why?

Why is it that on SLProfiles 90% of the population put down “textures” in their SL skills resume?  Ok guys, being able to drop a crappy image from the freebie box of crappy images you found does not make you a texture artist, that’s all i am saying.

people are strange

It really blows me away that people think a few hours wandering around the grid can show them all that SL has to offer. No worries that I am going to stop supporting my addiction any time soon. >=)

Been busy in RL work these days so when I get home at night I am fragged for SL creativity. This blows massive space goats as I have got 2 really big projects on my plate right now. I need to start the texture process on DogWood and I need to start the design process for Deadly. Basically we are going ape Roma as much as possible since the worthy designers of that SIM did such an amazing job. The down side being that Deadly is not nearly as moved to recreate historically accurate settings. S’ok it will still rock when it is done.

As I may have mentioned in the recent past, Shadows of Ithilien pretty much fell apart and they are rebuilding. I offered them a mess of free stuff and got ignored. I don’t really care if t hey don’t want my builds, that’s groovy if they want shite builds that all look exactly alike with all of the same texture sets. I can see why one of the admins took his toys and went home. It is frustrating to deal with a crowd of people like that.

So I have to add a young woman to my list of adored people. Phedre Moriarty. She rocks, and we mesh like a couple of cogs in the same clockwork. Getting to know her is an awesome experience. It is one of the rare connections that promises to be a good friendship in either the virtual or real world. She is kinky, smart, funny and fun. We seem to have totally different tastes in online activity but we get on really well. She has me in her picks as being collared and honestly I think that is an extremely shallow representation of the connection we have. At first my interest in her was strictly D/s but now I see what fantastic friend she is as well. If you read this, Phedre, know that you are adored and have a better day then yesterday.

Nothing stunning to share today although later on I may post a product image of the medieval style bench seats I built a bit ago. I just haven’t sat down to create the vendor image yet so they haven’t gone into the store.

Wednesday morning

Thank you to all you wonderful people who post images in thumbnail and link to a larger file and to those who don’t post a zillion large images. You are the people I celebrate today for you are the people who do not demolish the tag surfing feature of word press with pic spam.

So I need to address my accusatory voice today. I am a combative person in that if someone posts a load of negativity concerning my current favorite addiction (second life) I will almost always step up to the plate and issue a response. I try to address all salient points of their discourse in a forthright manner with the knowledge I have. Sometimes I get a little heated about it. When someone totally rags on a hobby or a lifestyle they don’t know anything about it really bugs me. It presents that person as fantastically closed minded and why I should care if they are closed minded is a mystery even to me. I really should just be able to say to myself, “that person is living in their sphere and that is fine.” Then be on about my merry way. So I resolve now to stop being combative in that manner. It doesn’t do anything but paint me as some sort of geeky fanatic and frankly it takes to much energy to change someone’s mind about something so trivial.

Dusan Writer posted a great piece on alts and the various connotations/uses of those alternate accounts. I have two alt accounts actually for two specific sets of activities, both role playing oriented. How often do I log into them? Not too often. The truth is I have spent so much time making Mace my face in SL (yes in some circles I am often addressed as maceyface) that I find the maintaining of an alt to be a chore unless like Degan Blackadder (my first alt) it is a character for a specific setting, in that case he is a villain (reference the BBC show Blackadder) for RP settings.

In that same pile of ideas is the idea of the many avatars. I have many. . . erm very many avatars. Dragons, satyrs, a crow, a raven, a giant raven, a steam powered robot, an armored arch angel sort of demony thing, a dark unicorn (yes I spend too much money at Grendel’s Children) a dark fae and the variations on my “normal” shape including a heavily tattooed demon (best tattoo work ever done by Tera Cioc) and a Kender based on the characters from the Dragonlance novels. If you know where I can find a hoopak staff I would greatly appreciate the LM. Not to mention the four furry avatars, two vulpines (fox) and 2 equines. Now I am considering a werewolf for another RP sim. Is it just as bad to have many shapes as it is to have an alt?

