Reading Radar

One minor way to help contribute to people’s knowledge of SL if you’re so inclined is through the SL Wiki. If you have an SL account, you can edit the wiki. Tonight, for example, I added an entry for imageSynth2 on the Texture Tools page of the wiki, and previously I put in a link to my Final Wrap Up on SL Voice Recording on the Mac post, as well as to WireTap Anywhere on the Wiki’s Voice Recording page.

I’m not pointing that out so you’ll all send me flowers and want to pick out curtains with me, but as examples of little contributions you can make to resources that people use when they’re trying to figure out how to do stuff in SL. Little helpful tips for people add up, as Scottlo Scorbal reminded me last night in a chat I had with him.

There’s actually very little as satisfying as putting a little tip or bit of information out there and then finding out later someone stumbled on it and found it useful. I never was a fan of knowledge hoarding.

And in fact, I see that on the Machinima page that I need to add a link for ScreenFlow for the Mac…

One of the things that sets builds apart is good textures. Instead of relying on the freebie ones and any of the textures you can buy in SL, generally you’ll want to make your own. The hard part about that is making them seamless, or tileable (isn’t that a word?) so that you can have them look good on any size prim.

If you’re a Mac user, consider ImageSynth2, a non-free, non-cheap ($99) app that can either be run as a standalone program or as a photoshop plugin. It’s versatile in that you can pick “chunks” of your input images to use, define the percentage of contribution to the image you want a particular chunk of image to have, etc, etc.

I made this tatami texture with basically no messing with the settings or doing anything other than dropping chunks of original down and then letting imagesynth2 come up with the edges for me. Then I added the fabric on two sides of the tatami, uploaded, and used it to see the results.

Like any tiling texture, it has some repeating patterns in it, but it is seamless and it looks pretty good for not really working too hard at it. Compared to a seamless tatami texture I made from the same original snapshot of tatami, it came out cleaner and the repeat lines aren’t quite as strong. And it took a LOT less time to produce than me doing it by hand, and tatami is a pretty easy texture compared to some others you might need a tileable copy of.

Anyway, not a cheap option but I think a good one if you’re going to be making seamless textures for your builds in-world.

Linden Lab spend more time blogging about their blog nowadays than actually blogging about their business.

Tateru Nino talks about this on Massively, properly conveying the sense of confusion all of us have about what’s going on with LL and their blogs and other communication tools.

Isn’t the job of a PR department to break things down, make them simple, and help people NOT be confused? Ok, the real job of any good PR department is to lie and cover the company’s ass, but aren’t they supposed to do it is an easy to follow fashion? Any real problems with LL have a lot less to do with their actual approach, but rather their communication. The one major exception probably being age verification, that was just handled stupidly from the word go.

Maybe we should all follow LL’s lead and blog about our blogs for awhile. Publish something once or twice a month, and have it be metababble. Whaddya think?

Niko Donburi is one of the good guys in SL. He’s been called the Weird Al of SL, taking music from known tunes and dropping SL related lyrics in them, but he’s done much more in his music and SL careers.

He’s recently updated his web site with an interview series he’s doing of some notables in SL, as well as some machinima he’s started doing too. Good stuff. Thanks, Niko.

BTW, Niko offered to let me use some of his music in my podcast, which I gratefully did. It’s contributions and participation like that from people in the community that made it so much fun, and continue to make SL fun.

The discovery of new land was reported on the Linden Blog, and promptly derided by all the usual commenters for many reasons, some of which I’ll get into, but first - the new land: Nautilus. I hope that link works - I stole if off a google search after I forgot to get a slurl while in-world.

As implied by the name, Nautilus hearkens back to maritime civilizations of yore, wherever yore is. So far so good, but then the knowledge that it’s built by the Moles and is part of the Linden Lab project to spruce up second life and auction off land has already enraged the masses, and they spring forth to the blog with witty and bitter comments at the ready. All I have to say is, if you’re one of the people who think it’s the end of the world and the Lindens are out to get you, then yes it is, and yes they are, now go away so we can look at pretty pictures. I’ll let other people drivel endlessly over the politics and ramifications and moan and wail in ashes and sackcloth.

Nautilus is big. It’s over 20 sims, some of which are Open Sims for waterways, some of which are sims built up for land auction and inhabitation and no doubt commercial use. It’s too big for me to capture it all here, but the level of detail in the project is impressive. There’s a lot to see both on land, on sea, and underwater.

There’s two big guys who I guess are either standing guard or selling tickets. They didn’t really ask me for any ID or anything, and I just kind of snuck through. Guess they didn’t notice the katana.

Like I said, there’s a lot to sea, er.. see, so without further talking, which only enrages people and causes them to block me on all those social networks I don’t belong to anymore, here are the visuals.

I’ll admit I don’t really get the glow crystals either, but for the most part, it’s a really nicely done build with great texturing and detail. The moles did a great job, as far as I’m concerned. It will be interesting to see what the auctions bring.

