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--

Technology convention for non-profit organizations

I attended a technology convention for non-profit organizations and they had a session about non-profits on Second Life so naturally I attended. The session was good, but the presentation was awesome. There was one presenter on site, but both she and the other two presenters we in Second Life form across the US. In addition, the presentation was geared both to the real audience sitting in our room and the virtual audience sitting around the presenting avatars. It was a situation which would take more guts than I would have to do a presentation myself.









But I think it was very worth it. This presentation was to a group of people that were mostly not Second Life literate. Probably more than half the audience had not been on to SL at all, and many of the others were at the “I signed on once” stage. The fact that the presentation was on SL communicated a feel for the world that I don’t think would have reached the same lever even with a “demo” of Second Life (“Here’s how you walk”, “here’s how you chat”, …)

It was great fun at the end where all the audience questions had been answered and the in-room presenter asked if there was anything the audience would like to see. One guy immediately asked if we could go see dancing since he couldn’t picture avatar dancing. Instead of taking us, the presenter asked the in-world audience if they’d indulge us in dancing and several of the onscreen avatars gave a great show and a great close to the presentation.

--DrawDweeb Latte-

New friend on Second Life

Had a wonderful experience today getting a good friend onto Second Life. We had talked a lot about Second Life in the past few month and he'd expressed a great interest in it. He's even joined the South Florida Second Life Group. But he was battling that ever so common syndrome of "I signed up once, but didn't do much since then". I guess now I've been in Second Life long enough that I forget how hard it is to take the first steps. After logging a few hours I think people do well. But those first few hours are oh so painful.

But it was a wonderful experience because it showed me what a difference even a casual tutor makes for this process. This was not a formal class. We just carted the laptop over to lunch. Over some great (and I'm sure fattening) Nicaraguan treats, we were able to create the account and go through several of the basic stuff like Inventory, walking, buying (freebies), and creating landmarks. Was really awesome to have him finally visit my place and see my art rather than just seeing picture of it.

I've been thinking of giving beginner classes to people as a way to make contact with future SLers. This has really made me feel even more like doing it. I look forward to the first building class!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

So I look behind my building one day and notice that the big weird roller coaster amusement park thingee is gone. Now there's just a huge expanse of land behind me and I can see the original mountain.



I fly over for a look. An I find the land is actually quite cheap. Of course it is. It's not waterfront. Anyone can build something in front of it.

BUT....

I own the two waterfront lots in front of it. So that means that for my purposes it IS waterfront. I have a good shot at keeping this view. Took some thinking, but not much, to make me buy the two lots behind the two I already own.

One of the first things I did was to climb up to the top of the mountain and sit to take a good look. Its a wonderful view!




I quickly started a project to replace the building I already had. It was a fun build, but in many way shows my inexperience. I loved the idea of having a shot from scratch.

My first attempt pretty much looked like a large fish tank...






Ah...but a fish tank with great views. I really like how the inside took advantage of the view down the mountain and out to the sea.



So the layout was cool with me. But I stated working on giving the building just a bit more character. Slope part of the roof down. Add some color on the walls. Stairs inside. A veranda leading to an outside deck.

May still be somewhat boxy, but feels much better to me now.







Can't wait to do more. My wish for my birthday is unlimited time!

-- Drawdweeb-