Those are my thoughts this morning.

A new resolution

I am not going to get into discussions with architects regarding the usefulness of SL for their business.  They just don’t get it, and I am not going to keep trotting out the same arguments about why its a bad idea to allow people to upload any mesh type into SL.  My education is in 3D animation and production design but apparently I don’t know as much as an architect. (insert sarcasm)  Instead of bitching about how much SL doesn’t do what you want either figure out a way to make it work or go someplace else because you are just annoying the rest of us who are quite happy with our SL experience.

 There has got to be a better way to set up the filters here.  Maybe I will just move to Weebly too.

Where’s Mace?

Ok, I was on the grid last night for all of 30 minutes. Wednesday nights my SL presence will be a bit scarce as I have engaged on a course of even more geeky fun and frolics. You guessed it kids; a group of my cronies has started up a D20 D&D game. Why they picked Wednesday night, I do not know. Suffice it to say I was dragging ass this morning. I did manage to revamp my parcel a bit and rezzed my loft up on the platform I have been using for building. I figured that since Deadly was moving in a more classical Roman direction my urban loft would not fit so well down on the ground.

So, not a ton to comment on. Per comments on other blogs I have been called narrow minded and short sited because of my opposing point of view regarding the ability to import other files/mesh types into SL. All I will say here is that as much as I would love it, I think it is a very bad idea. Basically I let myself get caught up in a debate again which I always hate. When someone can get me riled like that it just annoys me, so I choose not to respond and continue the thread. But I maintain that there are many people out there who want to force SL into a pigeon hole it is not currently designed to fit into.

I haven’t been in Asgard recently and Rome not much at all. I will no doubt go back to Rome since they have tightened up on weapons that do enhanced damage in order to level the playing field and the last I saw they were not allowing whips because of the hi cheese factor. Asgard was a different story. I really like it there and I like the people. I do not like group owned land and not having media control in my rental. So I decided to not maintain the skybox but instead to get a spot in the mall and sell my stuff there. Slight drama ensued. The SIM owners had upgraded me to a larger skybox which was my initial interest when I rented there. Granted they did it without verifying that that is what I wanted. Also, one of the owners and I had been flirty and interested in each other. She wigged a little on me when I told her I was planning on renting a mall space instead. Not only would it save me money but may generate income as well. The other owner apparently has issues and regularly made inappropriate commentary regarding the relationship between his business partner and me. Aside from conversation and general hanging out there really wasn’t a relationship. So a fun comfy place became less fun and less comfy ergo there was less Mace. I just picked up my gear and faded.

I have a few things to add to the store this weekend and the club to finish building so that I can start the texturing process. I will not be attending the Pony Camp at The Forum this weekend despite my confidence that I would be the best pony boy on the field. There is just to much else to get done in RL and SL.

Sometimes people are a notch shortsighted. Forget about the back end code for a minute. Forget about LL techs having to make some major updates to our favorite addiction and forget about grid stability or instability whatever the case may be. Can you really imagine what would happen if SL had the ability to import other mesh types? Think back on all the art work that is appropriated by dishonest content creators and sold on the grid. Now imagine the tidal wave of content that would smash the grid with content from DAZ, Renderosity, RDNA and Content Paradise, just to name a few. No, as much as I would like LL to allow even just 3DS meshes to be imported, I can understand why they don’t. I would rather see LL add a few more options to the toolset rather than support the import of other mesh types.

Any of my loyal readers (all three of you) know that I am big on Games Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_theory) although I am not a big brain about it, ever since I sat through an entire season of Survivor I have been much more aware of the various applications of Games Theory. Add to that the following essay

http://www.nickyee.com/pubs/Yee%20&%20Bailenson%20%20Proteus%20Effect%20(in%20press).pdf

and you will have some wild reading to occupy the brain bucket riding on your shoulders. How much does your virtual self effect how you interact with the people around you? Now I don’t go around analyzing everyone and their interactions, in fact unless someone is a right prick I rarely think about it other than to gaze in awe and wonder at what some people think looks good. It’s like a train wreck sometimes and you just cannot look away.

