several 'postcards' featuring 'snapshots' from inside SL, and they have all arrived. This time it didn't work....me? or something else?)

But overall, I'm having fun, and will continue to do so for the remaining 5 or 6 (?) nights of the SL5B celebration.

First Look at SL5B

Last night, I finally felt ready to go check out the SL5B sims (an 'island' of connected sims, located approximately between the 'original continents' and the 'newer continents'. Probably there are Official names for those places, but I don't yet know what they are.) I'd gotten my Inventory below 6,000 items---not that I know this is any Magic Number, but...somehow I get the feeling that smaller Inventories are to be desired.

I was kind of surprised that Search didn't really make clear where to go. Inputting "SL5B" in Popular Places yielded only the usual sex-bed shops and such. My notes aren't clear, but I think it was through "Places" that I finally found a link to the "SL5B Birthday" sim.

Teleporting there, I was somewhat confused by the ambient sound seeming to describe a football game.....must have been some memorable moment in Second Life, I guess, but I couldn't figure it out. I was near the Time Capsule, and thought about putting one of my sculptures in there (and I still may, as supposedly there's another full week for this thing to run.)

I walked up the stairs to what looked like a big safe....a visual to represent what the Time Capsule will be, I suppose. I then walked out and started looking around.

I didn't try flying last night. I wonder, now, if flying is disabled (I'll try when I log on, tonight). I would guess that Linden Lab is concerned about vandalism, and so they may not permit people to fly...we'll see.

I probably examined about 30 or so exhibits carefully. I figure I have 7 nights or so to look over the sims, so I decided to avoid skimming through.

On the whole, what I saw seemed about 5% interesting, and 95% pedestrian. But that might just have been luck of the draw. Or, on the other hand, 95% of SL5B exhibits might genuinely be of the 'paintings of busty chicks on black velvet' level of originality and sophistication!

We shall see...

Below 5K!...and Polls

After what seemed like hours of work, I finally succeeded in getting my Inventory down below the 6,000-items mark. I deleted only a few things outright (mainly T-shirts with profanity across their chests, which is something I don't think I'd enjoy having my avatar wear). Everything else, I put in 1-prim pillars that I'd made from a torus. I like the way they look--rather Ancient Egyptian, with the US stars-and-stripes texture I used, mucked around with as to number of repeats and colors.

(Playing around with such things is so much fun that I'm still avid to get into Second Life each night...I don't allow myself to log on during the day, usually, as if I did I'd get no RL work done!)

Last night appeared the fourth survey question I've seen since registering. (Apparently this is connected with the 5th Birthday.) This one was to do with whether or not I'm the same gender as my avatar (I am). The one previous to this was really irritating: it was "If you don't own land, why not?" What was irritating about that, from the viewpoint of someone trained in research (yes, I have a PhD), is that there was no option to say "I DO own land"...all the options were reasons for NOT owning land.

That sort of thing yields less-valuable results, because there's no way of knowing if someone refrained from clicking a response because, like me, they do already own land, or if they refrained out of boredom or impatience or such. If an "I DO own land" option had been offered, then those who analyze the survey would know that the residents who'd failed to choose an option were actually making the choice to ignore the survey.

Well, it's late in a long day, and I suspect I wasn't completely clear in that explanation.....I'll check it again in the morning!

Another Mystery

I went to my original parcel last night, and found something I've found on many occasions, both at the original parcel and on my new one: the prices of some of my creations have changed.

So far I've made some sculptures, some koi pools (still with only dummy koi, unfortunately), some tables and stools, and the Amazing 9-Prim House (!) I don't actually expect to sell any of this stuff---I have a lot to learn before any of it will be unique enough to attract attention. But, since we CAN put prices on our creations, I've done so. The prices range from a fraction of a penny, US money, to about $1.30 US for the house....just for the principle of the thing.

It's upsetting to have these items revert to "L$0" or "L$10", mainly because the reversion is mysterious. When I do learn enough to make creations attractive enough for buyers, will I log on repeatedly to learn that the fruits of my labor have become free (or as near as makes no difference)? what is causing this?

I began this blog hoping to be able to post answers to questions that don't seem to appear online---in some cases, because long-time users find the answers to be obvious. But newbies (or at least the less-technically-minded ones) may not find them quite so obvious. I know I've looked for a blog like that. But if it doesn't exist, I can at least make a start toward providing one.

And I want to continue to do that. Of course it's discouraging when the unanswered questions seem to pile up much higher than do the answered ones....still, slowly but surely, I WILL learn these things. And post about them!

Communication Occurred!

The leader of the group that owned the 288m parcel I was interested in, did, very kindly, re-divide the land and sell it to me for a bit over L$10 per meter, which was very fair considering all the dividing efforts. So that was a relief.

I'm still trying to tame my Inventory in anticipation of trying to go tour some of the SL5B exhibits---I'm guessing they will be very laggy, and the less I'm carrying around with me, the better. I'd like to get below 5K items, if possible.....and it ain't easy. I'm still trying to put things in storage according to some kind of classification (by permissions, at a minimum), and of course that slows things down.

Back to work!

The Festivities

This would be the celebration of the first five years of Second Life, SL5B.

