Via--amusingly enough--Duchess Eva, comes this interesting bit from Vernian Process. If you like his synthesized explorations of classical music, steampunked to a high shine, you will adore the new album. But they're having a bit of problem funding it. So, for a limited amount of time, you can download the pre-release version of the album for free (always, of course, knowing the actual album release will be tighter, more polished, and come with a nifty case and nifty art). He's also soliciting donations to help cover the cost of self-pressing the album.
It's a good cause and it's good music; give if you can, and in return, you get to hear what the album sounds like before he's finished tinkering with everything (sort of the middle step between live and fully recorded, if you will), you get the chance to download the artwork from the album as wallpaper, and you know you're giving your money to someone who's going to turn it around into more music--either on his own, or through his record company, Gilded Age.
Ran into an old friend and an amusing new acquaintance over at DV8 Designs--so, just to prove I don't always mock other residents on this blog, I present to you Unlimited Clip. With mask:
And without:
Very, very spiky avatar. Plus, y'know, the arrow through the heart, that's never good. But it was a striking look, and looked good on him.
He says he's not antisocial, though, in spite of the spikes. And he has one of the most wonderful SL bios I've ever read. Pull his profile, you'll see.
(This next bit, unfortunately, crosses a bit of SL and RL. Can't be helped--in that I'm not going back and editing out anything I'm typing on the fly--I'm just going with it. I'm tired and my head hurts so deal.)
The War Poets Exhibition is now open in SL. Laird Brideswell, Elric Merlin, tipped it my way, but I wanted to take a look for myself. Unfortunately, I was asked to delay to make this a group thing, and several hours past that, my typist got smacked in the back of the head with her desk chair (gods, don't ask), so by the time I actually got back to wandering the exhibit, things were a little...off.
They recommend specific Windlight settings--my new favorite, Gelatto--but it's not essential. You can walk this exhibition without Windlight.
(Miss Neome chose dark blue for the journey. It looked good on her.)
The bubble system of transport--I've had one for years, I adore it--is really unique. I will say that, while I doubt this will happen to anyone else, putting an avatar in a bubble whose typist has a head injury--and then spinning the bubble wildly--is not destined for good things.
(Around and around and around and...ugh, let me down already.)
I got out of mouselook, and breathed for a while, and things were fine, but that was not fun.
Some of the audio transcripts were--for me at least--very, very faint. Whether that's a result of injury and shock, or sound quality, I'm not sure. I honestly couldn't tell you, save to encourage you to zoom in on the box itself; it amps the broadcast volume.
It was about this point I realized I somehow hadn't fully set Gelatto on my Windlight settings. Ah, well.
Several things could be clicked on--the archive boxes for poetry and description of conditions, a small field of poppies one could click for a wearable remembrance poppy.
(The aid station, with some very talkative rats.)
And the rats in the aid station.
[1:50] Rat Fact: Rats transmit Murine typhus fever, rat bite fever, salmonellosis or bacterial food poisoning, Weils disease or leptospirosis and trichinosis, melioidosid, brucellosis, tuberculosis, pasteurellosis, rickettsial diseases, and viral diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease.
The aid station was stark, terrifying. Bodies laid out as best they could, desperate conditions, too few nurses and too many wounded men, as happens in any war, all wars. There was a port circle at the back leading to the hospital, but we elected to push forward to the front.
[1:53] Rat Fact: Shooting rats was discouraged because ammunition couldn't afford to be wasted so it became a common practice to use bayonets or shovels.
Another rat I clicked gave me an agonizing poem and a sketch of dead rats--the nearest thing the artist had to work on, during his hospitalization.
O Life, Life, let me breathe,---a dug-out rat!
Not worse than ours the lives rats lead---
Nosing along at night down some safe rut,
They find a shell-proof home before they rot.
Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,
And subdivide, and never come to death.
Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.
'I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,'
Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:
The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.
'Pushing up daisies' is their creed, you know.
(from A Terre by Wilfred Owen)
The exhibit grew darker, the deeper we went into it.
[1:54] Rat Fact: 1 pair of rats can produce 900 offspring in a year.
The barbed wire is black against the green-looming sky. Traces of cordite and mustard gas in the air give everything an unsettling haze. The poppies stand out like drops of blood on bright stems.
[1:55] Rat Fact: Rats have poor vision. To compensate for this, a red or pink eyed rat will often weave its head side to side to add "motion" to see better.
There is some lag, and we were very confused at first; yes, it's got some fair amount of scripting, but why would just that lag things out? There's nothing beyond scripting to account for it.
Then--entirely by accident, trying to click one of the reading stations--I discovered the nurse skirt has resize scripts. So does the belt, the cape, and the cap and veil. (They are all no-modify, of course.)
When I related this to Miss Midnight and Miss Fawkes--who had elected to wander garbed as soldiers--they informed me that hat, belt, boots and backpack were resize-scripted. (And also no-modify.)
Well, no wonder--we're our own walking lag machines!
Barbed wire landscape
[1:56] Rat Fact: A group of rats is called a mischief.
Everything ends--as much as it can--with a small tutorial, a mini-theatre where you can see another film, and some credits and acknowledgements. This is one person's machinima on the project. There are others.
All in all, this comes highly recommended. It takes some time, but if you have the time, it's worth it to go. I would suggest possibly scouting about for World War I attire on your own, that is not fitted with resize scripts, but that's your own call--go early enough, the lag is not too bad.
Plus--free Lassitude and Ennui boots, ladies! Come ON now! And they aren't resize-scripted!
2 Comments:
Hi Emilly. It sounds stupid i guess, but I didn't realize the resize scripts would add so much lag! I'll see what I can do about getting moddable versions without the scripts from my supplier.
Csteph
The findings are very recent, and for most of us who know very little about scripting, we don't understand clearly why. What I can say from my researches are, there is a definite difference in script time (and active scripts increase lag) between a script that listens on command, and a script that is always "on", always listening.
Essentially, if it's a chat command--for hair recoloring, for example--that means the script starts to listen from that point, and after the change is complete, it goes dormant again. Brief spike of lag (but you're generally not moving when you're recoloring things) that soon fades.
But if it's always listening--like resize scripts, like any touch-menu event--then that script is constantly checking, and rechecking, to make sure they can always hear any change command. And for most touch-menu events, it's a single listen. So again, brief spike of lag, every seven to ten seconds or so, that fades.
Resize scripts, we are finding, are not only always on, but they are keyed to seek for new commands individually--so, instead of one script seeking every seven seconds, for all the prims in an item, it's one seek for each prim, every seven seconds. Which adds a lot of lag, when taken en masse.
Though I will agree with you, and other designers I've heard from--it would have been good to know this before designers revamped their entire store lines!
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