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• 

  Sunny gets a shop in Enclave Harbour

  Ener Hax 8:41 pm on March 13, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbour (6), sunny whitfield (2)

  it must be Sunny week, maybe we should have a parade?

  we are building her a shop in Reaction Grid and it seems that there are not many clothes makers in-world so she should get some attention.  now how to sell the clothes is a different ballgame. i presume that she could via the reaction grid outpost store if her items were packaged as multiple sets. pricing in Second Life is so low that you could not sell individual items in OpenSim because PayPal fees would eat up the small transactions.  i know PayPal does have micro transactions and that may be a way for Sunny to sell clothing

  i think packs of like 3 mix and match outfits and maybe 3 skins plus shoes would work well. i don’t know reaction grid well enough to gauge the market. i did see that on the Outpost store you could buy an avatar set for like $500! i don’t need to express my thoughts on that after having been in SL for three years. but the set i talked about may be able to sell for like $5?

  Sunny is smart and makes real money out of her SL efforts, so i am sure she will figure out how Reaction Grid is

  in the maanwhile, we are building her a store and were pleasantly surprised that she wanted it to be the Butterfly house, one of the original Enerville homes that people could get for free way back . . .

  i liked that house a lot because the inspiration came from cargo containers. those are awesome for building with irl because they are strong and pretty cheap. you can get used ones for about $5000 USD (yours truly looked into them as a real option in the past) =)

  her shop is basically that house but scaled up to make it easier to move in. some additions included more steps in the stairs (for some reason, i can’t climb as big a stairs in OpenSim?), stair railings for safety,and a big front deck to make it easy to land on and have a place to dock boats (this being a harbour and all). also used the same textures as for the Ener-Gy Hotel to be matchie-matchie and reduce lag

  so if you are looking for clothes in Reaction Grid, Sunny should have her displays up this next week and give her a shout out – Sunny Whitfield =)

  

  the original in Second Life's Enerville

  

  lol, special Sunny edition of Eville Speedboat

  

  now the butterfly has a flower! i like that =)

   

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• 

  avatar rendering what?

  Ener Hax 11:58 am on March 11, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbour (6), reaction grid (79)

  we connected subQuark’s private Reaction Grid grid to the main Reaction Grid grid (here a grid, there a grid, everywhere a grid) and all in all it went very well. some scripts petered out and i thought all my moving boxes were empty! they just took a while to load (i guess cramming in hundreds of textures will do that)

  but . . . ugh . . . sigh . . . whine . . .  redoing my avatar blows, i know it’s not a big deal, but just ugh. i can’t find my right skin parts, i lost my left stocking . . . =D

  it forces me to rethink how my “look” is created and to lessen my avatar rendering cost (arc). i had never used that info before but had an idea it might be on the high side. i don’t have any bling and for sure i don’t use evil face lights! face lights are heavy performance hitters since they force more shadows to be rendered (plus it’s just weird to have a flashlight pointed at your face)

  i spoke with Nickola and Micheil about ARC and compared my values to theirs. now Micheil is a hard core builder, he knew his av would need to be redone once we moved so he just stayed a Ruth. i think his ARC was 1! Nickola was like a 1 also

  yours truly with flexi prim hair with transparency, a 63 prim skirt (all prims are flexi), and a transparent parasol has an ARC of 2,638!!!  o_O

  yikes! suddenly i felt like some sl pole dancer with blingie and noisy shoes! (not that i am judging sl pole dancers, in fact, i know of a certain tall and gothie expert scripter who did that for a while to make money!)  =p

  so out with transparent hair textures (but no way losing flexi hair) and not sure on the skirt – non-flexi version is 600 less on the ARC, so i guess it’s going too. who knew i was so vain? *fails to notice that everyone raises their hand* =D

  so it’s all good and while we are not officially open (lol on Nickola and keeping it on the downlow, she already blogged about it like 12 hours ago – she was the first of us on the moved grid checking to see if all was okay, thank you Nickola – don’t change your passion for virtual worlds, you are an amazing builder). you can come visit us while we finish all our half done projects (and as we learn new quirks in here). the terrain textures don’t transfer and even though subQuark is the estate owner, he can’t change them! lol, he has to make me do it as an estate manager (how weird is that?)

  it’s been fun learning about so many things we took for granted in second life. and it certainly is not second life, but then i personally would not want it to be second life. i have learned many new things and my appreciation for virtual worlds has grown with our adventures in reaction grid =)

  the Reaction Grid team has been incredible in making this move so smooth and i want to send a thank you out to Felix, an intern for RG, who was very helpful in making certain that what we needed setup was done to our satisfaction

  so onto the important stuff . . . hair colour should be Crayola wild strawberry with a hex of ff3399 and rgb of 255, 51, 153 . . .

  see ya in-world and have fun! =)