I haven't made any plans to try to attend. I've never quite been able to figure out how people CAN make plans to attend functions when so few avatars can be in one place...as in real life, one must plan ahead, but with room for only---what, about 200 people if the venue is at a corners-of-four-sims location---then luck must play a big part.

I saw that we can watch (presumably at any time) 'video' of the speeches and whatnot. So I may content myself with that.

I had a possible experience with trans-cultural communication, last night: I had IM'd the owner (or the leader of the Group that is the owner) of a parcel that adjoins mine. I'd like to buy just the part on one side of the road--the parcel as a whole is split by a Linden road. (Of course there's no road yet, but the land the road will be on is Lindon-owned.) So on Sunday I'd asked the owner if he/she would consider selling me just the Western portion---and I offered to pay about 155% of the per-meter rate the entire parcel is priced at.

Well, I got a very kind and courteous answer---offering to sell me the EASTERN part of the parcel, and even setting that part for sale just to me. Which was genuinely kind and cooperative. But I'd say that the person is probably highly fluent in languages other than English. (Believe me, I'm not being critical---no doubt that person's English is a heck of a lot better than my Spanish or French, and I do respect those who manage to work in more than one language. )

So I wrote back to thank the person for the efforts, and to repeat that I'd really like to buy the Western part of the parcel. (I also put the coordinates of the Western parcel in this second IM---and should have done so in the first, of course.) We shall see. I hope I didn't word things so as to cause any offense....I can sincerely say I didn't intend any offense, but of course, international relations can often get derailed even when everyone involved has good intentions.

Now to log on and find out if there's been a reply.....

I Gave Them More Money

Yes, I did.

Friday, I saw that the parcel adjoining mine for 1,024 meters from the coast, and separated from mine by an unsold inland parcel for another 1,536, had been sold. This is the one with the thunderstorm and Giant Rocks, all of which, regrettably, were merely a sales tactic.

One that worked.

So the new person had put up a Club. Since the sim is rated PG, I wasn't terribly concerned about a lag-inducing attraction that might bar me from my own land...something that DOES happen on the Mainland (and the main reason for my Grand Plan, which of course involves spending over 1K, so that's in the future.....)

The 'club' part didn't take me aback, but the 'benches with pose balls' deployed along the unsold parcel, did.

This unsold parcel had been set up as an inland lake--only 1,024 meters inland, so it was feasible to 'dig down to water', and indeed the seller had done just that. And clearly, my new neighbor-with-the-club was counting on this attractive vista to remain, for the enjoyment of his hypothetical club patrons.

The sight of this reminded me forceably that whoever purchased that parcel might well decide to raise the attractive lake and place a gigantic purple cube in its place. Or put a big black floating platform over the entire parcel, blotting out the light for all parcels to either side (meaning both me and Mr. Club). Or anything else that took their fancy.

So I started in with the calculator.

Could I afford both the price of the parcel ($10/square meter, which is about right, currently, for non-coastal land) and the monthly tier?

I decided: marginally.

I suppose that the fact that when I logged in Saturday with these thoughts in mind, I saw my neighbor Mr. Club hovering there, looking at the same land, impelled me to give Linden Lab my hard-earned cash (to purchase Lindens sufficient to complete the transaction). I felt a weird sort of guilt---did I do something mean to my neighbor?

On reflection, I'd say 'no'. He could have bought the parcel himself, if it were important enough to him. And certainly I will leave it in a condition that's less likely to cause him pain or grief, than would any random purchaser. I have no interest in making giant black floating platforms or massive purple cubes.

Still, it's interesting how this Second Life reflects the first. In first life, people 'do' each other out of land deals, and build things their neighbors hate, and all the rest. It just takes longer than it does in Second Life.

Social Control through Numbers

When I logged in last night, there was a Survey Question on the screen. (A first for me, but I gather, not uncommon.) It concerned the privacy of an avatar's number for....I should have written this down!....well, terms denoting resource-usage by that avatar. I believe this refers to some combination of Inventory size and attachments worn.

I had some things I wanted to do and so didn't take the time to explore this, but, presumably, this number is always available somewhere. I'd assumed that one of the drop-down menus offers it.

I guess the survey question was gauging reaction to having this number be in every avatar's Profile, so that when you right-click on someone and look at their Profile, you'd know if they were a 'resource hog' or not.

My first reaction was of revulsion. Though clearly some types of social control through peer-pressure are useful (a world in which people were unashamed to, say, openly torture animals, would not be a good world)----the whole concept has some very icky aspects.

Of course it's cheaper for Linden Lab to have users police themselves--and others--on their resource usage, than to provide the hardware and the level of service that would mean Hoochie Hair made no difference in performance. Possibly, LL people dream of a Second Life experience in which users routinely checked each others' Numbers and wrote songs and ballads praising those with Low Numbers and formed a culture based around Inventories with no more than 50 objects and going barefoot (those shoes can really cause lag!)

But that may be unrealistic. Many might have the same type of cynical reaction that I did, and even if the Number were to be made public, might form a culture based around not looking at that number.

On the other hand, as long as LL offers the Second Life experience to users for no fee, they do have a right to restrict what avatars can wear and carry around with them.

So in spite of my libertarian reaction, my final vote was based on the knowledge that this IS a business and that we ARE being offered quite a lot for free.