I tried Windlight last night. Wow. Ok I can understand some of the beefs people have about how it makes avatars look, but honestly the person who brought that up wears a face light and you just don’t need a face light with Windlight. It will cause you to look bleached out and plastic, every time from what I can determine. My virtual self looks great in the Windlight viewer. I noted that particle effects display much better and I love the glow options. I didn’t have any issues running it either, my system chugged right along and I even had photoshop open in the background.

On another virtual front, I had an experience recently that stuck with me. Several of you know I like MMO’s and have run through several. I play WoW as well as spending time in SL. I can’t refer to being on the grid as playing although that’s part of what goes on, it just doesn’t qualify as a game the same way WoW and other MMO’s do. So I was playing WoW the other day and I get a whisper (an IM) from this dude asking if I want to be a guild master of his guild because his account is being cancelled. I say no thanks and go on about my business. Five minutes later he IM’s me again asking if I want to join his guild. Being me, I answer with the following, “You just asked me to be a guild master of your guild because your account is being yoinked now you want me to join your guild?” To which he replied in the affirmative. All I can think is what kind of brain damage this guy must have. The two most likely scenario being that he got bunged by Bliz-Gods for doing something naughty, or he is really a 14 yr old who is under the iron will of his ‘rents and it is their CC that allows him to slay virtual dragons. Either way I am not up for inheriting someone else’s abortive attempts at virtual conglomeration so I say, “No thanks, go away.” He responds with, “Well fuk u then.”

Gee no wonder his account is being yoinked. I wonder if anyone took him up on the offer.

building building building and a funeral

Where did the weekend go? I mean wow that seems to have just flown by with the speed of teenage girls heading for a sale in the mall. Was it a productive weekend? Well RL housework did not get done which means that I will be logging onto the grid later in the evenings this week. Productive things that got done where as follows:

I created a couple of wicked cool armbands. They are the first step in creating a set of men’s silks. I am a huge fan of the stuff over at Solange and even though they have a vast color selection and excellent work it just isn’t quite what I want to see on the old AV. Besides a set of silks is a good project for messing with prim accessories.

I re-created some WoW style bits and pieces in SL. Not really textured yet but just to see if I could. Now I am going to make them different enough not to attract the attention of the Blizzard Gods.

I need to rez the medieval manor house and double check everything as it looks like it is coming up as no copy in the vendor. Not that anyone has actually bought one of the damn things which is unfortunate as I think they are nifty.

I also turned out a very simple and rather homely short sword. Now I know zilch about scripting so I will need to glean some details on how to make the damn thing usable but I felt like a giant among builders for a brief time.

In other news, I found out that an acquaintance had passed on recently. Now usually I take this sort of thing with a grain of salt and go on about my business. Death is a very personal and private issue for me. When a friend or a family member dies I tend to lock myself in the bathroom, turn the shower on and sob into a towel. Not that I am afraid of appearing “unmanly” or anything. Far from it, I just don’t feel that the rest of the world needs to have my grief up in their grill, but I digress. So a bunch of folks in Deadly got the news that a former resident has passed away. Apparently the fellow had a bad ticker and was hit by a heart attack near the end of December. So everyone loses their shit of course. He was pretty popular there and I hear he was a nice guy. All I really know is that he wore an outfit with a zillion prims and had a really bad skin. What caused the big up roar was that the dudes wife responded to a few inquiries and blamed SL for causing un due stress on the dude. WTF? Ok whatever, she was obviously an SL widow as well as a RL widow and may have been a bit bitter. I will refrain from calling her a rude twat out of respect for the dead. Dude, I hope you are in whatever afterlife you aimed for. I won’t comment too much more on that. Needless to say much drama was born and one of the dancers (who has a me me me complex) immediately pipes up with, “Oh it was my fault I stressed him out too much!” Honey get over yourself, you were his nightly wank material for a while that is about as far from stress as it gets.