  

  priorities! =D

   
• 

  Pathfinder - one of the better guys

  Ener Hax 12:20 am on March 11, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: pathfinder linden (2), second life (381)

  i didn’t want anyone to think i was really thinking Pathfinder is a horrible person. it is one thing to maybe be snobby (looks at self – i am a major snob on some things, like gourmet cuisine and wines, or is that whines?)  =)

  there is a diff between being cold and being a dork. i don’t know Pathfinder at all and i know that subQuark emailed him with nice polite emails as a peer and neighbor (subbie is a consummate educator – he loves to teach, has taught college for years, was a geochronologist for like 10 years – so he is a real science nerd kind of guy – hello, his website is called subquark – the quantum particles that were once thought to be virtual particles by physicists)  =D

  anyway, so subQ is for sure a peer to Pathfinder and has probably spoken at as many conferences (although John, Pathfinder, has been a keynote several times). who knows, maybe John never got the emails sent to the gmail account he lists all over the place. but for sure John would have seen some of subbie’s video that introduced him last spring at a Texas conference? so i judged him harshly on that, mainly cuz subbie is very, very special to me irl and i know subbie works hard (as we all do) and it’s nice to get a “hello” from time to time (i can also be harsh cuz i am a frog, and we frogs are mean people some times)

  so Pathfinder still ranks as a cold person in my books, but he is also a person that contributed a lot to the sl experience. and even though i never met him, his contributions added to what made Second Life so special. he was in that first group of Lindens that made it seem like anything was possible isl and that we where all in it together. i am sorry to hear of the way he may have found out he was let go. if indeed he found out at a meeting, well his boss is a way bigger d1*# than i ever thought Pathfinder was (gee, that’s a weird way to say he is a lesser d1*#) =p

  BUT . . . it makes sense that Pathfinder is gone, Second Life’s vibe has changed big time since Philip became absent (maybe that is the sad truth – Philip did not have the passion to stay isl – he had the passion to bring it to life, but not to stay with it). it’s clear that last year was the education push and that Linden Lab is done with that, so they are done with peeps like Pathfinder

  for us, finances forced us to reevaluate what we where doing in there. subQuark has always practiced the eLearning thing he does with it, which is using it as a real time 3D programme (as compared to Blender 3D or StudioMax 3D) for making video for eLearning scenarios. and i was in there because i love to build and terraform. but with stagnant growth, there were no more opportunities to terraform or build

  kind of like that expression about the cobbler’s kids having no shoes

  maybe we picked up on this change at linden lab too (ener <– wears colander and tin foil hat to tune into the mothership) and that was at play in our decision on pulling out?

  all i know is that hearing about people like Pathfinder being let go speaks to the direction LL is going. regardless of how i feel about Pathfinder, that does not diminish his contributions to sl. the only thing that stops that is LL getting rid of him. is Torley also gonna go? i hope not, but who knows? it probably did not make sense to think of Pathfinder ever being let go

  i do wish John the very best and times like this lead to better things, even if it seems like the end of the world atm (at least the virtual world)

  good luck John and thank you for your contributions to second life

  at one time, sl did offer so much promise and so many possibilities. that promise was chipped away a bit more with the loss of Pathfinder =(

   
• 

  Pathfinder Linden get eliminated

  Ener Hax 12:59 am on March 10, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), pathfinder linden (2)

  well, his position got axed. even though i think Pathfinder is a total dick (ener holds back) it is a shame that Linden Lab dumped his job. don’t get me wrong, even though i think peachfinder is a douche, he is a smart guy and was probably very good in his role with LL

  from SLED:

  Greetings,

  Due to recent reorganizations at Linden Lab, my current position
  (Evangelist, Market Development) has ceased to exist. There are no
  alternative positions available to me, so as of March 12th I will be leaving
  the company.

  I am not sure what the future holds for me, but it will probably involve
  something at the intersection of online communities, virtual worlds and
  neuroscience. I will be remaining open to new opportunities.

  I’ll continue to follow this mailing list, since innovation in education and
  healthcare remains near and dear to my heart.

  You all are doing amazing work, and I’ll be sticking around to see what you
  come up with next!

