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A Little Slice of Heaven Sculpt Studio is a very popular sculpting tool on SL, probably for the reasons described above. As I said it is very powerful, meaning theres a lot you can do with it, but the creator of the tool, TheBlack Box, saw fit to allow those with the propensity to extend its capabilities by providing plug-ins, that make it even more powerful. So anyone who knows me knows I would have to eventually try my hand at it, and of course I did. I created a plug-in for Sculpt Studio called Symmetry. I contacted Eleanora Newell, who teaches Sculpt Studio, since she was one of the officers of the Sweet Sculpties group, a group dedicated to discussions of Sculpt Studio, to ask her if telling people about my plug-in would constitute spam. She told me it wouldn't, but she went far beyond that! She tried out my plug-in and made some suggestions on how to improve it and read over my instructions and helped me rework them. Then she did a demonstration of it after one of her classes and asked me to be there to answer questions. I was so excited when she showed it and I received several "WOW"s from the audience. There was one thing my plug-in didn't do that I would have liked it to and Eleanor suggested I contact TheBlack Box, the creator of Sculpt Studio, to see if he could help. He got back to me right away and let me know that the plug-in architecture did not yet support that capability, but Eleanor didn't stop there. She contacted Blade Spargel who also makes plug-ins for Sculpt Studio to see if he can help. He not only was helpful (though it remains that it can't as yet be done using the plug-in architecture - though it will in the next update), but he gave me a couple of his plug-ins and a tool he had developed for scripting. Keep in mind Blade is selling competing products to the one I made. Granted they do different things, but if someone has a few hundred L$ to drop on a plug-in they may choose between my plug-in and his. I think that says a great deal about Blade, that he would go out of his way to try to help someone improve a competing product. And back to Eleanora, I can't say enough good things about her. What started as a simple question turned into oodles of help from her. Like I said Sculpt Studio is the best sculpt making tool I have found. There may be some better ones out there, but I doubt you will ever find this kind of support anywhere. Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Abbys Vacation Day 7 Then the real fun began, DJs not making it for their sets, hosts informing me they would not be able to do their sets, some confusion as to who was to cover for Abby in her absence, a disagreement between a guest and someone who had very kindly agreed to fill in for a host who couldn't make it which turned ugly. OK, so that's pretty much business as usual. I even managed to hire two new dancers, both of whom have turned out to be very good, but the dancer tip jar didn't work for them (still not sure why) and so I replaced it with one of my own. Then the DJ tip jar stopped working and I had to swap that out. Then the host tip jar stopped working as well and I replaced it. But then each time someone tipped the host my balance went to L$-1 and I had to relog. One good thing did come of this though I found out why the tip jars sometimes stop paying tips to the person logged in, and it's no surprise its the Lindens' fault. The host tip jar stopped working right under my nose as tried to tip it and it told me my funds were messed up and it had been reported. I relogged and it fixed it for me, but since Bobbie (Abby's accountant alt) could not do the same, her funds no doubt remained messed up. Then to add to the fun the dance ball seemed to stop working and in fact so did some peoples chims not work correctly. I know there is more I'm forgetting. Suffice it to say it has been a long week. Forward to Friend | Comments (2) Sit on It There are some instances where poseballs are appropriate, such as with the popular Intan dance devices which rez poseballs for the partners to sit on, but couches, beds, chairs, any object you sit on with as many prims as potential sitters DO NOT NEED POSEBALLS. The addition of poseballs simply adds unecessary prims and ruin the look of the item. Why do people put poseballs on objects when they don't need to? Laziness or lack of knowledge is all I can figure. Though some people argue that poseballs are necessary to let people know there is a place to sit. Well, if it's a couch, I think one will naturally assume they can sit. Some other items that one might not normally sit on might benefit from the addition of poseballs just to let people know to sit there, but there are other better ways to handle it. Please, if you build STOP USING POSEBALLS. If you don't know how to do so without them, I would be glad to help you. Forward to Friend | Comments (4) Cupidity Creations Very many of my creations come from seeing someone elses product and thinking "I could do that better". One example is my fight ring. I was invited by a friend to a wrestling match in SL and couldn't resist examining the ropes around the ring and was aghast when I found that they were over 25 prims. So I set about creating the same thing using only 3 prims, and I think it looks as good or better than any similar configuration I have seen - typically well over 20 prims. Very often I will see or try someone else's creation and my dissatisfaction with that, and other similar products on the market, will drive me to create something better. Typically I find that they: * have too many prims * are of poor quality * do not perform as I think they should One example of the latter is my Hemi Charger. I generally try to avoid entering into markets that are already saturated with competition. The car market on SL is one such market. It's not that I am afraid of the competition; it is just difficult to reach customers in a market with so many offerings, but I got to driving some vehicles and was displeased with a couple of things: * you pretty much have to take your finger off the forward key (the throttle) in order to shift using the PgUp/PgDn keys * they fly, and sometimes would do so when I didn't want them to. Cars don't fly. If I want to fly I'll buy an airplane or helicopter. Some of my other creations come about when I, or a friend, search in vain for something I want and can't find it on the market, or can't find anything of suitable quality. An example of this is my sculpted grappling hook. I could find plenty of nice sculpted anchors, but no grappling hooks, so I set about making one. Often times my creations will begin as a favor for a friend that later turns into a marketable creation. My DJ Vote device for example was created for a DJ friend of mine, and I decided others might like to have one. Many of my other creation are simply a result of my own insane imagination and often that of my friends. Some are just a whim that comes out of thin air. Some are even a result of a mistake gone right. Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Gambling Allowed As I said in my last post, I really don't care if people gamble online, but there are attorneys general in several states of the US who care as well as some federal authorities. If they decide to crack down on online gambling on Second Life, will they be satisfied that the Lindens did all that they could to prevent it? I know if I were a judge and the case was brought before me, I would not be satisfied. They could have claimed they were unaware of such activity or at least the potential for such activity until they were notified by me and possibly others of instances such as this. It seems to me that the Lindens, themselves, are taking a bit of a gamble. They could have, and in my opinion should have, taken decisive action as soon as they were notified of the possibility of someone violating the gambling rules: removed the offending item from xstreet until such a time as they had assurances that the device could not be converted to use Lindens. By their inactivity they are risking prosecution under the laws of those states that prohibit online gambling. Is it really worth the gamble? Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Second Life Gambling Allowed As far as I have been able to tell from the response (or lack thereof) from the Lindens - gambling on Second Life is just fine as long as you pretend that Lindens won't be used. Case in point, there is an item for sale on Xstreet which claims to only accept their own phoney currency, which they assure us cannot be traded for anything of L$ or monetary value. A link on their listing takes you to their website wherein they say something like "While our device can be configured to accept Linden dollars L$ . . . it might violate the TOS blah blah blah" wink, wink. Well, more accurately heres what most people would read "our device can be configured to accept Linden dollars L$ blah blah blah" because most everyone else will stop reading when they see that part - other than to look for instructions on how to do so. But these guys wouldn't be stupid enough to provide instructions on how to set up their device to acccept Lindens on a public web page where anyone including the Lindens and the attorneys general of those US states that prohibit online gambling, would they? Yes in fact they are that stupid. They later provide instructions on the website to configure and use the device using Lindens. They even have the topic highlighted. I reported all of this to xstreet (in other words the Lindens) and guess what? As of this posting nothing has been done about this. By the way, I really don't have any problem with gambling online or otherwise myself, but these guys pissed me off, which is a whole nother story. So I noticed when reporting one of the myriad of techincal issues I encounter using SL that there is a selection on the support site to "report an xstreet item" so I reported the item there. The "solution" I received was telling me I should do what I had already done by clicking on the "report this item" in xstreet. Why then do they even have that as a selection on the support page? I reopened the issue saying in effect that the solution I expected was: ideally the item should be removed from xstreet or the references in their documentation on how to configure the device to use L$ be removed and the item be made so it could not be configured to use L$ or some correspondence from the Lindens that such a device was allowable in consideration of the TOS I pointed out that the last option or inactivity on their part could cause the Lindens to be considered liable, possibly even complicit if said activities ran afoul of law enforcement in those states of the US that prohibit online gambling. So, unless some action is taken on the matter, to start your own gambling business on Second Life all you need to do is: 1. Create a gambling device and set it up to use some phoney form of currency, which supposedly is not redeemable for L$ - though we all know it could be 2. Make it easy to configure it to accept Linden dollars instead of your phoney currency 3. Issue instructions including "Although our product can be configured to use Linden dollars (L$). . . blah blah blah 4. Include in the instructions how to set the device up to accept Linden dollars instead of your phoney money 5. Cash in until states in the USA, which prohibit online gambling go afer the Lindens and yourself. Hopefully by then you will have set enough aside to either mount a legal defense or flee somewhere to evade prosecution. As I mentioned, I really don't have a problem with gambling online, but I do have a problem with hypocrisy. Either say "We allow gambling on Second Life" or say "We won't allow gambling on Second Life" and enforce it, but not "We allow gambling on Second Life as long as you lie about it" (and in this case do it badly). Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Business as Usual I set about doing other work, checking in occasionally on Second Life and by the time I went to bed about 4 hours later Second Life was still down. In fact, if the status page is to be believed service wasn't restored until after 6 am SLT the next morning. I finally logged in a little after 11 am SLT and was online for all of maybe 20 minutes before hearing the "ping" again and was again unable to log in, so over 12 hours later the site still was not fully functioning. (still unable to log in as of 1:30 pm SLT) The Lindens seem intent on enticing businesses to establish a presence on Second Life. The V2 viewer, which they seem intent upon getting us all to use, even though all the bugs are not worked out yet, was touted in at least one Linden interview I read as a marvelous tool for businesses. Let me digress for a moment to illustrate a point I touched upon in the previous sentence. A friend contacted me for help with a problem. Someone they were trying to help was having an issue with SL clothing. When he put on his shirt his pants were removed; when he put on his pants his shirt was removed. Knowing this should not happen I asked if he was using V2. He was, and when he reverted to the previous version the problem was fixed. So, not only are the bugs not fixed in V2, but they are introducing new bugs. I think the fact that Second Life was down for over 9 hours and then continued to have issues for over 12 hours and the fact that they introduced this new bug alone demonstrate the incompetence of the Lindens and I'm sure anyone who uses Second Life could provide further evidence. So the obvious question is why would anyone want to establish a business presence on Second Life? Suppose I have a business and I make it known to my customers that they can shop, pay their bill, contact customer support, or whatever on Second Life and the site goes down for hours. Some, not understanding that my business depends upon the services provided by Second Life will blame my company. Others, who understand the relationship between my business and Second Life, will still think that whoever runs my company must be an idiot for depending on a company that can't keep their service up. I have worked for web based companies and 10 minutes unscheduled downtime is too long. 2 hours is an eternity, and the CEO would be screaming at the CIO to get it fixed NOW! Beyond 4 hours the shareholders would be screaming at the CEO to replace the CIO and threatening to replace the CEO if anything like that ever happened again. The age-old business adage "time is money" is especially true on the Internet. For a web based business every second that ticks by while the site is down can amount to thousands of dollars lost. Would you trust your business to a service that would flush your dollars down the drain? I and others who sell products on xstreet and even inworld lost sales during this entire time. Can we expect any recompense for our losses? Hardly. In fact, from my experience none of Second Life's residents can expect even as much as an apology much less any assurance that this will never happen again. I had to add to this since it is now 5:30 pm SLT approximately 21 hours since the debacle began and I still cannot log in. I logged in for maybe 20 minutes this morning and was booted right in the middle of an IM with a friend and was unable to log back. After taking care of some RL business, I tried again and again and again and again and am still unable to log in as of writing this. So lets give them half an hour for the time I was logged in. I have been unable to use Second Life for neary an entire day now 20 and 1/2 hours. Great news though, they announced at 3:30 pm SLT that xstreet was back up and monetary tranfers were fixed, but with people like me unable to log in what good is it? Forward to Friend | Comments (3) What's in Store One problem I had was finding the right place for my store. I offer such a wide and strange assortment of products that I really didn't seem to fit in anywhere. Ro to the rescue, she provided me a nice store in her shopping sim. Anyway I'm really excited about my new store and was even more excited when I made my first sale there. Check it out if you get a chance http://slurl.com/secondlife/Green%20Goblin/23/185/39 Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Chill Out And would someone please take this damn thing away from me? I'm serious, I can't stop playing with it. Forward to Friend | Comments (1) Give Em the Boot Adia has worked long and hard on these boots, and I think it shows. There are no other boots like them that I have seen on SL. They are similar in design to some of the much admired Bax boots, but they have a a flashing animated texture that gives a whole new meaning to the word "bling" in second life. At the risk of sounding like a curmugeon, so called "bling" in SL is another pet peeve of mine, though a minor one. What is called "bling" in SL is really just simple particle effects intended to simulate sparkling light. The problem is that the products that this bling scripts are attached to often don't seem to sparkle at all, and in fact too often this simulated bling is a substitute for fine craftsmanship and attention to detail. Adia's "Sparkle" boots are aptly named, since they really do sparkle. No description does them justice and even a picture doesn't capture their beauty. Toward that end, she inspired me to finish the vendor I had long put aside, which allows you to rez a display of the item, but I digress. I'm really feeling frustated here because I can't put into words how brilliant Adia's boots are. All I know is that I love them and I hope she sells a milliion of them. I have worked with Adia on a number of her own creations and unfortunately she hasn't yet landed on that one great seller. But her creations are always very inventive, and she spends a great deal of time on crafting them just right. I suppose it was ineviatable that Adia would make boots, because she has always been boot crazy. Say the word "boot" around Adia and she lights up like a Christmas tree. Oh, and I made my small contribution to the effort in crafting a sole to fit it. I guess you could say Adia put her heart into the effort but I put my "sole" into it. lol Oh, to finally get around to the title of my post, give all your friends the boot(s). I'm buying them for some of my friends and I hope you do the same. :) Forward to Friend | Comments (1) The Shape of Things to Come There is a catch, however, you will need to use RLV to take full advantage of the Mystique costume. I have long been an advocate of