Among other people related news, I recently met a stunning young woman with significant complimentary interests to my own. Similar age and background, similar tastes and she is a dominant. Very ginchy cool person and I enjoy getting to know her. I have made some fairly interesting friends via SL in the last six months. Yes some have resulted in varying levels of sexual tension of the good and the bad sort and some were just plain friends. The suck ass thing is when one of the people with awesome friend potential up and leaves SL. Frost, if you ever read this, thank you for not hitting on me constantly like the rest of the girls at Deadly. (yes even the gay ones, what can I say, I am pretty) You were fun and I hope your club does well.

Club DogWood is coming along very well and aside from having to re build five door way arches and finishing the room, the basic structure is done. Once I texture the bad boy (it is effing huge) I will put in some gaslight fixtures and railing around the upper deck. Someone gave me a texture animate script last night that I may put to good use along with a texture cycle script. We shall see how it works as I am still not so great with getting tricksy with my builds. I do need to rebuild the image I used on the entry way as it came up as a little pixilated. Once I finish this build I will go back to expanding the building selection in my shop.

don’t get it?

Would you like to know what I do not get? I do not get people who don’t get it. Is that vague enough? Like SL, people don’t get it. I didn’t get it until someone showed me the potential and where I fit in the SL scheme, or rather how I could fit in the SL scheme. Like I said, potential. Am I an oddball? Without question. But I didn’t get algebra in high school either. Despite having a deep and abiding love for the wonders of geometry and a healthy respect theoretical statistics (bred in me by being a gamer for years and years) I just did not understand algebra nor why it would be useful. Later in college I had a professor who taught the subject much better and made it into a game. I don’t love algebra but I “get it”.

I don’t know why people do the things they do, but I get their motivations. I understand enough about how people work to “get them”. Same for animals. In fact short of learning something totally new I think I “get” just about everything in my sphere of influence. Rather, I get as much as I know. I am aware of wave theory, doesn’t mean I am an expert. I have a vague notion of what it means and that there are many arcane tomes published on the topic with maths well beyond my current level of comprehension.

I even get “griefers”. I don’t like em but I understand that there are pricks out there in the world who just want to ruin someone else’s good time.

CLUTCH slight topic change-

The term griefer has been around almost since the inception of online gaming. I have played all of the big MMO’s and people still get tweaked at other players for “griefing” in WoW. How exactly do you grief someone in WoW or any number of other MMO’s where PVP is strictly voluntary? I never had it happen that I can think of. Unless it’s just a matter of someone being a right bastard.

SHIFT

So, to people who “don’t get” SL. If you have honestly sampled all aspects of the virtual world can still say “I don’t get it!” then maybe you need to go back to playing the Sims.

who cares about banks?

Ok let me start of today’s post saying that I don’t give a good god damn about SL banks closing. If someone put money into an SL bank they deserve what they get. Yes this includes what few friends I have who may have “invested” in this manner. The plain and simple fact is that unless it is traded on Wall Street or is secured/insured by a government agency or there is a legally binding contract you do not put money into it. Gee, anyone recall the Savings and Loan scams? Bitching about SL banning banks is like pissing into the wind. All you get is a frustrated. The flip side is that if you opened an SL bank and do not have ties to a RL bank to back your virtual currency trade you should have known better. The gambling issue clearly illustrated that governing body’s can in fact step in and say, “wait a minute!” Bur even before that came up I cannot honestly believe that anyone thought an unregulated SL bank was ever a good idea. Good riddance.