  Take care,
  -John (formerly Pathfinder Linden)

  —————————-
  John E. Lester
  ####### at gmail.com | twitter.com/pathfinder

  wow, maybe it is a great thing that Pathfinder dissed our own subQuark.  subbie was talking at conferences at the time and had sent an email introducing himself as a peer and wishing Pathfinder the best. and then he sent another when he learned that they were speaking at the same conference (a video subbie made was used to intro Path) but never so much as a “hey” =(

  lol, maybe subbie and i need to bathe more or something? no LL peeps (‘cept Torley) have ever said a peep (or a tweet in the case of asshat M Linden)

  =D  woohoo, i be wound up! (just excited about my silly boat, it has been kind of symbolic of not being able to just make something 100% for my own pleasure) =)

  now that a blew my Pathfinder gasket, i guess i can let go of that inner rage (ener <– protective of subQ) and be thankful that the universe did exactly what it was supposed too (despite someone’s tiny pink wings pushing back)

  had Pathfinder answered back, subbie would have spazzed (where do you think i get my spazziness from?) and been an even bigger evangelist for LL. so in that respect, i must acknowledge that in Pathfinder, be thankful, and say a sincere namaste to him – namaste John =)

  ener splashes in the tub – has great imagination

   
• 

  Eville Speedboat closeup

  Ener Hax 1:49 am on March 9, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbour (6), Ener Hax (126), reaction grid (79)

  

  clickie for flickr set

  

  no sculpties, lots of tori (???)

  

  not scripted yet . . .

   
• 

  Sunnygirl visits us in Reaction Grid

  Ener Hax 7:00 pm on March 6, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbour (6), reaction grid (79), sun made fashions, sunnygirl whitfield (3)

  it is so great to have Sunnygirl Whitfield join us in Reaction Grid. she is so talented and passionate when it comes to making clothing. don’t let these pics fool you, since our grid is private it doesn’t make sense to take the time to customize your avatar because when we join the rest of Reaction Grid, our avatars will get hosed

  Sunny came in to consult with Ener about her shop space and then we gave her a tour of some of the builds. it sure seems like everything is halfway done and will never all get done! (i best keep this blog post short and get back to building!)

  Sunny’s reputation in SL is solid and she has already been asked by people in Reaction Grid about when they can shop in her store! she is also the official clothier of Ener Hax (oooh, it’s like being an Olympic sponsor except without the rings, medals, glory, etc!)  =p

  one of the “signature” ener things is the parasol! i love that parasol and Sunny went and made one, complete with my initials! or are those the initials of Enclave Harbour? maybe she is making fun of how us canadians are always saying “eh”? hmm . . . =D  she also made the signature motocross boots for the total ener image! (snap, need some pink wings!!!)

  anyway, it was fun to show her around and we ended up goofing around in the rocket graveyard and she suggested a treehouse! what a great addition (and another project!). the rocket graveyard is a place to play hide and seek and DreamWalker came up with the brilliant idea to add a scripted bot to it that will look for you! that’s what it’s all about, putting your heads together and pushing the builds

  at Enclave Harbour we are very fortunate to have such talented and passionate people with us. that is true wealth (plus just a lot of fun!)

  

  Sunny also joins us as a blog author!

  

  nice Ruth pants for the kiddie pool

   
• 

  improved SL experience

  Ener Hax 11:12 pm on March 5, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: linden lab (12), reaction grid (79), second life (381)

  brinda Allen (she has a nice blog btw) commented on the iliveisl blog post about what a membership is worth and brought up an interesting perspective. it’s probably obvious to many, but it was a different thought to me. basically (i think) what brinda was saying is that you can’t gauge what Linden Lab is working on as far as performance goes. oh sure, viewer releases do address specific bugs and introduce new features, like the internet on a prim thing, but what about other areas?

  as i said before, i don’t see a big diff in performance today compared to three years ago

  sim crossings still suck hard

  i much prefer the way they work in Reaction Grid. you hit the sim border and bump against it till you can cross over. so you don’t end up way far away and i have yet to ever fail at a sim crossing (now it’s hard to judge because subQuark has 16 private sims and there are only 5 of us working on it and it’s not loaded with scripts)

  i did see some nice changes in SL  like being able to link further prims together, but i have not seen any performance gains in three years that made me go “wow”. or even any significant changes that made me notice much. i am sure that zillions of little bugs have been fixed, but those were bugs

  i know that it’s all still pretty new and all you have to do is look at OpenSim which is still in Beta

  BUT . . . Linden Lab has like 300 paid employees to work on the overall experience (i know it’s not all developers, but still, 300 is a lot!). when i think of that and then that there are only 3 people running Reaction Grid, suddenly it seems that SL is severely lacking in being that much better

  now Second Life is better in many ways over OpenSim, but when you take into account 300 versus 3 employees and $295 versus $25 for a sim, well the diff in performance and features is not directly proportional. second life is good, but it’s not 100 times or even 10 times better. and remember that OpenSim is mainly worked on by volunteers and that anything OpenSim does can be used by Linden Lab (personally, i think the performance in reaction grid is better and i don’t care about no in-world money and i like that it can be used by little kids in school) =)

  the internet on a prim has been in the works in both for a while now and OpenSim already has some of the things working that LL has talked about, like facebook login into a grid. and Kyle at Reaction Grid should have a very nice mobile client out this year

  so back to what brinda was saying – you can’t really tell what LL is doing as far as behind-the-scenes hardware and so on (thus the phrase behind-the-scenes!). when LL was ramping up to launch Second Life, the cash expenditure must have been huge! buying hundreds of servers, setting up all the logistical parts, hiring new employees, and so on (is that called burn rate? the spending rate of the $$$)

  since LL is private, they don’t need to disclose this info

  

  non-adult Ener

  so are they still investing at a similar rate into the things that will improve performance? or are they doing things that are highly visible, like the website redesign, which has no impact on existing residents and in-world performance? (and evidently, they think only white women are the worthwhile demographic!)

