in the late of the evening, with the cold in my eyes

Ten reasons why watching fantasy and sf shows is a good thing.

Worldwide music takes on the Rolling Stones. One world, singing together--yeah, that's much better than bombs.

Kirsten's Viewer strikes again--but this time around? She's made a 3D viewer...for a 3D world.

I don't get it, either.

Artist Olly Moss has a solo gallery show out called Papercuts; lucky us, she's also started a blog to show off. Sadly, I have several fandom fails where I don't recognize the silhouettes involved, but they're all wonderful.

Last entry I got a comment from someone praising me for a rant, I think (I never take those comments quite seriously, it'd be like praising me for breathing...wait. Breathing isn't an autonomic process with me...Hmm. Okay, I get the point, but I was making another one, so we move on), and as a by-product, I've been reading through her blog. I hit this entry, which made me ponder, and then I found this one, still reading back, and then hit what I thought was the main entry (though as it turns out, I'm wrong, the controversy goes back farther).

And this is Dolly and Lilith Heart's response to some part of the controversy.

Now, I'm not going to go into the whole thing in terms of my experiences with others; I've ranted that rant, and have no intent of revisiting. And that's not entirely relevant here, anyway--while it should be the responsibility of everyone who seeks to protect the copyrights they have to protect those copyrights, it's not an easy process, and there are some severe downsides to doing it. Because, yet again, DMCA was never intended to be used in all the ways it's being used today. It just isn't that robust a law.

But, I figured I might have an important point from someone who does work with an estate company, who is always looking for new and interesting landscaping ideas: most of us won't shop at Heart Botanicals, flat out. This is a Solace Beach-wide thing. Why?

It's not because any of us even heard of this controversy. We're not boycotting or making a fuss or saying they do bad work; they don't. (In pure point of fact, they do amazing work, and always have.) Several of us, including the owner of Solace Beach, Ayesha Lytton, own palms, lilies and various beach plants and tropical ground covers from Heart Botanicals, after all.

Hells, just from reading through their blog, I dropped by yesterday for one of the beach bonfire sets. But I had to grit my teeth to do it.

Why? It's quite clear: nothing we buy from them is copiable. Nothing. And that kills its usefulness for us.

And it it bothers me to no end, because sometimes I have ended up deleting items because they hit the Lost & Found folder on a return, and I wasn't thinking. These days, I try to carefully rez out everything in Lost & Found, but at that point, once moved, they're never in their original folders, and things get jumbled, and yeah--in some cases, I've just forgotten. They have a series of volcano hot spring calderas that I adore for off-sim decoration; they also have a couple different versions of tropical ground cover that are just perfect for behind signs and next to difficult parcel transition points. And of course, I've long since fallen for their coconut palms with the lily vines...

But nothing they make is copiable, from their lemon topiaries down to the scattered beach-rock prims they make up. And I've pondered why such a big firm--big enough that, at least to the surface eye, some of their designs might well be being copied--steadfastly refuses to make copiable designs. Anyone who works with estate management is very clear on what that means--pay L$100, say, for five of something, no copy, or pay L$1000 for five of something copy. We get it, we're going to pay more for no-transfer versions.

But we need them if things are going to work.

Think about it: if I have a 4096 parcel, say, that needs some tropical additions before I plunk the land sign down, I'm looking--realistically--at two makers, Tobias Novi and Heart Botanicals. (While there are scores of other makers, and I've investigated most of them, those two people are really where I shop, when I shop tropical landscaping.)

And 90% of the time, I'm going to go with Novi's work (hells, even when I use Dolly and Lilith Heart's palms, I use Tobias Novi's shadows, come on!), because I can just delete it when it gets returned to me. Why? Because his items are copiable.

Sooner or later, we hit that wall of pretty vs. practical too many times.

In pure point of fact, I'm now in the process of shopping for similar sculpts--not in the attempt to copy them (I wouldn't dream of it, frankly) but solely and simply because some of what they do, in terms of plans, I can either buy from them (and get pretty single-serving plants and rocks), or find comparable sculpts, cobble them together, and have not quite so pretty, but copiable plants and rocks.

If you were managing several dozen parcels, what would you do? Or forget the building angle--if you had the choice between two palm sets, one lovely and tropical and amazing, with detailed prim work, but no copy; and the other one pretty damned good, with less variety but everything was copy, no transfer...Trust me, you'd shoot like an arrow towards the no-transfer items.

Because, at the end of the day, if I'm going to spend L$800 to L$3000 on something, I'm going to look for these things:

* Does it alpha badly?
* Will it fit a large area easily?
* If tropical ground covers, not palms, is it a good mix of rocks and plants, or plants and other debris?
* IS IT COPIABLE?

And that last one? Really is the most important.

Will I boycott Heart Botanicals because of their stance on this? No. It's on the tacky side to call out the person, not the comment, but it happens, it's an unfortunate fact of the internet. More importantly, just examining the comparison shots, they may have something there, because their original meshes and their package layouts do seem to resemble the pieces on other grids--at least to the untrained eye.