Normally I’m not a big fan of removing posts from a blog. But my last one, I decided wasn’t productive, so I did. There was no name calling or anything… well, I did make a joke about a leper calling me stumpy, but that was in humor. And if you can’t laugh at lepers.. wait. SCRATCH THAT! Last thing I need is to reconsider yet another post. Ok, um. Start over.

Let’s see, what’s been happening with SL (this is my smoke and mirrors part where you forget that I posted anything and that I was ever born)? Umm. A new client version came out, the official 1.21 version (1.21.6.99587, if you really need to know). As always I’ve read a lot of talk from people afraid to switch, many of whom haven’t actually used any of the 1.21 series in RC form, but I found the RC’s very stable and a worthwhile upgrade myself. Again, I realize my situation may not be representative, and fear, loathing, and computer self-flogging might occur if you use it without being born with a silver spoon in your mouth as I was, apparently. I’m sure I’m the only person to run it with success and good performance.

That reminds me of a thread of comments on a blog post that was linked here, where someone claimed the ATI X1300 couldn’t run SL with higher than a few frames per second… um, my Mac Pro does it with high 20’s to low 50’s fps performance. Someone ELSE commented that they have an nvidia 8800 and can’t run it with greater than 5 - 7 fps, while I have an nivdia 8600M (that’s mobile) and the Macbook Pro and I get 20’s - high 30’s on that machine. What am I saying? It’s very.. well, variable. Assuming that because you’re having issues is all down to the graphics card solely may not be accurate. I think anyone with an open mind should be willing to admit that much.

A couple cool things about the 1.21 series: you can compile scripts in Mono and prim touch face and locations are sent from the client to the server, meaning in theory you can make huds, control panels, interactive billboards, etc, with much fewer prims because you can see where on the prim they click, eliminating the need for separate prims for each button. Just put it all on the texture and slap it on there. In REALITY, though, that’s a 1.21 and up feature, and 1.21 is optional. So frankly it’s useless as a lot of people will be running 1.20.whatever for a long time most likely. And I don’t even know if 1.19 is still able to log onto the grid or not.

What else? Eh, who cares. By now I’ve convinced you there’s nothing to read here, but there’s already people willing to evangelize that fact for me, and you’re ready to move on. Me too. Tomorrow will be a better day. Yay?

What a week. And not in a good way. Besides a couple already depressing events, I took a couple unexpected cheap shots from people that I didn’t expect to take them from. Makes me really wonder about any podcasting community in SL. Maybe since I suspended my own podcast until I figure out what I want to do next, I’m fair game, eh?

Not really sure what to say. All I know is right now I have no feeling of connection with whatever community I was supposedly apart of, aside from the Podcast Island managers. They never change. That’s something. Go ahead and make the empty island jokes, I’d rather have empty islands than empty minds and hearts, at this point. I’m to the point where I don’t really care much about anything in SL or podcasting in SL, which is not a place I saw myself ever being.

Now just get me away from this week, please. Holy friggen cow.

I was a little confused when Torley’s video tutorials were apparently banished from the SL blog, since they are a good resource for learning new things about SL and the client software, but apparently that confusion has ended as there is now a Tutorial Showcase section on the second life website.

Categorized, and searchable, it should make it easier to find video tutorials about SL that interest you or answer whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.

Always good words of advice, whether it’s about galaxy hopping or the end of a podcast.

I’ve been getting a lot of response, some private emails and IM’s, and some in plurk. I’ll respond in time, but at the moment, the whole thing is kind of depressing.

So think of it this way… Don’t Panic. I’m still on earth. I have plans for other creative ventures, I’m way too hooked on podcasting, machinima, blogging, essentially all the creative outlets for using and presenting the platform known as SL to people, to just wither up and die somewhere (even if some people specifically requested that, btw).

So thanks to everyone who enjoyed the podcast, and please be assured it’s not a publicity stunt or me looking for positive reinforcement. I hate when people pull that garbage. I just figured it would be better to say “Hey, I think I’m done, folks” than to just not publish anymore.

I’ll be around… I’m still helping Stuart with the SLPN headquarters, and I still need to get the podcast exhibit implemented there. I have no plans to abandon that.

I’m not a quitter. I’m just trying to figure out what next. Hopefully it will be something that people enjoy, and if not, hey. You can print it out and line the hamster cages with it. (Can you line hamster cages with audio or video? Can you print them?? Lemme know, huh?)

Now get off my lawn, you damn kids! And wipe your noses.. you’re dripping snot on my flower bed.

Razzap Snookums had a razz day.. er, Rezz day. In honor of the little green guy, Crap came up with one of the best ideas ever… everyone going Martian (complete with Martian last named avatars) and throwing a surprise party.

Just remember, we have the Interrogator Probe 3000, and we aren’t afraid to use it.