  during this past year, it’s easy to justify trying to survive and LL has been expending money on the website redesign and in buying XStreetSOL
  (i am so sophomoric! SOL!!!)  =p

  doing the Linden Homes seems like a lateral type thing. it doesn’t help in-world performance and since i can’t seem to ever hit my home sim, i am kind of assuming that the overall experience may be pretty sketchy (read: FAIL)

  oh, and it cost LL some serious paper when they put the Adult policy in place. what a support nightmare that must have been in moving all those people!

   
• 

  what is a premium membership worth

  Ener Hax 10:14 pm on March 4, 2010 | 10 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), jokay (2), linden lab (12), second life (381)

  i know what you get as a premium second life member – a Linden Home (my home sim seems to be gone? have not been able to hit it the last 3 times i logged in), the right to put in a support ticket (lol eh? the right to point out a bug!), and the right to “own” land (oops, forgot – and a $300L weekly allowance)

  BUT . . . what is a premium member worth to Linden Lab?

  you know my opinion, i don’t think Linden really gives a rat’s butt about anyone except corporations. i mean i never could get M Linden to just tweet a hello. twitter is made for casual convo, so don’t get an account if you don’t intend to chat with peeps! derr

  and Linden Lab doesn’t seem to care about people that are hefty subscribers and spread the good word. when we first started, and up until the openspace debacle, all we did was talk about how second life was the best thing since sliced bread. and that meant loads of flickr pics (about 5,000 of only sl, all tagged with second life). and with as many as 19 sims, we were bigger than the 2.4 of the average estate. but even with a near $3k monthly subscription, neither me or subbie got as much as a “hey there”

  and how about peeps like Jokay? 4 sims and tons of resources online for educators and she has probably introduced second life to a few thousand people! anyone in education and second life knows about Jokay. and Linden Lab treated her like dirt cuz she had the incredible SLeducation wiki! LL had even praised her work in the past (she is soo much more gracious than i am – omg, i would so go off on them – but i am typically more french than canadian, so being all whiny and a pia is just my nature – don’t hate me cuz i’m cranky!)  =D

  well anyway, that’s old news and i have beaten that poor dead horse into dust with my rants (sorry – i kinda get the rage over the Jokay thing more than over our dealio)

  so what is a membership worth to Linden Lab?

  lots of talk about the first hour experience, but did doing away with the Mentors and making orientation island easier really help with that? i imagine that simplifying orientation island reduced the number of support calls and dumping the mentors allowed for Linden employees to be tasked with other duties rather than helping guide us

  Prokofy made a good point about viewer 2.0 in that it keeps pushing the graphic requirements of sl. now i understand very well that sl will continue to be a power hungry app, it is real-time 3D rendering. i know from my Blender 3D work that rendering is always heavy for any cpu and vid card. and Linden needs to keep amping up what sl offers in order to stay competitive

  but i simple do not see a big diff in my graphics from when i first started 3 years ago (my uber top secret alt for corporate work has a january rez date, but she doesn’t get any cake – “shut up! get back in your hole, slave” – woof, i may have serious issues when my avatar has an avatar!)  =D

  so for all the work Linden Lab says they do for that first hour experience, do you see a diff?

  is it any better than when you had to squish rats on the orientation island with a segway?

  maybe i am missing the obvious here . . . what are you worth to LL?

  

  from paying LL $100 USD every day for 2 years to this . . .

   
• 

  take a seat, almost anywhere

  Ener Hax 1:02 am on March 4, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbour (6), enerville ferry, reaction grid (79)

  for some reason, i am obsessed with places for people to sit and chat. maybe i secretly wish i were Plato, he sat around and talked all day long to his students (how do you write “blah, blah, blah” in greek?) =D

  since Reaction Grid sims are monster in that they can have 256 metre prims and as many as 45,000; it’s great to finally add seating to the original Enerville ferry. it was one of the first things i made isl after getting our first sim. even though it is almost Tonka toy looking, i love it very much (i am sappy sentimental like that)  =)

  so it has tons of seating and who knows, maybe some teacher will sit there with a bunch of second graders talking about why sunsets are red or talking about boats – that would be so great to me  =)

  

  maybe Micheil can script the ferry to putt around?

