Wishing everyone all the very best for 2014. Thank you for taking the time to come read this blog, give feedback and comments, and for all your retweets, replurks, loves and support throughout 2013. It has been and is, deeply appreciated.
Tag: My SL
A joyful Second Life from a collection of little wonders
When I was reworking my little corner of Second life recently (and driving people up-the-wall with blog posts on it), I wanted to add a little more life to the place.
I’ve always used sounds a lot in my private region homes; usually in the form of scripted recordings of birdsong, night-time owls and crickets etc., and have also tended to use the sound of splashing / running water if I’ve had a stream or waterfall in the build (although confess I have yet to do that with the “new” garden design).
However, with the “new” house, I wanted something more; I just wasn’t sure what that “more” should be. While I love having Kayle Matzerath’s butterflies flittering and circling the flower beds and adding more colour as well as movement to the place, butterflies aren’t exactly known for being songful or chatty. And while I have things like ducks and squirrels and rabbits sitting in inventory, they also weren’t entirely what I was looking for.
Thus I set off to trawl the SL Marketplace for suitable ideas – and in doing so, I discovered Morgan Garret’s stunning range of garden birds. Or perhaps I should say “rediscovered”, as I first came across them in-world around mid-year, then lost track of them after his in-world store seemed to vanish shortly afterwards.
If you’ve not seen Morgan’s birds, then you’ve missed out. Seriously. They are the most amazing creations you could have to bring added depth to your garden or region; hence why I’m yakking about them now -I’ve hard-pushed not to since adding them to my garden earlier in the month!
There are around 24 varieties of bird in the range at the time of writing, most on sale in COPY packs at around L$350 a go. The birds cover a spread from North America through Europe into Asia and northern Africa, so offering a good range from which to choose. Each pack offers a given bird in a number of variants – standing, perching, “24 hour” and even wearable; and most include a high-res version for photography.
All are beautifully scripted, so once positioned, they bob, look around, cock their heads as if listening, and seem to react to noise and movement in an incredibly real way. And of course, they sing – but not just any song. Each sings in a voice that has been recorded from its real-life counterparts, and like real birds they’ll happily sing from dawn until dusk, before keeping quiet through the night – unless you want them to keep right on singing, which is why there is a “24 hour” variant or two in each pack.
The detail in terms of textures and the sheer natural movement Morgan’s birds possess has to be seen to be believed; I was totally blown away when I first encountered them, and even now I’m hard pushed not to splurge on adding more to my land. And with a LI of just three apiece, it’s possible to get a fair few into even a relatively small space, perched here and there or gathered at a feeding table, and so on without over-burdening a parcel. Each pack even includes a “perching branch” you can plant in or beside trees to sit your birds.
At the moment I have three varieties of Morgan’s little birds scattered around the garden and I’m sorely tempted by at least two more. Those already in the garden have a distinctly North American bias, so being from the other side of the Atlantic, so I feel a pressing need to balance things up a little 🙂 .
If you’re interested in getting Morgan’s birds for your own place, you can find them on SLM under the Grizzly Creek brand, which is managed by Dryfly (Julia Garret – Morgan’s real-life sister), along with the rest of their unique range of goods.
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I’m in Prim Perfect!
Sorry, but I’m a-tooting my little horn here.
Back in June, Saffia Widdershins tackled me to the ground and persuaded me to attempt an interview with Rod Humble.
While I dithered a bit with the result that the interview didn’t entirely go as planned (although it did eventually appear in issue #49, the delay no fault of Saffia’s or mine), Saffia was nevertheless undeterred by my fiddle-farting, and asked me if I’d consider helping-out with the Christmas issue of the magazine, and provide a piece about Calas Galadhon, selected as Prim Perfect’s Region of the month. Given she did ask so nicely, and the subject-matter of the article is so close to my heart, how could I refuse? 🙂
Issue #50 of Prim Perfect is now out, so if you’re so minded, you can read my thoughts on Calas for yourself there. More to the point, you can find out lots more as well, particularly if you’re in a post-Christmas / pre-New Year mood for Doing Things. So why not grab a copy on-line or from an in-world vendor and:
- Join Honour McMillan in discovering 11 amazing regions to visit
- Read about Eliza Wierwight’s moving campaign to help 35 elephants
- Immerse yourself in the wonderful world of Jenne Dibou (just like Honour has!)