But I won't lie, I'm working very hard to ensure that those replacements I can find to buy, I do, and those sculpts I can track down, to make on my own, I do. So that, once everything's found and as finalized as it's going to get, I won't need to shop at Heart Botanicals any more.

Because pretty only counts for so much. Past that, it's all about performance. And as far as being able to copy them across seventy-plus sims, Heart products simply do not perform.

learn to be paranoid, fear pulls my strings, too

The dropdown upon entry, during the Tainted hunt, said:

Greetings Emilly Orr, Welcome to Venom Rahne (ALL HUNTERS IF YOU USE AREA SEARCH,DERENDER MY SHOP,SHOUT OUT THE LOCATION OR ANY OTHER FORM OF CHEATING YOU GET ONE WARNING AFTER THAT YOU WILL BE EJECTED AND BANNED I DO NOT TOLERATE IT.)Happy hunting!

Disregarding the grammar issues and spelling errors, this got to me. Area search? Okay, some non-official viewers come with that, and it may not be playing by the rules to use it. How is it externally detectable by a merchant?

Second, going into wireframe--which I'm making the big assumption he means when he says "derender my shop"--is not cheating. It's an option to understand the structure of the world mesh and the mesh of items; it's been in the official viewer for...ever, I think; and again, how can a merchant know I'm using that method to find things? First, I could be using it to trace the shape of prims in a sofa, or to understand what's flat and what's sculpt in something I'm seeing.

Though he could mean more direct rendering, like, removing alpha textures, or simple textures, which would partially de-render his shop, yes. Again, I have the same two questions: first, how is a merchant to know when one is doing this, and two, how is it cheating? What I don't render can't lag me. Some hunts get really laggy. It's either that or cut out avatars rezzing in, or killing flexi skirts and hair on everyone. Get real.

Third, "any other form of cheating" would assume that the methods listed above are cheating. They're not. And it's ludicrous that any merchant thinks they are, and will auto-ban for something that is a) largely indetectible, b) largely silent, and c) helps to find things in laggy sims...

I mean, shouting out locations in main chat or on voice? I totally get why that's a bannable offense. But the rest of the items aren't, or at least shouldn't be. He wants to ban me just because he wants to ban me, fine--it's a jerklife move, but hey, his store, his rules. He wants me to cave to things that aren't against the ToS or hunting in general and holds over my head the threat of being banned?

Bite me, fanboy. Unless there is a sure-fire way to detect when I'm "de-rendering" a shop or poking about in wireframe, you're not only not going to know, but I'm not doing anything wrong.

"[S]hutting down the teen grid, then a few weeks later saying they’d let teens access the main grid, then later saying costs are going up. eegads, if that isn't writing on the slowly rezzing texture, [I] don’t know what is [...]"

She's not wrong.

Also, this is beautiful and everyone should read it. For the funny, if not to make you fans of the show. (But if you become fans, you could do worse than Netflix, domestically at least, because Netflix has all the episodes.)

Now, then. More Minecrafting. This morning, in excavating another long hallway to...nowhere in particular, actually...I discovered one patch where I was hearing a lot of zombies. I mean, a scary number of zombies. I walked back and forth, and it was really localized. And right under my feet.

Dungeon, I thought.

In Team Fortress 2, I'm very reckless. I strap on my flamethrower and charge into the fray. I count it a good fight when I manage to set ablaze two of the opposite side before someone guns me down.

But in Minecraft? I'm very careful. It can be an unnerving game at times, and I don't like the sense of panic when I die, and I have to go back to where I died to pick up my toys.

So...slowly, carefully...I started to dig out the floor. Never straight down, always in small patches, and three cubes down, I finally cracked a corner of the dungeon. And it was packed with zombies. Yeek. I cracked through more of the dungeons and the zombies went crazy trying to get to me. Unnerved and slightly desperate, I started dropping cubes of gravel on the ones I could see. It seemed to kill them, and I went off to make iron swords.

When I came back, I'd created enough of a space to drop into, which I immediately filled with light. Then--carefully, again--I began to dig out the gravel, and put torches around the spawner, flickering with eldritch light, because I had been told that would stop the spawning.

It seemed to; now there was just the zombies already there to deal with. (I should note, I didn't think to take pictures until after it was all over, because I was pretty much fighting for my life!)

I managed to kill seven zombies in a row, a somewhat astounding feat for me, before the eighth one leapt and killed me off. Then it was a race against time to get back to the little dungeon before my stuph went poof; I stopped only long enough to grab a pickaxe before I ran for the opening in the tunnel floor.

I leapt into the far side, turned, fended off the last zombie, lost a few more hearts....but I was safe. It was dead, and the treasure--MUAHAHAHAHA--was mine!

