Chandra’s Page

Linden Lab continued its tradition of replacing the sun and the moon with holiday-themed imagery today. Apparently, the only two moving celestial bodies in Second Life have been changed several times already today, with messages such as “Marry me,” “I do,” and “2Lag is 2Love.”

This is the sort of inspired zaniness that keeps me coming back to Second Life. Even in times that I’m not feeling much interest for building or socializing, I can count on LL to provide a bit of self-deprecating humor. Thanks for a good laugh, Linden Lab.

It figures that my first post in here in a couple months would be about something that’s actually been around for even longer, but it’s brand new to me. FlipperPA Peregrine whipped up a lovely little tool for converting an animated GIF89a image into a Targa suitable for animated texture use in SL. It even spits out the LSL code required to run the animation.

Now I need to get off my duff and build those animated textures I’ve been dreaming of for the Space Fountain accelerators.

I followed a poster advertising skydiving at Cubey Terra’s store in Abbotts, and I was pleasantly surprised to arrive at the lovely island of Allure. Not only did I find a fantastic skydiving platform (complete with diving boards, a bar, and a dance floor), the entire island has been covered in a recent snowfall, giving it a cheery holiday feel.

However, the holiday magic quickly gave way to amusement as I surveyed a large number of snow sculptures, both macabre and whimsical, throughout the island. In the spirit of Calvin and Hobbes, the snowmen are engaged in activities unusual, and often dangerous, for snowmen.

Lured by the prospect of seeing pixel-shaded water effects, last Friday the preview grid saw a small invasion from many EFNet #secondlife regulars. The 1.8.0(1) preview attracted a couple dozen people, who crowded onto Chip Midnight’s swimming raft in Freelon.

The atmosphere was festive, and culminated in an attempt to cram as many people as possible onto my Flying Tako sailboat.

As for the new ripple water effect, those people whose graphics cards are capable of displaying it were most pleased. Though far from perfect, it’s a far cry easier on the eyes than Second Life’s current water surface. It looks even more impressive today on version 1.8.0(3), including real-time distortion of objects on the opposite side of the surface from the viewer.

Nope, this post has absolutely nothing to do with Second Life. I’m just abusing my blog to test plogit on my new Palm LifeDrive.

Posting is remarkably fast, aside from the time required to scribble out text via Graffiti. It’s a bit irritating that plogit can’t set the category of a post, but it could still be useful.

Of course, if I’m blogging about Second Life, I’ll be seated at a powerful desktop computer that’s running Firefox, so I don’t really need this wireless toy. But it makes my inner nerd smile, at least.

Castles aren’t exactly a rare thing in Second Life. “A man’s home is his castle” is, more often than not, taken quite literally in a world where erecting a fortress is hardly more difficult than building a bungalow. However, there are some builds that stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The Elven Tower in Orwood is one example of such an exceptional build. I ran across it, like many things I’ve seen in SL, completely by accident, after a physics mishap tossed me several sims away from my workshop. (To my neighbors in Drawbridge: I apologize for the giant smoking crater. I’ll have someone in to fix that in a few days.) I looked up, and the distinctive outline of the tower immediately caught my eye.

Despite some clunking and thumping about in the bowels of the colocation facility housing Second Life (yes, the infamous asset server was acting up again), I still managed to get in a few good hours of general lolling about. I gazed in amazement at the new, super-tacky field of cubic doom in the neighboring sim (-no picture available at the moment; Cristiano’s got Snapzilla down for a move to a new server- picture here on Snapzilla), discovered a brand new plywood box hovering above 250 meters near my airfield, and got in a bit of flight time over the northern continent in the biplane I’m building.

I had two of my best friends in SL log on about the same time, both of whom I keep managing to miss. We caught up and generally shot the shit most of the evening. Even on a night that’s not conducive to much building, it’s nice to know I can still have an enjoyable time in SL.

I’m amazed at the deep bonds of friendship I’ve developed in SL. I’ve been in online environments for half my life, but before Second Life, I never really formed any lasting online relationships. There’s some magic underlying this little virtual world, some bit of shared experience, that somehow makes the people I meet in the Second Life community more real to me than those I’ve met in other virtual worlds, games, and chat environments. I don’t know what it is, but I’m thankful for it.

Typo seems to have installed without any effort for a few other people I’ve asked, and instructions on a couple pages for installing it on Dreamhost, though seemingly simple, gave me no love.

After no small amount of bashing my face into the keyboard, I started from scratch with a fresh installation. Lo and behold, it worked, without complaint, first try.