   
• 

  a greener world, virtually

  Ener Hax 12:50 am on March 2, 2010 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: gre-ener, reaction grid (79)

  in discussing with subQuark about the direction of his Enclave Harbour (note, i had him get the proper spelling, he has been in the States too long!) he has finally (i hope) found the ultimate direction for his Reaction Grid dealio

  shouldn’t that affect all your building and what the other 4 peeps are doing in there?

  well, yes and no. there need to be lots of places to check out (i guess i could throttle back on the self-asserted goal of thinking it needs to be 100% done)

  and i know subQuark well enough to make builds that are flexible (after all, a building can be used for almost anything, imo). subbie wants a place for people to come hang out and experiment without being judged. that’s easy to build towards. and make places people can build (sandboxes), meet, explore, chill, and maybe even dance!

  sandboxes – check, uber easy
  meeting spots – yep, chairs, tables, an auditorium, outdoor stage
  explore – Nickola making kick butt learning path & my obsession with fallout shelters & even Enerville resurrected! oh and the Enaxia Art Gallery!
  chill – little intimate spots to sit alone or with a good friend, that’s easy
  dance – oh yeah, the Haxor Lunar Lounge lives!!! (just need to make a dance machine!) =)

  so those spots are just like what we had in second life. just spots made for fun and to be easy to use for n00bs and anyone. in second life, two of our spots were regularly used by two diff fortune 500s that held monthly virtual world orientations for n00bs. keeping that on the down-low helped them use quiet places free of distractions

  the same holds true in Reaction Grid. people like these same elements. but, having clearer direction helps fine tune things and with 16 sims, it’s easy to add special places to meet these new requirements

  the new thing is creating some environmental programmes (lol, you’ll handle the proper spelling or i’ll remind you of the hockey win yesterday!) =p

  these programmes will be aimed at middle and high school kids, both mainstream and home schooling and will involve subbie writing workbooks that will be published! he had been approached by the big “O” (not Oprah!) to author a textbook/workbook but the ding dongs at Linden Lab made attribution nearly impossible. just as well, i’d rather see publicity for Reaction Grid than for LL (read: you suck M Linden and i hope Wallace Linden has a google alert to pick up this mention of you – lol, a little pent up rage? maybe, or just a lack of poutine and martinis)  =D

  i don’t want to steal subQ’s thunder but suffice it to say that i built a lovely little camp fire setting for some teaching modules (hmm, maybe depicting wood being burned isn’t such a green thing to do?). oh well, maybe it can be an example of what not to do!

  well the heck with that! i’ll just redefine what greener means! gre-Ener?!?  yep, it’s a gre-Ener build! doh!

  

  it's a gre-Ener world =p

   
• 

  Zen of Ener - Zener

  Ener Hax 12:08 am on March 1, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), martini (22), reaction grid (79), second life (381), zener

  we are so excited to have Micheil over with us. he and Nickola have done a few sl builds together (sl6b & burning life) and he will add richness to subQuark’s Enclave Harbour in Reaction Grid. we are grateful to have him join us (being grateful is zen-like)

  Micheil was our sim tester over in second life and evidently he can stretch an OpenSim to its max having crashed one on Reaction Grid last week. but not on purpose! there are subtle differences between LSL scripts in second life and in reaction grid. and learning those differences can have some extreme consequences at times (thankfully, my mastery of omega and sit scripts don’t tear up sims! self-effacing humor – more zen type stuff). he was also one of our first iliveisl residents and that made it even harder to give up the second life estate

  while the iliveisl estate is no longer ours in SL, a little drama still plays out. even though the Ener beaner has no land isl, some peeps still look to the wisdom of the weiner to settle small disputes (that sounds a bit naughty). the secret to that was listening, helping peeps walk in the shoes of the other, and time. most people solve their own issues rather well without intervention, they just need a shoulder to express themselves and often just chatting it out helps them reach balance and compromise (lol, the Zen of Ener – Zener!)  =D

  the only other issue was the last sim transfer that i already blogged about last week. what those peeps need to realize is that reopening a ticket means me paying $295 to Linden (fat chance of that and the heck with any zen towards LL atm).  and i already covered the last month of their sim. if they took that $295 plus the $100 transfer fee, it would cost more than just buying a homestead ($395 vs. $375). while it would be great to be given a $1000 credit for $395 by me, i no longer am a part of sl (ahh, zen detachment from the physical world – hmm, that may be a bit of a stretch). i imagine they will think me wrong for this rather than seeing it from my point of view, but i can not change their perception and i know i did very well by them (hello, they got their last month tier free plus bought a sim for the transfer fee!) =)

  i do log in to SL to grab something i forgot, but that chapter is done and yes, i realize it would be nice for me to give even more away than i already have but this pony is tired of being ridden and you can give away free stuff to people all day long (that is not good zen, you should do right by yourself, not at the expense of yourself or of your zen pony) =p

  zen . . . ohm . . . and a smile  =)  *ener listens to a lot of Eckhardt*

  that’s the zen of the ener – do what is right in your heart, assume the very best of others, and know that you can’t control what others think or feel

  if that fails, go to plan B – toss out the zen, toss in the olives and have a nice martini! namaste =)

  

  who's the wooden dude?

