"Getting it"

I've often felt a bit of an outcast in the real world for my Second Life usage. I explain Second Life to non-residents and I get a variety of reactions, but they all center around "I wonder why anyone would do this". Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote a great article in her blog that really helped me understand the different types of views that people have of SL. I still feel like and outcast, but now understand it better!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Speed Build at Dreams

Yesterday I went to the Speed Build hosted by the Dream Travelers' group. I don't think of myself as building "fast" so I went in "shy" mode, thinking I would just watch the building. But as soon as I got there I couldn't help myself and hopped on on of the building platforms.

The rules are:

You may use up to 60 prims. All builds must be made from your own NEW prims. You may use scripts and textures. Builds must stay within the edges of your 10X10 platform, but you may go as high as you desire. You have 50 minutes to build. A 5 minute warning will be given. When the host says "STOP" , everything stops. The builders in the contest will then vote for 3 of the best builds. Builders cannot vote for their own build. TIes will be determined by the host. Cash prizes to the 3 top builds.

So there I am, expecting the theme to be like "car", "airplane", "office building". Instead it was "purple"! So I spend the first five minutes thinking "maybe I can just slink away quietly". But I finally thought "grapes" and decided to build a bowl of grapes.

I'm so glad I hopped in. It was great fun. And while competitive, it was extremely friendly competition, with people walking around at the end complimenting each other and giving suggestions.

This is my bowl of grapes.



And this is the winner, Sunn Thunders.



--DrawDweeb Latte-

Start or Dweebtitechture II

If you've been reading this blog, you've heard I've recently become a fan of megaprims. I've redone the free houses display in a new location. This original was 60 by 60 and the floor took 36 prims. The new one is twice the size, 120 by 60. But the floor of this one only takes two megaprims. I love this stuff!



--DrawDweeb Latte-

For the love of slopes

In Second Life, flat land draws a premium But somehow I find it lacking. maybe it comes from living in Florida where flat is the norm. But I find repeatedly that when I'm turned on by a piece if SL land it tends to be (a) by water and (b) steep.

I know, I know. It so much more difficult to build on sloped land. Those flat lots are so nice to throw those blocks on. And to have a nice even lawn.

And then there is the reality of most of the buildings on slopes. Oh my God. Do people really think a flat floor jutting out of a mountain looks good? Many of these look like a piece of wood that was driven into the mountain by a hurricane. But then there are the beautiful slope builds. Looking like some of the best architecture in California and Oregon. Builds that don't fight the mountain, but take advantage of it. Builds that look like the have support for the weight. That add to the scenery like a Frank Lloyd Wright house.

My first piece of big land was selected on a slope. I spent a large amount of time searching and narrowed it down to four lots i liked. I picked the one I bought precisely because it was on a slope. They were all good, but the slope added a certain something to this one. It made it stick out and set it apart from the others. All four had water. The slope made this one special.

My builds may not be the greatest. But in both buildings I tried to make them part of the slope.

My first building tried to hug the slope while giving good views of the water. I wanted to make sure it didn't look just glommed on to the mountain. I wanted the people behind me to be able to keep their view....to enjoy my building rather than resent it.





The second building was all about the slope. It was at the top of the mountain (yes, Mt Dweeb!). It had to have great view and really fit in.







I think there'll be more on this subject. Why shy away from slopes? They can be put to great use and the results can really stick out.

--DrawDweeb Latte-

The start of the rental houses

Most of the stuff I've built for myself has been at the top of Mt. Dweeb. But I have all this land below it kind of wasted. I want to keep it to guarantee my ocean view. But why not do rentals? Under my control, so hopefully no view problems.



I put some placeholder blocks where I thought I might be able to place houses. I was able to fit six houses comfortably. This was keeping with what I wanted from layout.

1. That my view would not be blocked.
   
2. That each house also have a decent view.

This is the view from the house farthest form the water.



Will now replace the blocks with hopefully gorgeous houses. ;-)

--DrawDweeb Latte-

The speedboats

I've been playing a bit at Second Life with some of the family kids. Naturally I try to show them the cerebral aspects. But one of them could not help but notice my neighbor's Offshore Tornado speedboat.

I'm not much of a buyer, but I do have to admit it looked like a pretty nice build. And kids have those big brown eyes that say "Oh, I understand. No problem at all". So naturally I broke down and bought two of them.

They really are nicely put together. The shape is super. You can change the color. The scripting is pretty good (though the boat tends to capsize if pushed into a turn too hard). And details like the motors turning and the throaty sound really add a nice touch.





Highly recommended. http://www.apolon-online.com

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Next Monday, May 18th, MacArthur Foundation opens MacArthur Island

Jonathan Fanton, MacArthur Foundation President, and Cory Ondrejka, co-creator of Second Life, officially launch MacArthur Island and discuss the future of virtual worlds and philanthropy, Worth a look.



--DrawDweeb Latte-

SLCC 2009

Have finally decided I WILL be attending SLCC 2009 in San Fran! I finally decided I enjoyed the last one too much and life is too short. Hope to see many of you there!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Megaprims

For a long time I avoided using megaprims. These are the large (huge) prims from the past that came to be due to a loophole in Second Life. Used to be that the client was the one that enforced the prim limits of 10 meters. So that means that if a modified client allowed the user to go beyond those limits, the server would happily accept them.