non-BDSM uses of RLV. My RLV strip poker table is by far my best seller. A number of people in SL have an aversion to RLV, partially because they object to its association with BDSM and because it has been misused by too many people on SL. This is partly the fault of irresponsible RLV scripters who create devices that allow someone to take control of another person using RLV without their permission, and because of the idiots who misuse such devices. The Mystique attachment that uses RLV affords idiots no such opportunity to waylay you. It does not require the use of a RLV relay, and it responds only to your commands. I am very excited about another cool use of RLV for a non-BDSM application. RLV allows you to do things the standard SL viewer does not, some very cool things in this case. This will be by far the best Mystique costume out there, and knowing Abby she will sell it for some riduculously low price. I hope you all enjoy it! Forward to Friend | Comments (1) Balls to the Walls Granted, poseballs do have their uses. Intan dance balls come readily to mind as one acceptable use of poseballs, but even then do they have to be round? Why not a female symbol and a male symbol? Forward to Friend | Comments (3) What it's all about One of the best things Abby ever did for me was introduce me to Heroes, her club, and the people involved in it. Most notably Cherry the most awesome DJ on SL and a true friend and great person and Cal also an awesome DJ (I'll let them duke it out as to who is the greatest DJ). Though I talk with him less, I find him a person of great integrity and fortitude and I find his mere presence reassuring and inspiring. There is also DJ Vixen (not to infer she is an also-ran) who can join the battle for best DJ as she is awesome also and a great person to know. There is P, Abby's wife and a great friend, and Ro, an incredible builder and sweet person and so many people who have come and gone (no wonder my favorite song is "Slipping Away" by Moby) that I'm sure I've overlooked many incredible people (and then there are those who have resurfaced as alts and whom I'm not sure how to address). Please don't take it as an affront, since I'm writing this at near 12 pm and am quite tired. My point is simply this: SL is about people and I love you all, even those of you with whom I've had my difference. Life is too short to short for spite. Thank you all for being there and for being who you are. Forward to Friend | Comments (1) Thank you, come again - again Forward to Friend | Comments (0) Venting [name withheld], I have noticed that you have repeatedly in open chat on many occassions criticized my tip jar. At first it seemed it was all in good fun, but lately it seems the fun has gone out of it and it has deteriorated into mere complaining. First of all I think it is unprofessional to openly criticize the club: it's staff, customers or the club itself including whatever devices it employs, unless perhaps it is truly in a joking manner. Secondly, I would wish that you would have the consideration to not criticize my creations openly in front of me and would instead offer me any crticisms or suggestions in IM. I pride myself on my customer service. I go out of my way to see that my customers are satisfied. I even go so far as thanking each customer when they have purchased my products and offer my assistance should they require it. And when they do have a question, a problem or a suggestion I do my best to see that they are satisfied. I work hard on my creations and take great pride in them, and it hurts me when someone continuously criticizes them. I would think that you as a builder would understand better than most. How would you feel if someone criticized your creations over and over? I tipped you tonight as I have everytime I have been there when you were DJing, despite the fact that I have heard many people refuse to tip you because they say they have noticed you never tip. Instead of a "thank you for the tip" I instead got a criticism of the tip jar that I have worked so hard on. I will not tip you ever again, but I want you to know the reason is not because you never tip anyone. I don't give tips expecting tips in return. I don't really even care if I get a thanks. But I will not tip someone simply to get criticism. I can get that for free. I ask you as a friend to please save your criticism and suggestions and IM me rather than voicing them in open chat. I "ask" you also as a manager at Heroes to not openly criticize Heroes while there unless it is in the spirit of fun and frivolity that is encouraged there and not intended to disparage or slight anyone. Thank you, Garbo I was careful to simply outline my concerns and offer a solution. I was careful not to criticize her. The only thing that could have been taken as criticism was my mention of the fact that people say she never tips, and quite honestly I hadn't taken notice of this until it was pointed out to me. I did not ask for an apology, though an apology would have been nice. In her response, she claimed that the above was an attack on her, accused me of arrogance and petulance (though I'm not sure from the context that she understands the meaning of the word), thus attacking me in response to a perceived attack and asked for an apology for me simply pointing out something for which any polite person might apologize. She claims that her remarks weren't criticisms or complaints, but multiple witnesses can attest to the fact that beyond some point they could not have been taken any other way. I actually put it nicely in my note to her, it was labeled, and appropriately so, as "bitching" by more than one person. This person was so incensed over my note that she not only quit Heroes but claimed to have broken down in tears. Whether you feel my complaints are valid or perhaps might even tend to side with the other party in this matter, any reasonable person would have to agree that what I wrote is hardly sufficient to reduce one to tears. Never mind an apology; a reasonable person might have come back and said to the effect "I disagree with you because . . ." and we could have settled upon some agreement. Forward to Friend | Comments (2) [Next >>] |