   
• 

  LL running 8 regions to a sim?

  Ener Hax 7:16 pm on February 28, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: linden lab (12)

  maybe someone can explain this to me and other blog readers what this means: Mainland Simulators now running 8 full regions

  it seems as if LL is doubling up regions? i always thought one full region ran on one core of the server? so 4 regions to a chip?

  but that post seems to say there are double that amount? i am not techy at all but would love to learn more about this. like in Reaction Grid, they balance out load somehow so that machines are never sitting idle. for LL that is prob not easy to do because of their investment in hardware (i imagine any hardware changes are really expensive decisions)

   
• 

  is full perm really full perm

  Ener Hax 2:33 pm on February 28, 2010 | 12 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), reaction grid (79), second life (381)

  i read this interesting post and even went off a little about its topic – saving stuff to your hard drive

  there are a lot of misinformed ideas about what copyright and fair use is. so much so that it’s hard for even big companies to interpret it properly. for example, ever see how so many people still use “All Rights Reserved.” as part of their copyright notice? well those people are dopes! that has not been part of copyright since like 1930! it means absolutely nothing anymore, but people still place it on their work

  and “fair use”, that’s really tough to determine and you are seeing more and more people dropping that notion in order to be a bit safer from legal issues. ever notice on some TV shows how the pixelate out art on the walls?

  basically, if something someone made adds value to what you are selling, you need their permission to use it

  the Empire State building in NYC is it’s own copyright. you are not allowed to use it as part of anything commercial. even though it is a part of the NYC skyline. it’s like the happy birthday song, you can’t use it in commercial places

  or like music, you can’t play any radio station you like in a restaurant or bar or hair salon unless you are a member of ASCAP. lol, if you are a professional wedding videographer, you can’t film a wedding and record the audio as you film without paying royalties for the music they are playing. since you are selling the video to the wedding peeps, you are doing so for commercial gain, that music adds value (unless it was Michael Bolton)

  it doesn’t matter that everyone does this, it is still breaking copyright law

  same happens in Second Life, Reaction Grid, or any online platform. if you were to come to our sims and film with the water tower in the backdrop and then that film helps your portfolio, which helps you secure more prestige, well that is basically for commercial gain. so now if anyone hired you cuz they liked your portfolio, ta dah! it can be argued that your fame is partly based on my incredible (it made George Lucas who he is today) water tower!!! =p

  see my use of George Lucas’ name could be argued as copyright violation of sorts. he is a celebrity and as such, special rights go along with his name. if this blog turned me into a millionaire, he could come after me (but as soon as he mentioned Ener Hax in any paperwork, look out, he is going down!) =D

  three years back, i used the term Realtor for an in-world group – iliveisl certified realtor, i think. and guess what?!?! the National Association of Realtors sent me a Cease and Desist order! for real! i felt kind of important for a minute!

  well dumb me, i had not even thought that realtor was a registered trademark, derr – but my ignorance of that fact had nothing to do with the law

  anyway, Ann points to some vague language in the SL TOS that seems to button up this language a bit tighter. to be fair to Linden Lab, there is a diff with what full perm can mean. full perm in SL is not necessarily granting full copyright free use of something but maybe only full use in SL and not outside of it. copyright-free licensing is something peeps in graphic design know well but most peeps never run into needing to know this isl. but with SL, many peeps are creating things and selling them. that’s where the real issue comes into play

  as for my water tower, i grant you full rights to use it in anything (lol, this is subject to change – the real way to legally word something, not that stupid “we reserve the right to change this” which is incredibly difficult language to argue in court – court likes straightforward language, if it is subject to change, just say it, what the hell does we reserve the right mean anyway?)

  

  hey, what does that mean? Canadian? =)