And I voted for Big Brother.

I'd hoped to read some opinion about this; rather foolishly, I suppose, I looked all through the SL Forums. Either people are disinclined to talk openly about such issues, or the Survey question was NOT sent to everyone, yesterday. (Though logically, if you want results of a Survey, you DO send it to your entire sample at as close to the same time as possible....)

I also Advance Searched the Internet in general, but haven't yet found anything about it. Well, I do need to remember the exact terms used; I hope to come across them in my general reading about SL.

"Property"

I'm still thinking about this weird animalnapping thing. I had spent about half an hour (all I had available) reading over the Second Life Forums, yesterday, wondering if someone had written about their experiences with the DMCA-infringement action...but I didn't find anything. (I thought I checked all the logical places for such threads, but maybe not.)

I should mention that none of the objects in question contain any scripts....and my understanding of the Wednesday action was that it was specifically about people stealing other people's scripts.

By the way, when I logged in last night, I was particularly interested to see if my neighbor's scripted cat would be in its usual place, pacing back and forth under a tree at the edge of the property. It WAS gone when I logged in. BUT, it was back by the time I logged off.

Weird. I'm not really thinking of all this as "My Property", so I'm not outraged by the 'violation', as much as puzzled by the mystery. Will I ever find out what really happened???

Anyway, I had fun working on making some rugs. I tried using the Hair Textures in the Library as an underlayer, to look like fringe on the rugs. It actually does look like fringe; the trouble is that the hair rezzes on a sort of 'plate of glass' (or at least that's what it looks like). And though I played around with various settings, I didn't succeed in getting rid of the 'pane of glass'.

So I'm still looking for a better thing to use for rug-fringe.

I notice that I'm dreaming about the Edit box almost every night. I tend to remember a lot of my dreams, most nights (or at least when I don't have to wake to an alarm clock), and it's quite common for things (or people) I've dealt with on any particular day to feature in the dreams. But the Edit box is becoming quite a star....I seem to do a lot of considering what Edit Box Settings are needed for all the various activities I participate in, while dreaming.

(And certainly there are many things in Real Life that could use a bit of shrinking or stretching or being made Transparent or Phantom...... ^_^ )

Animalnapping

This is so weird that I can't help wondering if someone is amusing themselves. But I suppose it's more likely to be some side-effect of the DMCA infringements crack-down that took place yesterday:

When I logged in last night, all seemed normal. Though I'm striving to have all content on my parcel be something I've created, I'm not there yet (and won't be for months). Of the three dozen or so items created by other residents on my land, there were four animals.

Well, after making a new version of my 9-Prim House, I wanted to make a snapshot with both the original and new houses. On the original, I have two cranes on one of the decks---white freebie cranes that I'd tinted blue-gray (to look like Great Blue Herons)---they look great against the white stucco.

They were gone! I looked around, and the other three types of animals were gone, too.

Now, contrary to what I'd read in Reuters about the day's DMCA action, the four animals were still in my Inventory---so I could see that they were all Full Permissions. And all were made by different creators.

It seemed beyond belief that this DMCA action would hit just animals.

I thought: well, maybe someone who has a strong personal belief that Animals Should Not Be Depicted in Second Life, is using the announced DMCA action day as a time to take away people's animals, under cover.....

And maybe that WAS it.

But when I logged in tonight, not only were all the animals back where I'd left them, but another copy of each was sitting in a pile on the ground, next to my original house.

WEIRD!!!

Freebie Closet and the Blank Map

My inventory was in the mid six-thousands, so last night, with my few-minutes-available-for-leisure-Internet play, I worked on offloading clothes into storage prims. But I wanted to try them on before doing so, so I stood there (well, my avatar stood there) in undies and tried on one garment after another.

Before doing so, admittedly somewhat irrationally, I checked the World Map to see if anyone was around.

'Irrationally', because, honestly, what difference could it possibly make?

But in the event, no one was around.

I couldn't help wondering: it's now 10 days since I bought this land. From the location of the sim, this isn't the most recent mainland that Linden Lab has created.

Yet it's still just the outline of the 'continent' on the World Map....no 'snapshot' of what people in the parcels have created.

How long does that take to appear, anyway? My narcissism demands an overhead shot of my parcel!!!!!!!!

(Or something.) ^_^

Brown again

My land... the new large parcel. Now I've seen this green/brown/green/brown sequence over time in two different sims.

Well, someday maybe I'll happen on an explanation of it.

Busy week at work. I suppose those who commit to blog every day sometimes fall short. (Or don't have to go to a job!) I got only about 45 minutes in SL itself, last night....and I wouldn't have liked to give up much of that time to blogging. Anyway, I'll try to do at least a paragraph or two each day.

More progress on The Amazing 9-Prim House---I took a window from the Library cabin and enlarged it to make the top story of the house secure against intruders, not that I care about intruders. I know, there's griefing and whatnot to be concerned about. But so far, I don't have the same "none must intrude here!" territorial feel about my Second Life 'property' that I do actually feel about my first-life property.

Still, if I hope to ever make my house saleable, I must at least offer a version with Security features.

I was sorry to see that the Big Rocks And Thunderstorm property is up for sale---it's just a developer's sales-tactic, not the Dream Home of a resident. (The big rocks are not Objects Included in the sale, so it's doubtful that the land will stay in its current state after sale.) Oh, well.