Linden Labs corrected this eventually by putting the checks in the server. So no new megaprims could be created. But there was still the problem of the existing ones. Should Linden make them disappear? Many people had used them in builds. And people hate when the walls of their hard worked builds disappear. Or the floors! So Linden came to a compromise. No new megaprims could be built. But existing ones could stay.

Now megaprims could also be a nuisance. If I didn't like you as a neighbor I could put a huge prim on my land that blocked your path around your house in the next lot. Maybe even in the next sim. Or blocked your view of your own beach. Or they could be a wonderful tool for the griefer, sending huge wheels to run down everyone at your event. In addition, there were cases where really huge prims could cause problems for the rendering or physics engines.

So Linden made a set of rules that went with the prims. The main ones are:

1. You can't change the size of a megaprim. If you do, the regular rules apply again and it's truncated to 10 meters max per side.
   
   
2. Any part that's off your land becomes phantom.
   
   
3. You can't link them with other prims.
   

Some others, but those were the biggies The rules made me kind of uncomfortable using the megas. In addition, I felt that Linden merely tolerated them rather than supported them. What if policy changed in the future?

But one day I was browing through Xstreet and came accross a free set of megaprims. I figured no cost and it might be fun to try. This was the Huge Prims set from Paola Delpaso.

I was so impressed! I immediatly chided myself for not trying them before. What a great building tool. I had specnt so much time in the past lining up many, many (,many!) prims in a row to create areas that were really in my mind one object, just broken into 10 meter sections. I was hooked in no time.

I went back to and picked up 329 Megaprims from Ceera Murakami and Parcel-Sized Prims Collection 0.5 from Day Oh, both also free.

If you haven't played with megaprims, give them a try. You'll be glad you did. And stay awake for any plans to remove them so you can put in your $0.02.

I erected a single very tall prim on my dock. here's some shots to try to give a sense of scale. I start standing by it on the dock. Then go and stand on the top in the clouds. One prim!









--Drawdweeb Latte-

So I'm really pissed that I haven't been blogging. It's not that I haven't been doing Second Life work. I've been sitting down almost every night as a wind-down before heading to bed. But I've been miserably bad about documenting it. One of the fun things I've done is finally set up a place to preview my houses. I've wanted that for a while, but had not gotten around to it. I hated giving up part of my land for commercial purposes. And I picked my land for my own purposes. I loved the mountainous slope to the water. Great for me. Not so great for showing off "normal" houses which kind of call for flat land.

So I finally joined the many other merchants in the sky. That really worked well for me. I had the section of land that was in water. I wanted to keep it so that I kept the view. But I certainly didn't want to build in the water. And I had as many prims over the water as I had on dry land. But I could use those prims up in the sky. I keep my water view on the ground. I use my water prims effectively. And I get my "flat land" for house displays.



I started with 36 10x10 slabs of grass. Boring, but a good base to work around.



Added some walls, a path, some trees, and started adding the houses. I had some fun with the house and bought some inexpensive furniture to put in the houses. They really made a big difference in the presentation. I need to work on that more and keep it up.



And at the end the Dweeb rested and viewed his work!



--Drawdweeb Latte-

The meeting table

I made my first serious try at building furniture, This was a meeting table with chairs. I made the carpet afterwords because the table looked lost on al that wood. Still needs some tweaking, I think



I really need to start working more on animations. I liked that the bean bag chairs had a casual pose for the sit. Now the default animations are really looking lame to me.



-- Drawdweeb Latte-

No integrated video!

I finally decide to do my first video. So I find the SL client no longer supports capture video to disk. Arggghh! All the reasoning is cool (much better third party software). Just hate that as soon as I decide to use a feature, that's exactly when it''s removed!

--Drawdweeb Latte --

New Building

I finally got tired enough of the fish-tank building to get rid of it. Finally realized how much I didn't like it.

Once I got rid of it I felt the same way I do when I clean out a closet (a rare experience). It was good to have the mountainside clear again. I got all turned on and started building a new one right away.

This is the first "sketch" with blocks. I wanted to get a something modern yet open and light. I didn't take pictures, but this was actually like the third iteration of moving the blocks around. But it felt good and I went with it.

When the first set of windows went in the views started looking good. The overall scale of this building is smaller than the previous, but this seemed to have much more usable spaces. Large areas rather than several little ones.

The view of the ocean was great from here. It's almost 100 meters up so a lot of structure kind of tend to fade away leaving the feeling of being out in the country.

I went a bit crazy with the trees. I looked at my prim count and I had lots and lots left. I was being too stingy. I figured the best way to use those wonderful prims was in trees. At one prim each they're really one of great deals from Linden Labs. I don't think I'm done. There may be more coming!

And finally a well deserved rest looking out at the ocean. I go these bean bag chair form Sara Designs Furniture . They have a single animation and an ad if you click instead of right-click, but you can't beat them at L$1 each! She has much nicer stuff at very reasonable prices. I think I'll be back there when I seriously get into decoration such as that is.

--Drawdweeb Latte--