- Catch-up with Designing World’s year
- and more!
Or, if you prefer, and as a special treat for the cold winter nights, grab a mug of hot chocolate and huddle down somewhere cosy to read a series of special seasonal stories penned by some of SL’s top writers.
All-in-all a great read!
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Home and garden … again
I recently blogged about changes to my parcel on Blake Sea and doing more to landscape it decently. Turns out that post was a little premature; at the time I wrote it, I still wasn’t really happy with things, but the creative muse had decided to the take a few days off, leaving me bereft of ideas.
Since then, I’ve had time to play and re-work things a little more – which is part of the reason blog posts have been a little sporadic of late (the other being RL and sorting out things for Christmas and New Year with family and all). The place still isn’t entirely finished, but I’m approaching a point where I’ll be reasonably comfortable with it and happy to let the rest fall into place over time.
The main bits of additional work have been to add a decent mesh river course (from a kit by Flea Yatsenko), move the bridge and wooden deck, and lay some new paths which in turn allowed me to do more with the flower beds.
The river now more naturally splits the parcel into two – or at least, that’s the way I look at it 🙂 – which has allowed me to improve the look and feel of the river bank alongside the house with new paths and flowerbeds. The far side of the river is a little less organised, with trees and few ruined walls. It’s not quite as I’d like it to be, and could benefit from ferns or long grass, but I’ve yet to find anything that has sufficient caught my eye.
With a total land capacity of 800 prims, I set myself a ceiling of 500 for the work, of which some 246 was already accounted for by the house, furnishings and decor and also by my cruiser, Lady of Calas (157 prims on its own), leaving me 254 with which to play. Right now, the total count stands ay 491, so I’m feeling a little pleased with myself. A couple of things which have really helped along the way: the convex hull physics shape and mesh, both of which can help greatly reduce the land impact of a build.
I’ve written in the past about the ability of convex hull physics to help reduce LI / prim count by up to a half, depending on the complexity of the build in question. Coincidentally, when I wrote that piece, I was using convex hull on the house I have now, reducing part of the structure from a LI of 32 to just 18.
2,557 days
Two thousand, five hundred and fifty-seven days; that’s a tad over 365 weeks, or around 84 months. Or to put it another way, seven years.
That’s how long I’ve been involved in SL in this incarnation. Even when you take into account the fact that I’m not actually here 24 / 7 (although back in the early days, it certainly felt that way!), that’s still a pretty long time. Not as long as some have been here, I know; but it still boggles my little brain.
When writing on the occasion of my last rez day, I focused on a couple of the ways in which SL had changed for me as a result of exploring and discovering new pastimes; I also wondered, albeit idly, as to what 2013 would bring, given it marked SL’s tenth anniversary.
As I suspected (and no tea-leaf gazing was required to reach the conclusion at the time), SL is still here, still moving forward and still with the same worries: tier, users, retention and so on (something I’ll have a lot more to say about shortly, trust me 🙂 ).
We’ve seen the 10th anniversary celebrations come and go, marked by events big and small. Those longing to SL in the media once more got their wash granted, with Rod Humble fairly bouncing around interview-wise, even if the message was a little confined – something I encountered when asked to interview him for Prim Perfect magazine in June (although the interview didn’t appear in print until August). Even so, there were some very good articles on Second Life to be found, as well as the expected lazy journalism on the part of others, as I also had a poke at.
The year has, of course, seen a lot of LL’s projects on the platform come to fruition. We’ve had Server-side appearance arrive in while is quite possibly one of the most complex updates / deployments to the platform in its entire history, and certainly the most successful first-time deployment on record for a change so far-reaching in extent and potential impact had anything gone wrong. With it, one of the longest-running (and most oft-complained about) banes of Second Life was almost completely eradicated: that of bake fail. For this project alone, the Lab does deserve a decent hat tip of recognition and a word or six of thanks.