   
• 

  computer maintenance

  Ener Hax 11:20 am on February 27, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: reaction grid (79), second life (381)

  i get asked what i do to run Second Life, and now OpenSim hosted by Reaction Grid, as best as possible. i have a decent pc (nothing crazy gamer-like-gonna-become-a-level-67-merlin with a purple divinity helmet and nekodestructo wand) that i “made” on one of those build-your-own pc sites. it has a two year old NVidia 9600 GT vid card and an AMD dual core 6000+ chip, 3.5 GB RAM, and dual hard drives (7200 rpm)

  i use 2 hard drives with two OSs, both XP. one HD is only the SL, Hippo, and Meerkat viewer and quicktime. it’s barebones to only build in virtual worlds

  the other HD has all my crapola on it for doing flash, photoshop, blender, blah blah blah, needed to run my “real” business (which needs external storage drives for tons of pics and video files) *wink DreamWalker* =D

  so the pc is on the old side as far as uber performance but i try to keep it clean and so far it works great! in reaction grid, i get really high frame rates with all the graphic sliders maxed out and 4-8X antialias turned on. frame rates like 30-60! in SL, i get less but it’s cuz sl is laggier. with sliders maxed, but no antialias turned on, i get 15-25 fps and it can be less depending on what is going on

  so apart from two hard drives, i try to keep as few programs on as i need (so no loading of games, or stuff i don’t use regularly) and i keep all the drivers up to date. NVidia continuous to put out new drivers like once a month . . .

  and i do some simple “cleaning” on a regular basis. on the full HD, i use the anti-virus Avira premium one that you pay for, the paid version of Malwarebytes, and then CCleaner (to clean cache and the registry) and Defraggler (several options for defrag including defragging freespace)

  i can hit Defraggler from the little 80 GB VW-only HD with a shortcut but have to install CCleaner on it to use it. there is no anti-virus on the little HD (i don’t use the web from it)

  sometimes i use the free Ad-Aware on the big HD. both Malwarebytes and Avira scan both HDs

  i do full scans about once every three weeks and then do crap cleaner and defraggler once a week. neither one has ever caused any problems. that’s about it!

  keep drivers updated, scan malware, clean the registry, and defrag  =)

  any other handy (and easy things) that you do?

  

  wow, that is 2 years old!

   
• 

  it's fully official

  Ener Hax 1:09 am on February 26, 2010 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: iliveisl (154), second life (381)

  tonite Ener Hax no longer has a private estate in Second Life. the last sim is gone

  out of the 12 sims of the last year, 9 were full sims, 2 were homesteads, and one was a rare openspace

  the residents stepped up and bought sims and kept it going as a community

  a testament to what sl is really all about – its residents

  and LL really isn’t out all that much. of the 9 full sims, 6 stayed in the hands of iliveisl residents and one was bought by a very lovely estate owner who also bought the two homesteads

  the openspace park was a clear goner, it just is not worth $75 a month for 750 prims and a 10 avatar limit

  LL still collects $2,315 a month versus the $2,980 a month – so it’s not a huge deal to them (heck, the $2,980 wasn’t enough of a deal to ever have M Linden tweet us a measly hello!) =p

  looking back, i am glad that i was able to sell sims to the residents, even though we made very little money on them. the only bummer was the last sim

  a transfer ticket was put in at the same time as all the others. all other tickets went through much faster than the 10 days LL suggests. so i am unsure what the issue was with this one

  i Live Chatted with linden twice about this, once last night and again this afternoon and they had no info on the buyer’s ticket for me

  those buyers already got a heck of a deal on their one sim with me paying their last month’s tier for them (that was poor planning by me since they lived their the entire time! derr math). but that’s how i roll, worried more about the other person (but i still will whine, it’s what i do!)  =D

  with the tier being due today on the sim-in-limbo and LL not being able to tell me if the buyer’s still had a ticket on there, i had no choice but cancel the sim. i guess i could have paid the tier and then sold the sim for a few hundred, but i simply don’t have that in the budget anymore (a sim can easily sell for $500-600, so on paper it would have been $100-200 gain – don’t forget the $100 LL takes out as a fee). so it just was not worth the pain in the butt for $100 (or less as i imagine the original buyer’s would not have wanted to go from $110 to $500 for the transfer!)

  i feel badly cuz it’s a shame to just let a sim lapse, but those peeps now own a sim and can buy a homestead (just like we did when we had 12 homesteads!), it’s not my job to bankroll anyone and that is in effect what i did with all the sims we sold to residents. those peeps did not have to fork out USD $1000, only the transfer fee. so i am still very pleased with how it all worked out  for everyone =)

  i wish all sl residents, and especially former iliveisl residents, the very best and much happiness =)

  it’s a new chapter for the Ener Weiner and i learned a ton from second life and loved the experience for the most part

  i am in a happier place (albeit maybe a little scarred) and able to build, build, build.  that’s my true joy isl (in sim lands) and one i share with a small handful of really passionate people that are working on Enclave Harbour with me. i think of them as pioneers with me on Reaction Grid. sure, there are little bugs, but there are bugs in SL too

  thanks Linden Lab, Philip, Torley, my former Mentor colleagues, and especially all the wonderful people that i have had the honour to know as friends in SL

  i am far richer from that than any sim sales =)

  namaste

  

  some of the fastest & most talented sl builders

   
• 

  OpenSim is like the open sea

  Ener Hax 2:33 am on February 25, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: reaction grid (79)

  update – this blog theme does not support strikethrough, so red text has been corrected to [] bracketed text . . .

