Chey's Travels: Puntarenas

Written 5 March, 2011

Chey's Travels: Puntarenas

I thought I'd blog about some fabulous places I've visited lately. Thanks to Chestnut Rau and others for bringing them to my attention.

Costa Rica is an estate of more than 70 tropical sims. Most are lush, and some mountainous, terraformed and landscaped with great skill. Seven or eight of the sims are parkland.

Puntarenas is one of the parkland sims, a dry forest, lushly vegetated and mountainous. Paths wind through the woods, terminating at stunning waterfalls. Wild animals can be seen here and there along the way.

I'll let the photos tell the story.

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Botgirl Muses on the Muse

Written 1 March, 2011

Botgirl Muses on the Muse

Last month Botgirl Questi wrote a blog about creativity and the muse. You should all go there right now and read it.

Botgirl was talking about both creativity and relationships. I'm a big believer in working things out while I sleep, so I especially like the following, as applied to creativity:.

Trying to power through a creative block is usually futile. It's usually better to take a break and let the Muse do the work. Instead of running from difficult relationships and projects, some of us habitually attempt to power through relational and creative blocks with urgent brute force. Although this can be an effective approach in short bursts, it is not a sustainable strategy. Blockages are a natural part of the creative and relational cycle when we are working within our depths. The key is to have enough confidence in an eventual resolution to "Let go and let Muse". Any in-progress work of mine that gets cranky is sent to bed for a nap.

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Whales

Written 1 March, 2011

Whales

Once again Second Life has provided a reprise of a real-life experience.

I'm fortunate to have a week every fall on Cape Cod. Most years the weather is cooperative enough to allow a whalewatching trip. Some years are better than others, but I've never missed seeing whales.

I took the topmost photo in 2003. Maybe because I live inland and don't get to see the ocean much, I was impressed with the aluminum foil look of the water.

I snapped the second and third photos last night on Whimsy Kaboom. If only I had managed the angle a little better, I could have captured Kaboom's seabirds. The shots do show some nice water effects, though.

(One of my favorite things in Second Life is Kailou Splash's blue whale. Four years ago my neighbor and friend Dodgeguy Woodward, who was moving to a new home, was kind enough to give me his. I plunked him (or her, as I found out later) into the lagoon and brought him with me to Whimsy a year later. Two more of Mr. Splash's whales cavort in the ocean on our Whimsy Kaboom sim. I like to stand on the decks and watch them play. Sometimes it pays off).

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Chey Encounters the Copybot

Is It Live or Is It Memorex?

Written 23 February, 2011

Chey Encounters the Copybot

In my more than four years in Second Life I've never come face-to-face with content theft. The closest I ever came was finding a coat that looked an awful lot like my Duchess Coat from Shai. I immediately IMed Shai Owner Shai Delecroix and cued her in. I've not idea how or if the issue was resolved.

Tonight, wasting time, I took myself to Help Island Public, where a well-meaning ex-mentor gave me and a bunch of other people a folder full of free hair.

When I got home I looked at the folder. The hair was from EDT, with full perms. Hmmmm...

I pulled one hairdo out onto the floor of our Hair of 1000 Pleasures and saw the creator listed as one Jas Ebbage instead of the actual creator, Elikapeka Tiramisu. I inspected the hair and discovered the many prims had all been created within seconds of one another.

For sure this was copybotted hair.

I checked my chat history and IMed the guy who had given me the hair, droppig him a note as well, since he wasn't online. Then I IMed EDT and told Elika about the hair.

Sheesh.

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Turtles

Written 22 February, 2011

Turtles

While Sweetie is coping with 8" of snow in the northern climes, it's been glorious here in Atlanta. For the past ten days or so I've been walking daily around the lake and woodland trails beside my house. So handy! I just log out and go out the door. It's the logging out part that's hard.

There's a lot of wildlife about, which might sound surprising, since my little community is just 10.5 miles from this:

We have a lake full of fish, muskrats, beaver, all sorts of waterfowl, songbirds, hawks, a pandemonium of squirrels, and even deer.

I've been hanging my Canon Rebel digital SLR around my neck and taking it with me, becoming more comfortable with its controls and exploring its many functions.

Turtles love to crawl out of the cold water and sun themselves on trees which have fallen into the lake. I took the top photo on Thursday or Friday.

Over the weekend I remembered I had in my inventory a nice little turtle from Animania. This evening I placed it in the little swamp on Whimsy's eastern shore, perched on a dead tree from Pillow Talk. You can see Mr. Turtle in the second photo, above.

Here's another photo from real life, same day:

Here's the same photo after Sweetie pounded it in GIMP. Big improvement, huh?

See Mr. Turtle in world here.

Chey and Friends

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Gone is Gone!

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Written 22 February, 2011

Gone is Gone!

I can't stand Linden Lab's 2.x viewers, and so consequently I use Phoenix. I like it. A lot.

One of Phoenix' more interesting features is derender. From the pie menu you can make any object or person disappear. It's handy when obnoxious people are present; you mute and derender them, and they're just... gone.

Until now crossing a region border or teleporting to a new sim would reset all derendered objects; they would e visible again.

But with Phoenix' latest release-- 1.5.2.908-- derender is permanent. Once an object is gone, it's gone, and you can't see it, even with Highlight Transparent enabled. Ever. Again.

I found this out the hard way today. When preparing the last post I derendered the floating platform at the game area.because it kept getting in the way when taking photographs. Later, I derendered some plants at the swamp area at Whimsy so I could grab and manipulate a 100% alpha fog emitter.

This evening I teleported to the game area to play mahjong. When I arrived the table was there, but the platform wasn't.

I relogged. Same problem.

I flew to the marsh to check on the derendered plants there. Didn't see them.

I searched the web and found a JIRA for permanent derender. From there I went to the release notes and discovered derender is now permanent; objects will show only if you remove them from the blacklist.

Great. Where's the blacklist?

Maybe the preference menu... Phoenix tab... Nope... Network & Folders... Nope.

Maybe it's on the hard drive... C:\... Program Files... Phoenix Viewer... app_settings...Nope... llplugin... Nope.

Surprisingly, I found no FAQ on the Phoenix website. I did find an in-world support group and joined. With nearly 9000 members it was not working properly, but repeately typing queries that weren't posted finally resulted in a reply. The blacklist was in the Phoenix menu at the top of the screen.

Duh.

Problem resolved.

It's Gone!

It's Back!

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By Dawn the Bull is Exhausted and Chey's Textures are Scrambled, But She Emerges Victorious

By Dawn the Bull is Exhausted
And Chey's Textures are Scrambled
But She Emerges Victorious

(Click the photo to see the scores)

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