Looking forward to the weekend...

Responsiveness

I'd given Second Life an email that I haven't used regularly for a while, because at the time I joined, I'd been getting too much spam on the two email accounts I use most often.

And I've been thinking for several weeks 'I'd better check that account'....but I didn't seem to get around to it.

But I should report: on the night I went Premium, and discovered the spending limits meant that I couldn't buy Lindens so that I could buy a small piece of land (though someone going Premium with a pay-by-the-month account COULD buy Lindens)---on that night I'd filed a ticket to say 'this isn't a smart policy'.

Having just complained about the policy in my previous post, it's ironic that it was today that I finally saw that I had, in fact, gotten a prompt reply back from LL.

I'm not entirely happy with the reply, since it sort of implied that I was a crank to care about this. (That's just my interpretation---the email was perfectly courteous.)

But whoever opened my ticket DID change the spending limits for me. And now that I think about it, it wasn't a full 24 hours between the time I went Premium and the time I bought that 512, the next day. So I guess they offered me a few hours' grace.

That wasn't enough to prevent what happened---some smart land trader noticed the amount of traffic (me, not knowing better, I assume) on the parcel that interested me, and bought it, and raised the price. So by the time the Linden in question had relaxed the time limit for buying Lindens, it was too late for me to buy the parcel that interested me at the price I'd found it at (in Search).

It was just a matter of a few dollars, for this 512. I guess it 's the principle of the thing that bothers me.

Am I wrong? Of course LL needs to have a limit on the dollar amount that can be changed into Lindens on Day One of a new Premium account. I don't dispute that. I don't have the criminal imagination necessary to be able to guess all the bad things that people could do if there were no limit, but I accept that such bad things could happen.

But that's not what I'm asking. I'm not asking for 'no limits'.

I'm just asking for those who commit to an Annual payment of their Premium fees, NOT to be treated differently from those who commit only to one month's Premium membership.

I'm saying: let the Premium fee be separate from the first-24-hours-limit. Make that limit US$25, or US$15, or whatever makes sense for fraud prevention.

But don't penalize people who commit to the full year.

(Okay, that is enough on that topic!)

I do want to commend LL for being so quick to respond to my ticket. I know from my reading that customer service has been a sore spot for many...but I can't offer any complaints.

A Relief; Pillars and Posters

I logged on today to find that my over-limit 512 had sold. What a relief!

If I'd still owned it when my monthly payment came due, I'd have owed $15 more for the month than I will now owe. So I'd have been willing to abandon it, at the last minute. This isn't the type of 'property' that appreciates with time---that's not how the Second Life system works. So it would be better to click that Abandon Land button than to be liable for the extra $15.

I didn't make a profit on the sale: I'd paid about $13 US, and sold it for about $11 US.

But that's okay. I had only about 10 days to sell (I'm not sure exactly how the system figures tier--if there is a "zero hour", before which we can click Abandon; or more likely, if their accounting requires a day or more of 'notice' before recording the transfer). And I knew it would be foolish to buck the dropping-price-of-land trend. This is a very nice 512 at the moment: in front of it is my remaining 512 (which I may convert into a low-key, low-height outpost of the shop I plan), and in front of that is a 2048 that is both genuine waterfront, and still unsold. But of course there's no telling what may happen to the view when the waterfront piece finally sells.

I lose track of time in Second Life. It IS just short of a month since I first looked at that land. I wasn't able to buy it until three days later, because a) it took me two days to complete my researches and finally decide to become a Premium member, and b) the SL system won't let you buy any Lindens in the first 24 hours of going Premium if you choose the Annual method of payment.

I do think that's unintelligent. Clearly they set up the limitations to head off problems with kids getting hold of their parents' credit cards and joining and charging thousands of dollars before their parents could find out, and speculators wanting to muck about with the exchange rate of Lindens, and that sort of thing. And that's perfectly legitimate.

But the intelligent thing to do would be to make the dollar-amount limitation EXclusive of the fee to become Premium. As things stand, people who opt to pay by the month can still buy some Lindens---and thus buy an moderately-priced 512 right after they go Premium--if they choose. But people who are clearly the more excited about SL, those people who opt to pay the full year's fees in advance, are NOT permitted to buy land (because the $72 annual fee automatically puts you over the first-24-hours $50 limit on spending).

Dumb.

Anyway, it didn't turn me off SL, and it's to be hoped, that's true for most who opt to commit to a full year. It does put in one's mind "wow, they either didn't think this through, or weren't willing or able to make a simple change such as 'the Premium fee doesn't count toward your first 24-hours' spending limit'". And that means that people are not beginning Premium SL life with an attitude of respect toward Linden Labs. I think they'd be smart to change that.

Anyway...

So, all my plans on how long I'd leave the ~$11 price up, and what day I'd have to Abandon Land, are now moot, I'm glad to say. It's much nicer to just be able to put that out of my mind (I'd been fretting over how that plot might fare if it DID end up being auctioned after I'd abandoned it, though since ad farms aren't a possibility, I suppose the fretting was unnecessary.)