We’ve also seen the viewer release process improved, allowing the Lab to push through fixes and updates a lot more quickly than before, as well as learning from the issues of a year ago when viewer updates were badly bunged-up for over two months by a series of recalcitrant bugs. Then there is Monty Linden’s work on the viewer / server communications front, Andrew Linden’s work (with others) on interest lists, Baker Linden’s tweaks, nips, tucks and all with various projects, and lots more besides. All of which add-up to an overall improvement in the user experience in SL, even if some of the work has yet to be completely polished-up. Nyx and his team are working to ease things on the inventory side of the fence, and of course we’ve had, or are in the process of getting, further new toys to play with – materials, the upcoming experience tools / keys, many improvements to the viewer and so on.
Yes, there are still bugs and issues and worries and upsets (dare I say … T…O…S?), but overall, 12 months on, we’re all still here and the world hasn’t blown up. For my part, I’ve continued exploring SL (as per my travelogue pieces), and flying and boating still feature in my in-world activities. Admittedly, I’ve now graduated onto something bigger than a Warbug (as featured in last year’s post) for the flying, and have swapped the sailboat for an E-Tech Sparrow 2, which I’ve named Lady of Calas after Ty and Truck bestowed that honorific upon me earlier in the year, something which touched me quite deeply.
While I remain a Premium member, regulars here will be aware that my interest in boating and flying has led me back into renting land in SL, rather than living within my little Linden Home (which I still have, given it is in a rather nice location). As I noted yesterday, the “new” place has been undergoing a re-vamp over the last 24 hours, and even now, I’m just finishing that off and refining things.
It’s been a fairly fun year, complete with a few ups and downs, but nothing to complain about. There is a lot still to come where Second Life is concerned, and 2014 already looks like it is shaping up to be an interesting year, with things like Oculus Rift and Leap Motion hopefully making their debut as well as various other things the Lab has up its collective sleeve.
Who knows? I may even blog about it! 😉
Taking a break. Well, for a day
I decided to take time off from blogging & exploring for a day and focus on things at my home on Blake Sea. Having seen a number of outstanding home and garden designs recently, I felt more could be done with my own place, so I took the day off for more involved blogging to see what I could do both within the constraints of the parcel size (2688 sq m), capacity (800 prims) and the requirements of the estate covenant (which limits things like terraforming, build types, etc).
The first thing I knew I needed to do was to re-work the house; when I moved in, the orientation of the build was such that the bedroom faced out over the sea, and the lounge sat towards the back of the land and faced into the parcel, something I’ve wanted to revise for a good while now, so the lounge would be more forward and facing the sea.
Once this was done, it was time to get to work on sorting out what else I wanted. This was actually a case of trial and error, as it turned out to be another of those situations where I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what I actually wanted; just a vague idea of paths, trees, flowers and water all somehow mixed together. Inspiration finally hit when I decided to take out the wooden dock I’d built for the Lady of Calas, my little E-Tech Sparrow cruiser. With that out of the way, I could re-work the house further and introduce a couple of stepped terraces down to the water’s edge, the lowermost of which could also form the quay for Lady of Calas?
It was a pretty simple idea, but one which let me get around the issue of terraforming, as it meant I could add walls and planters to the terraces, offering lots of opportunity to display flowers and add colour and have to worry about tweaking the land in order for things to look right. A shopping spree also saw me splurge a little as I picked-up some items from some of my favourite designers: Alex Bader, Cory Edo, Eko Zhong and Kayle Matzerath (I still love Kayle’s Luminaria build for Fantasy Fayre).
I don’t pretend the finished article matches up to anything like Crystal Oak Falls. I’m not even sure it is finished; I still have some capacity I might yet use; at the very least, there are some Koi Carp boxed somewhere in my inventory which may end-up in the pond, and I’m having further ideas about making the gardens somewhat more “formal”. But is it is, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to achieve, hopefully without bending the estate rules *too* much in the process. As it is, the house is now decently oriented, and I’ve given myself a little more organised space around the house through the use of the terraces, including finding a nice new home for my piano. I’ve also gained a new outdoor seating area out over the water on the far side of the parcel.
There are a few more things I might do over the next few days in order to refine things further, but for now, methinks it is time to get back to blogging!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 