Well...almost. There was the mossy cobblestone. Which I craved like a drug. With more care, and no little trepidation, I began to mine out the blocks. I didn't know if removing the torches to get the stones would start the auto-spawning again. It was mine and patch, mine and patch, mine and replace torch and patch, all the way 'round.

Miss Neome had come in to the computer room by now, and was watching over my shoulder. She swears a zombie was hiding under one of the cobblestones. I don't know how that's even possible, but it wasn't one of the blocks beneath a torch, so...I really don't know how he suddenly manifested and came for me, but he did. And I killed him!

This is the dungeon--and the spawner--after clearing out a few things--like zombies, moss-covered cobblestones, and adding more torches. Also carving a mini-staircase into one wall.



And this is the monster-spawner seen from the same level, looking over to the mini-staircase.

I found the mini-dungeon; I faced down the monsters; I survived (well, sort of.) My treasure (in the little chest)? A loaf of bread; three ingots of iron; 4 piles of gunpowder.

Healing, a new iron pickaxe, and my first chunk of TNT, and all I had to do was die once! That's a good day's work.

I am reasonably proud of myself.

at least just tell me what the hell is wrong

I'm starting to develop a severe issue with number-named residents. You know the ones I mean, the ones that set up their accounts to answer to "Julii69" or x09sevengirl90x" or some such.

Or proevo69julian Adamski, the new resident I just banned off my property in Lunitarium. He's the first name on the new list.

He flew up, banged himself several times against the structure--at which I told him to back off and stop violating my house--banged around several more times, then found a gap in the roofline (I'm still building said house) and darted inside.

Whereupon he found himself upstairs in the mini-loft (also unfinished), couldn't figure out how to get down (it's called the connecting ramp, you knuckle-dragging idio--anyway), and jumped on a nearby poseball to attain the main floor.

So I asked him why he was there. Nothing. No answer. I froze him in place and asked him again.

Still no answer.

So I bounced him. I mean, really, what would you do?

It seems to be going around. Miss Torricelli discovered a Miss Em Xue--and frankly, naming her "Miss" is just the barest bit of courtesy I can manage, I'd much rather call her more vile things--had set up a fully scripted, animated dance club/space station over her home. She discovered it when she wondered of a morning why her parcel had no prims.

Well, that would be why!

Meanwhile, a friend of mine asked me to help his new submissive (and honestly, where in the hell is he finding these women, it's unbelievable!) get a job. He mentioned stripping. As I used to dance myself, I IMed her while pulling up her profile, and realized Yuuki Bookmite was born on the 12th.

Of this month.

And yes--wanted a job stripping.

Her profile had the immortal line--until I told her she needed to change it--"But she will submit to anyones sexual desires unless she has gained permission.". (I told her she really needed to add the "not" before "submit".)

Honestly. I'm all for helping new friends to the game out. But if they're this irretrievably stupid, why should we bother??

In other news...I'm trying to make another house.

This:



is the house I'm currently building.

This:



is, okay, a Shih Tzu, and when I named the house, I was thinking of another dog, but hey...

But that's why I'm calling in the Bark Pomeranian. You can see why, right?

Right?

*hears crickets*

Fine...but really--what would you call it?

In the meantime, I need to figure out how to fix it...I'm thinking of adding trees. Which means I need to find branches. This is not proving to be easy...

Finally, by way of Lord Bardhaven (who found it on Dr. Mason's blog), comes this odd quiz-thing:

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents,
beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home
decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

...which, frankly, seems like the universe laughing at me. Abundance? Fertility? The nurturing impulse? Small little bunnies curled up at her feet next to the wheat fronds and the fruit?

Come on, now, who are they kidding? I'm about as fertile as Stonehenge, and frankly, my nurturing skills still pretty much fall into the "Get over it. Next." camp.

*shakes head* They have no clue.

(Psst--one last thing--Sine Wave is hosting a multi-sim pub quiz this Sunday at 1 pm SLT. It's apparently a joint venture with OSGrid. Tell your friends.)

I want you to know that being kind is overrated

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks nor made to court an amorous looking glass, I that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph, I that am curtailed of fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into breathing world scarce half made up and so lamely and unfashionable that dogs do bark at me as I halt by them...



Welcome to OSGrid.

Shakespeare was talking about Richard III--or at least, the version he felt he could best sell to the mob on the sawdust--but I can't think but it fits. OSGrid itself feels half-finished, the guidebooks empty, and the default coding...well.



Let's just say that had I known the default skin in which OSGrid's version of Em was clad, wasn't in the official library handed me by the operators...and that neither eyes nor hair actually exist, and will have to be imported in...well. I wouldn't have made the change, I really wouldn't have.

But I can't actually see spending a ton of time on the OSGrid in the meantime--with barely over six thousand active users, and between five hundred and two thousand in world at any given time...it's literally an empty wasteland, bereft of just about everything.

Kitsune Valley's there, though--I wonder if it's run by the same people...

In other news, GEICO finally responds to Optimus Prime's damage claims. *snerk!*