Last night (before getting the good news about the land sale), I'd started offloading the mass quantities of freebies I'd acquired at YadNi's into some pillars I'd made. I'm not entirely happy with the pillars, but they are 1 prim apiece, and they will serve to hold up the roof in the open-air shop I plan to build when I've made enough stuff to justify it.

I also want to make some storage-prim stools to offer as freebies to those who visit my land. I have learned since my first round of making storage prims to be careful that everything I put in one has the same pattern of permissions. The stools I'd made a couple of weeks ago are attractive, I think (I like the texture I put on them), and of course they're one prim apiece. Well, we shall see.

Today I made two posters, or 'oil paintings', on the freebie easel I'd gotten in my first days inworld. I'd taken snapshots of my original land before I started dismantling and moving the buildings and ponds and things (to clear the one 512 for sale). Applying two of them to copies of the easel, I ended up with some 'paintings' that I think are attractive...and of course, they are a nice memory-jogger for me.

And oh, yes: I had my first experience with making a sign in Microsoft Paint, and uploading it: a For Sale sign for the 512. Turned out pretty well, though I see what everyone says about the limitations of Paint! I definitely need to look into Photoshop!

The 9-Prim House!

I got so involved with finalizing my 9-prim house, I forgot to blog. (Horrors!)

When I logged on, I was immediately struck by the fact that the unsold parcel to the west had, clearly, been sold. Actually it must have been a purchase of several parcels, as there had been two 512s adjoining mine, and the new installation is larger than the combined 1024.

But....GIANT ROCKS AND A THUNDERSTORM!!!

I quite like it. Of course there's no telling whether or not the owner will leave the giant-rocks-and-thunderstorm up for any length of time. But it's quite distinctive and enjoyable for me to look at (and listen to!), so I'm happy.

(Also, I notice that the person has waves. If we meet, I will ask how those waves were acquired....)

I'd never seen anything like the rocks-and-storm. But that isn't saying much: though one of the things I enjoy most about Second Life is flying around and looking at all the variety of creations, I've been so focused on taking advantage of my vanishing newbie status (I think I'm at about day 40 or so, now) and on acquiring land, that I haven't done much recreational flying.

But I will, eventually.

At the moment I'm most excited about my new house. Made from, as has been mentioned, 9 prims.

It's two stories, connected with a walkable spiral ramp, with a loft-and-ramp in the first story, a partly-fenced rooftop garden area, and balconies on each floor.

All with 9 prims!

Now, the odds are, my creation isn't all that original. What with our limited menu of prims, the limited options for transforming each type of prim, and the obvious motivation we all have to conserve prims.....it seems quite likely that other people have come up with similar buildings.

I will be very interested to check this out, when I have more time. I suppose if I use the inworld Search for 'low prim houses' I might find some examples. (But will anyone have put their building together in the same way I have? I am curious!)

I used brick and white stucco textures (okay, the white stucco isn't actually a 'texture', but instead is the "Stucco" setting on the Bumpiness drop-down menu of the Texture tab of the Edit window). I like the look, and it makes the blues and greens I'm using for the furnishings really pop.

I do have some freebie chairs in there, as the only chairs I've gotten around to making are stools. But I made the platform bed-and-pillow myself, last night, and will ultimately have the house furnished only with stuff I've made myself. I just have a lot to learn before I can do that. And I want to find, or learn to write, a script for the bed. Not a sex script, just a 'lounge' script.

And I want to find out if it's possible to script the spiral ramp so that an avatar that steps on it at either end, would 'slide' to the other end. It IS possible to walk it, but it takes a lot of patience. Of course most of us in Second Life tend to fly into buildings anyway (and landing on the second-floor is fairly easy). But a scripted slide up and down the ramp would be fun.

I will probably leave the Library potted plants in the roof garden. At the moment I'm not ambitious to learn how to make plants, and the Library ones are amazingly good-looking for the number of prims they 'cost'.

I did put a price on the house. Though I'm not ready to try to draw attention to my parcel yet (such as by buying a Classified ad, and by posting in the SL Forums), someone might happen by. The house is admittedly boxy (and I plan to put a separate shed on the back to make the profile more varied), but......a two-story house with all those features, taking up only about 12 by 11 meters, and costing only 9 prims.....it's not bad!!!!!

Green/Brown/Green/Brown

I haven't made waves, yet. Though I crave them, they are low on the priorities list.

First, I needed to make my superfluous 512 ready for sale. So this morning I logged in...to find both it, and the other 512 that I plan to keep, GREEN!!!

Probably this is another one of those things that 'go without saying' for longer-term Residents of Second Life....maybe, on some regular or irregular schedule, the powers-that-be come around and turn land green.

(I swear it's not a case of my Environment setting changing...I always turn it to Midday, so the change in the appearance of the land isn't due to a difference in the position of the 'sun'. It's real, or as real as a pixel-world can be.)

Well, anyway.

So I spent WAY too long raising and lowering and smoothing and flattening the parcel. Some of what I did affected my 'keeper' parcel, burying some potted plants and sculpture pedestals....and of course, I lost some time to dealing with the log-in message that my Flying Carpet had ascended to 25 meters, back at the new parcel. (When I teleported over there to deal with what must have been a menace to navigation, it was sitting right where I'd left it, on the ground. So I guess some kind person had returned it. [Thanks, kind person.] I've never flown this thing, but clearly if it has a mind of its own, it can't be left unattended. So I clicked 'take' on it and it went back into my Inventory.)