  it’s been a good solid 2 weeks of straight out building in Reaction Grid (seems like longer, but all the transfer tickets for the iliveisl estate where put in 14-16 days ago) and here is how i feel about it now

  you may have read a month or so back that when i first started dabbling in it, i found it overwhelming. no textures and none of my “stuff”. and no ability to just go out and buy this or that

  however, now that i have been able to focus solely on this (almost solely, i had to Live Chat last nite and tonite with LL cuz two peeps couldn’t get their act together on one of the sim transfers [LL was unable to tell me if their ticket was in order, it now seems it may have been] and the tier is due now, so thanks to those two yahoos [LL giving no info], a sim was just totally lost, great, teaches me to be nice [to trust LL is concerned about others]. anyway, with being just into building and no worries about trying to pull in $100 USD a day, every day – i have to say i love reaction grid!

  but then, i really love building. i can see that if you were into only socializing, you’d get bored. unless you are a teacher or an educator, then i imagine there is lot of opportunity to share ideas

  it’s also been liberating to build exactly what i want (or what subQuark thinks he wants!) =p

  rather than looking for say, a bouy, and ending up with one “pretty close” to what i want, i just made my own. and it matches my lighthouse perfectly

  it’s a bit like using the same person to create your TV commercials. everyone has their own style and signature approaches. i guess the same is true here. similar textures are used on the wind turbines as in the solar arrays and that helps pull it all together tightly

  don’t get me wrong, i absolutely love the variety in Second Life, but there is a lot of just crappy crap crap too (lol, wow, i sound so conceited) =D

  maybe, to me, Reaction Grid and OpenSim are “your world. your imagination.” funny that it’s not the SL slogan anymore . . .

  

  ding ding ding =)

   
• 

  ener is so bright *rolls eyes*

  Ener Hax 10:55 pm on February 23, 2010 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: enclave harbor (9), solar array

  okay, well bright is the key – for solar panels anyway. i made some simple solar panels tonite but the magic comes from DreamWalker’s sun follow script. in OpenSim worlds, like Second Life and Reaction Grid, you have wind and the sun moves. DreamWalker scripted our wind turbines last week to react to wind strength and direction =)

  now a day is three hours of light and one hour of nite. DreamWalker’s script checks the sun’s position every five minutes and rotates the solar panels so they stay facing the sun!

  now that is bright!

  Enclave Harbor will demonstrate many “green” practices (might even make a small outpost-sized nuclear reactor for Energon, the domed post-apocalyptic colony) and subQuark is working on an environmental awareness programme that can be used by schools and businesses

  

  a solar farm! baby flashlights running amok!

  

  where's my hardhat?

  

  oh well, my head is pretty hard =D

   
• 

  hide water and prims while terraforming

  Ener Hax 10:07 pm on February 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: building, keyboard shortcuts

  two simple keyboard shortcuts i use all the time are to hide water and/or hide prims.  the hide prim one is also good for quickly finding people in places with lots of buildings

  • CTRL ALT SHIFT 7 to hide and show water
  • CTRL ALT SHIFT 9 to hide and show prims

  normal day, water and prims abound below

  

  another day in Enclave Harbor

  tides out! CTRL ALT SHIFT 7 and poof goes the water below

  

  oh oh, didn't pay the water bill

  with the water gone, hide the prims (including things like prim hair so don’t freak) with CTRL ALT SHIFT 9

  

  apocalypse? no waterworld for kevin costner

  or just use CTRL ALT SHIFT 9 to get back to nature (approved by Greenpeace) =D

  

  how peaceful

   
• 

  cross sim road secret

  Ener Hax 6:58 pm on February 21, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), reaction grid (79), sim border, sim crossing, torley (3), virtual worlds (3)

  it’s an ancient Torley secret – making a cross sim border road or path that you don’t fall through. in the old Enercity, we had catacombs under the roads, so crossing those could get you falling through the road into the darkness and zombies  =p

  but a nifty trick that Torley showed me years ago makes that a thing on the past

  just make sure you have prims that overlap the border from each side! one part of your road, path, or rail will already probably be overlapping, just make sure you do the same from the other sim. and you can use a transparent prim if that looks better

   
• 

  Linden Homes

  Ener Hax 9:01 am on February 18, 2010 | 11 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Ener Hax (126), hobbit

  talk about control freaks, you can’t delete your linden home? wow, that’s a lack of the old slogan: “your world, your way” (or is that burger king?)  =p

  how the mighty have fallen, from 19 sims to a hobbit wannabe house in uber laggy land with banlines all over the place (actually, it was a leap, not a fall)  =)

  the new Ener Hax home, hopefully i can find it again! it feels like the hobbit burbs =D

  

  umm, what's there to say?