So when is SL going to incorporate a bevel and extrude feature in their tool set? Talk about saving time and computing power. Imagine building a stone obelisk out of a single square prim rather than using three or four. I know we can always use a sculpty. The issue being that I cannot stand how sculpties texture, nor am I overly fond of the idea of them being “physically” round. Yes I know sculpt stairs are popular but have you watched an AV walk up or down them? Big time floating. I’d rather use a ramp. I wouldn’t mind seeing a UV Unwrap texture option too or maybe a means to export/import UV’s but that opens up a whole different can of worms.

I did package up the Viking house last night and put it in the store, and totally forgot to bring the snap shots with me to work to post here. So later tonight I will up date this entry with shots of the Viking long house and a local for all you eager Vikings to pick up yours. It is really a four house pack. Basically I did one (these are pretty simple low prim houses) and then did three variations on it. They are no mod-copy-no transfer and packaged with rez foo so you can easily set up a small Viking settlement with them. I will probably create an accessory pack and a few other odds and ends. I may try making a dragon ship; we’ll see how ambitions I am feeling.

EDIT: Here are a few images-

If you would like to purchase this little gem just search my name, Mace Maverick, my classified is there in the profile.

I did not work on the club last night as I am always hesitant to do a big build when SL may be having issues. So tonight I will lay in the side bits and the roof. Once I get everything where it goes, the Skidz scripts come out of the prims (by the way I effing love the skidz update) then the texturing process starts.

General Update- Insert generic witty title

No post for a while. Things have been a little on the “blah” side.

Current SL projects are as follows;

I resolve to shop less. In fact unless it is something really truly stunning, something scripted (like a weapon or gadget) or something totally beyond my skills to build, I will not buy it. I am going to try and build pretty much everything from here out. Like I said there are exceptions of course.

I am building a club. I took a commission to build a steam punk themed club for a BDSM/Fur group. It is going well, the bulk of the building was laid out on Sunday morning and I will put up the side walls tonight. Textures will take more time as the owner wants something very original.

I created a sort of gazebo/rotunda thing. I don’t know what you call it actually. A stone base with four pillars and a rounded roof thingy. I got the idea from a guy who sells these awesome Roman Villa buildings. If you get a chance search up Nile Designs. If you can’t locate the shop that way, go to SL Rome and look for the fellow’s store. Don’t rag on me for stealing his idea either. By the time I put this building in my shop it will be extremely different from his stuff.

I still have not taken the big stab at doing clothing and ornament. Mostly just been a matter of time. I goof off a lot.

Other developments are more or less in the nature of personal relationships. I do not want this to seem like bragging or boasting, because it is not. My SL mojo is strong though. I have met some really awesome people who want to become involved. I constantly comment on the level of social interaction and emotional investment with people in SL. Anyone who reads more than one of my posts knows that I believe with all my heart that a relationship is a relationship whether in RL or in SL. For the most part my standard philosophy of over communication seems to keep things running smooth. What do you do when you find yourself really into someone and they want you all to themselves? It is something I have been running over in my head for sometime. I came up with a solution I thought would work but honestly I am not certain now how I feel about it.

I recently had my first truly “sexual” experience in SL. I can see the appeal. Ms M basically told one of the Deadly priestess’ to take me off and do me. It’s a little like watching bad German pRon only more interactive. I admit it was in fact totally hot, both parties had fun. Well she said she had fun (gods, date/sex paranoia in SL too?). Yes I know my three whole readers will be surprised to learn it was totally straight sex with a regular girl. Assuming of course the person controlling the avatar was in fact female. I tend to take people as they present themselves in order to avoid going bat shit crazy. I will not launch into a defense of SL erotica. Either you think it is nucking futs or you do it yourself and just don’t talk about it or you are totally indifferent to it.

I need to go wander around Caledon some more. I haven’t done that in a month or two at least. I finished the Viking long house I was working on turned out three variations of it. They are no frills housing but they look really good. I just need to package them up and put them in the store. I will post some pics later tonight or tomorrow.