At any rate, after I got back to preparing the back 512 for sale, the time went by like THAT. Man, this terraforming is fun!

Okay, now to get in a few minutes of fun with the new parcel...

I Want to Make Waves

..not in the metaphorical sense...in the literal sense. Or, I guess, the virtual sense.

I've put in some time with both the books and the Internet, trying to figure out how to get waves to break on my new beach. I would tend to assume it's a scripting thing, though I haven't found any definitive guidance on that.

I did look in the Wiki library for scripts that might have something to do with waves, and didn't see anything. Online searches led me to the Second Life Surfing culture--I didn't see anything on their website about how wave-making is accomplished; I guess it's just another one of those things that seem obvious to those with more tech-savvy (or to those who've been in SL for a while).

I had figured out that they must be---made---the night I flew around between auctions. Sitting at the edge of those coastal sims, it was clear that the 'ocean' was as I'd seen it around, inworld, but that unlike nearly all the developed coasts I'd visited, there were no waves. So clearly, waves are not created by the Lindens for all coasts.

So, 'a script' was the most logical choice.

I suppose people must create waves out of prims, and script them to periodically go through a series of transformations....Well, I may have to resort to what I said I'd resort to a couple of weeks ago: go to a class. Not that I disdain going to classes---it's just that I have so little time to devote to this, and of course a class would be an investment of time.

But for now, I have to concentrate on getting one of my original 512's cleared and listed for sale. I'm not sure how complicated it is to get land listed on the Search - Land; possibly not complicated at all. We shall see. I guess I need to upload my first Texture, too---a For Sale sign (I'll put it on a flattened cube---no big rotating signs for me. I actually have one---when I bought one of the first two parcels, it was one of the objects given to the buyer [me]. But I don't want to put it out there in that mostly-residential 'neighborhood'.)

Also, I want to take some snapshots, inworld, of the original land as it's set up At some point I might well enjoy being able to see evidence of my first days as a landowner. And a nice 'photo' put onto one of my freebie easels might be a nice momento.

"Make waves".....sure, I do have some thoughts of getting good enough at building to have a good reputation. But luckily, I don't have the kind of ambition that 'making waves' implies.

However, I really DO want to be able to sit on my beach and experience the sight and sound of the water crashing on that virtual shore.

Lacking the Discipline

...to blog.

This morning before work I decided to look at land prices through Search, in-world. I hadn't done that since 2 1/2 weeks before, when I'd first bought land after three or four days of intensive research (or as intensive as my work schedule permitted).

The prices are going down, still, it would appear. Which makes perfect sense, given the number of new sims being created.

So my eye was caught by a "coastal + oceanview" for L$4.1/sq.meter. That turned out to be false about the parcel. (I gather it's not uncommon to advertise a parcel with terminology that's not true for that parcel, but only for other, possibly quite far-away parts of the sim.)

But I suppose these deceptive ads serve the good purpose of getting people thinking of buy land to teleport over. If that parcel is annoyingly unlike its description, at least there will be other parcels nearby worth consideration.

And so it proved today.

A very long 4080--with more than just the 16 cut out for the Linden road-space bordering on the east--was irresistable at L$15.30/sq.m., since its northern 32 meter width is on a coast. (with Protected land just north.)

So for a bit more than $200 (a lot for me--I just have to give up other things) I have waterfront to play with, and plenty of land to rez all the freebies I'd gotten on my first visit to YadNi's Junkyard last night, and to make and work on buildings, vehicles, and whatever else grabs my interest.

Sure, the value of a parcel with 32 meters of waterfront will drop over the coming months.

But, I didn't want to wait six or eight months for the price of waterfront to drop substantially (my crystal ball may well be faulty, of course, but that's what I'm now assuming will be the case).

So.....back to terraforming....yippee!!!!!!!!!!!

Auction Flight

Like a lot of people in Second Life, I'd guess, I have a Grand Plan for developing a full sim. Quite frankly, if I were richer than I am, I'd probably have no trouble coming up with several Grand Plans. But since I'd have to sell off most of the hypothetical sim---both to recover as much of the price of it as possible, and to avoid tier---I'm concentrating on the one Grand Plan. The one about making the land as attractive to buyers as possible. (Yes, yes, that's hardly a new idea!)

Being practical, I'd decided that an interior Mainland sim would be best, since it would mean the least possible initial outlay. And in the event I couldn't sell off all the parcels I want to during the first month, my tier payment for that month would be less than if I'd splurged on an Island.

But those coastal sims truly are seductive.

It's difficult to understand how sitting in front of a computer monitor, watching a little avatar sitting in front of 'waves' breaking on the 'beach', can be so soothing and compelling. But such is the case.

Still: it would be more practical to go for the interior.

Friday night I watched six or eight full-sim auctions. Naturally, I teleported to the first one's sim (or to one nearby---several people were doing the same thing, and teleporting was dicey). Like the others, I suppose, I flew over, and walked, each one.

The continent the Lindens are selling off currently has a Western end that minimizes interior sims. (Long and thin--possibly the entire continent is like that. Some of it was just gray squares, Friday.) Maybe that's the plan for future continents, too: it's smart, because as potential buyers get used to the idea that lots of brand-new land will be being offered, the less-desirable sims become even MORE undesirable. After all, many must be thinking, why not just wait a few weeks and get a really nice waterfront property?

And in fact, unless I was misreading the auction action, two interior sims didn't attract any bids at all.

I can't help wondering if eventually there will be differing levels of minimum bids, with a smaller minimum for the all-interior, no water-feature sims. Since the company's goal is to get as many Second Life users to own land as possible, with profits coming from the tier payments, that would make sense.

Anyway, Friday night I was enjoying the process. I suppose if I watch enough auctions it will become dull, but for now the interplay between the characteristics of the land, and the way people bid on that land, was quite entertaining.

I tended to avoid the others flying around. I assumed they were there to take care of business quickly and expeditiously, and wouldn't be in the mood for chat...and of course, who knows how many of them were English-speakers, anyway?

Well, I need to continue to educate myself about this process---to watch as many auctions as I can.

If I do end up buying a Mainland sim, the ideal time would be just after my account is billed for the land I have now. I'll be liable for the full $195 tier no matter when in the month I buy, so of course I should give myself as many days as possible to develop the land according to my Grand Plan, and sell it off---and hope to have a smaller tier payment for the following month.

(Yes, I am Captain Obvious!)

And, of course, I'll leave myself enough land to do some of the building projects I'm excited about.

Bratz Lips

I had a lot of fun in my last session, mainly because I solved some small problems.

To put my 2-prim pond up for sale (not that I'm assuming I'll ever have a customer--more on that later), I needed to have all self-created content. The pond water and the pond-surround were no problem. The problem was the fish.

A swimming fish (koi, presumably, for an outdoor pond) would make the item much more attractive than would the plain water-and-surround, or even water-and-surround-with-plants. (On that last--I'm kind of assuming that we CAN sell items made with Library components, such as the 1-prim plants. Ethically, I mean. I'm starting to get a handle on all the complications that go with the various forms of Object Permissions, though I still have plenty to learn on that topic.)

Anyway, of course it will be great when I learn how to make a swimming fish. That time has definitely not yet arrived, though!

I've looked for free scripts, and haven't yet found one, though I'm thinking that 'swimming' wouldn't have to be in the title. After all, an object scripted to move around on a single plane in the air is what I need, as there is no actual water involved.

Anyway, I don't yet have the skill to accomplish that (though I'll continue to work on it).

So I figured I'd make an attempt to at least create low-prim unscripted fish to put in the pond. What with the flowing water (thanks to the Library script "anim SMOOTH", with the speed dropped from the given 0.25 to 0.05, as suggested in Brian A. White's very useful book "Second Life: A Guide to Your Virtual World"), even stationary fish would look kinda-sorta-okay.

I did end up making a 2-prim fish of about the size of a koi. I made it late last night, rather hurriedly, so it won't win any beauty prizes. When I have more time, I'll look for better textures to use for body and tail. (I'd used two Fabric Library textures, having nothing better---I did try out a couple dozen Library textures---no reason to be limited to Fabric textures when making clothing, or to building-oriented textures when making walls, etc. Try them all!)

So I duplicated the fish twice (okay, triplicated the fish), and put them in the pond; I made a note card with some information and my avatar's name and location, and put that in the Contents tab. I do need to 'create a Landmark'---I think it's possible to have a notecard with a Landmark button on it. I need to check into that. Though of course all this is very preliminary--it's not as though I'm Setting Up Shop. Not for a while.

(Though I do have a great idea for a low-prim house that kept me awake much of last night. I can hardly wait to work on it!)

So......Bratz lips. I had a visitor last night---a female avatar landed, walked all over my land, looking into the cabin, etc., while I was 'out back' working on a sculpture. I finally opened Chat and typed "Hi there." She (as always, I'll refer to gender by whatever the person is presenting themselves to be---assuming that's detectable!) said Hi back, and "arent u bored" [sic].

I typed 'No, this is interesting, I'm having a lot of fun making stuff'--and without a word she teleported away. Kind of rude by my First Life standards, but many things are different in Second Life. (She may well have thought my response rude, too.) And I suppose it's quite common--for a certain percentage of the population--to occupy themselves by flying around, looking for green dots, and dropping down to see if they can find someone who wants to do...whatever it is they are wanting to do.

So, no biggie.

Seeing her reminded me of something that annoys me: the way the default female avatar lips are big ol' Bratz lips. (Her avatar, like every single avatar I've ever met or seen depicted on websites or in books on SL, had them.)

To have lips that aren't as gigantic means moving the relevant sliders in Appearance all the way to the left---and the result is a completely flat upper lip. There's no way to have a normal upper lip without having a lower lip that's bigger than a RL croissant. A big pink croissant.

So either I have to give in and have Bratz lips too, or try to invent some sort of attachement. I can only guess how difficult it would be to accomplish that. But hey, if I did, I could get rich, rich, RICH!! Even if most people with female avatars in SL truly want the Bratz lips, those of us who dislike them would be willing to pay as much for good non-Bratz lips as for a waterfront 4,096!!!

(Okay, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. ^_^ )

Dealing with the Aquifer; The Best Business To Be In!!

My land was still brown when I was able to log in, last night (Internet service has been spotty).

I'd looked up ways to find an Object that's underground: in the course of putting one of the free koi into the pond I'd revamped so that it could work on flat land, I'd lost the water underground. (Which I mentally labeled an aquifer, though of course in literal terms, that's absurd.)

But when I lost it, it was late and I was sleepy. So I'd given up and decided to deal with it the next day.

I did find a number of tips, many of which were about objects lost inside other objects (a fairly common occurence, apparently) and so not necessarily helpful in this instance. But unlike the 'storage prim' problem, the problem of Lost Objects is one that has a lot of presence on the Internet. (Search "finding lost objects," and of course "second" and "life", too, and you'll find plenty.)

As it happened, I'd decided to just leave the aquifer alone for a while, since it's only 1 prim. But when I used Camera Controls to look down on my newly-created 2-prim Pond-and-mossy-surround, and used the Shift, left-click on land, and draw a box method to Link the two together, the procedure also linked the underground aquifer. How that works, I do not know! But I was able to lift the whole linked apparatus into the air, then unlink and drag the newly-raised aquifer/pond off to the side, then relink the other pond and surround.

So that turned out okay.

In re The Best Business To Be In: surely it's the one in which your customers gladly pay you for a service that you're not obligated to provide! Yes, this is NOT best in terms of one's karma. But certainly it's best in terms of one's bottom line. Which will be healthy!

Why bother to invest in equipment and personnel to properly service the Internet access you purport to sell, when you can charge people a hefty monthly fee, whether you provide the access or not!

Okay, enough sarcasm. But seriously, it DOES make good business sense to sell people something they'll pay you for even if you don't provide it.

It's icky, ethically, of course.

But, who cares about that!

(denied-access would-be Internet users of the world, unite!!)

Mole Crickets?

My nice green land was brown when I logged on, last night.

How is that possible? I haven't raised or lowered or smoothed or roughened or done any Edit Terrain on it since the first day or so that I had it. So that's not the explanation.

This is Mainland (I think I said), on one of the newer Class 5 sims, near a 'coast' (within a few yards of an inlet---there's an unsold 1024 in between the inlet and me. I knew that my nice view could vanish at any moment, if anyone were to buy that land and build something big....but it's a nice area even without the view. On the Mainland, you can't count on views remaining, after all.)

But, point is: I know there are layers to terrain, but I didn't realize that they could manifest themselves without my having done anything.

(It's not a 'trick of the light', either---I routinely go to the bottom of the World drop-down menu and change the Environment to Midday, should it be 'night' when I log on. It's fun to look at places in all the options--both Sunrise and Sunset can be very beautiful. But for making things, I want Midday. So it's not that my grass suddenly looked brown last night because I had a different hour-of-the-day setting.)

And my post title is facetious, of course. I suppose it's possible that some Second Life resident has created mole crickets (notorious eaters-of-lawns in the US South). But they could hardly script them to actually turn people's land from green to brown! Surely Linden Lab wouldn't permit such a thing!

(Would they???)

Nah.

Anyway. Getting over my dismay at the color of my land, I resumed looking through all the freebies I'd acquired the other night. Finding two swimming (scripted) koi, I happily put them in the back pond--the one that I'd made by first 'digging a hole' in the ground, using Edit Terrain tools. This is important, I think, because I doubt that the koi could swim 'in' a pond that's been made flat to the land.

I should check on that. But it would make sense--unless one had flat, 2-D koi that only looked 3-D while 'swimming' just under the surface of a pond-on-land. And that would be hard to pull off, visually.

I guess I should make plain that I am not a graphic artist nor engineer, and I have no experience whatsoever with 3-D modeling or even with 2-D graphics programs such as Photoshop. Of course, if my desire to get good at building things in SL continues, I will have to gain some familiarity with such programs.

But I think this is one of the most interesting things about SL: the way it can inspire people like me---people who have never before felt any impulse toward learning about 2-D and 3-D programming---to not only want to learn, but to be willing to put in hours doing it. And to have fun in the endeavor.

The creation of a world that can motivate people that way is a pretty unusual and notable achievement.

And I'd say so even if LL did put mole crickets in my lawn.

A Frenzy of Pond-Making

Well, "frenzy" may be over-selling it a bit. But I did make alot of attempts.

The idea is 'fewest prims'. Though from my reading, I also need to think about 'fewest triangles'. For instance, the two-prim Pond with Surrounding Mossy-Covered banks that I made from a cube (mossy banks) and cylinder (pond) might cause problems for computers with less-new (or less-powerful) graphics cards.

It seems that when we twist and turn and path-cut and taper and top-shear prims, we increase the number of triangles needed to draw them. So this puts more of a strain on graphics cards.

But that 2-prim pond-with-surround costs only 2-prims against what might be a modest Prim Budget.

So, no doubt, there's a trade-off that people just have to work with. (And if I put this thing up for sale--it would be the first such item, as I hadn't thought of it, before!...then I'll have to make clear in the Description that the one prim was very tortured in the creation of the pond.)

I also made what's sort of a 10-meter river from two prims. But it doesn't look as good as the pond-and-surround.

So....gotta keep working on them....