Dianna's Musings

Wow, long time!

2008-07-23T01:29:38Z

Okay, so it's been what? Over a year since I last posted. >.<

Well, things are going all right despite the higher prices on everything and my income remaining the same. It's a bit of a scramble at times, but so far, so good. I've been keeping busy, working and getting hooked on World of Warcraft. I've got a couple of level 70s, like four level 65s and a bunch of others of various levels. One server's Alliance characters and one server--and RP one--holds my Horde characters.

I've also been busy creating art using DAZ Studio. I got rather hooked on creating 3D art in Second Life, and DAZ Studio's free to get and costs no monthly fee to keep your artwork in existence. Granted, clothes and ready-made props and hair isn't free, but there are a lot of freebies out there to find, enough to get at least a start on something. Besides, DAZ Studio's given me a reason to actually use my Deviant Art page (which can be found here) for more than just logging on to see mature content others have put up on DA.

And, sometimes in my wanderings about on the Internet, I come across things I think are neat and/or cute. One such case is this Japanese page that gives you a couple of Javascript ways to put a virtual windchime on your webpages. I have the one hanging from the upper right corner on my site's index page now and I'm thinking about where I might use the small windchime picture version. (I love Japanese windchimes, so much so that Lopayzanilaya had a number of them hanging off the beams of the various teahouses and the kitsune shrine.)

Apparently winter isn't quite done with the area

2006-12-19T19:39:23Z

It's been brought to my attention that I probably should make another entry--especially if you're aware of how bad the rain then wind storm last Thursday night/Friday morning was.

I lucked out. The lights dimmed out a number of times when the wind got really serious around 11:30 PM Thursday night (and yes, I leaned back in my chair and said out loud to the lights to quit that and to not do that. Perhaps there's a bit of animism still in most of us.), but the power didn't go completely out where I'm at.

The rest of the Puget Sound region, not so lucky. There's still people without power, and the local electric companies are saying it could be this coming Saturday before everyone's back on. We had cold air move in after the storm, so the temperatures have been in the 40's F in the day and as low as 30 F at night. My work's corporate office lost power in the storm, but their backup generators were enough to keep the WAN up and functioning, so I was able to work as usual on Friday, as well as fill in a bit for coders who were later getting power back and getting on the WAN. Work got power back on Saturday morning.

I usually listen to KIRO 710 AM, which is news/talk radio. Ever since the storm hit, they've been right there with the coverage and local calls, trying to get spokespeople on from the various agencies involved to give us all information on when the power could be back, shelters being set up, school outages, all the things that keep people informed in an disaster situation. In fact, one of the newer personalities, Don O'Neil (who happened to be in New Orleans when Katrina happened, and has taken a job up here after being displaced), gave up some of his vacation time to be on long hours Friday afternoon, early Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon so that he could be assured that the listening public could get the important information needed. Kudos to KIRO for their outstanding public service to the greater Seattle area during all this; they exemplify what the FCC broadcast licenses are supposed to be about.

This storm is being called a 200-year event as far as how much damage was sustained by the power grid. There were a number of major transmission lines (the ones running from the dams along the Columbia River in eastern Washington up and over the Cascade Mountain passes) that were taken down by felled trees as well as major feeder lines to substations, let alone all the local feeder lines being whacked. At the height of impact, the power companies had a total of over a million customers (that's locations; each "customer" could be more than one person impacted there) out of power--700,000 alone belonged to the multi-county Puget Sound Energy. This storm was worse than the last "big one", the "Inauguration Day Storm" that took place on Bill Clinton's swearing in. I remember that one simply because driving home from my then-current job was tough, what with the strong side winds pushing my pickup truck around and I nearly had a metal sign ripped off some chain-link fence go through my windshield.

One thing that's surprised me is the amount of people getting carbon monoxide poisoning. People have been saying over and over and over on the radio, DO NOT BRING ANY CHARCOAL- OR GASOLINE- OR ANYTHING-BURNING DEVICE INTO THE HOUSE. You absolutely must use those outside, not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in the basement, not in the garage. Even putting the Hibachi in the fireplace (if you have one) won't work because charcoal briquettes don't generate enough of an updraft to pull the CO up the flue. Instead, it just dissipates through the enclosed space and takes the place of O2 on your red blood cells. We've had five people die now just from that, four of whom were all members of the same family. For a place considered one of the best educated in the US, the amount of CO poisoning happening is rather appalling. The physician in charge of Virgina Mason's Hyperbariatic Medicine said on the radio that the aftermath of this storm will probably be the worst incident of CO poisoning in the US. He said that yearly 1500 people are treated for CO poisoning; as of yesterday afternoon, they'd treated 63 alone (that number has obviously gone up. There was the four deaths announced after the physician spoke on KIRO, and this morning I've heard of another family of six all being treated for CO poisoning).

So I've been fine all this time, and grateful I wasn't one of those hard-hit by the storm that rolled through. Here's hoping the rest of the region gets back to some sense of normalcy before Christmas comes along.

Oh, and my traditional, homemade fudge was cooked up last night. I've got two experimental flavors this year. It'll be interesting to see how they cut up and what people think of them.

So, winter decided to remind us how bad it could be for around here.

2006-12-05T18:54:08Z

As I'm sitting here typing this, the last vestiges of the snowfall from a week ago are hanging about hiding under shady areas. I can look out from my daughter's bedroom window and see patches of white amongst the green grass of my neighbor's lawn.

However, seven days ago, the story was quite another matter. I was sitting in the dark, unable to work, because the power had gone out--and it had been out since the snowstorm got serious late Monday morning. What really sucked was the fact that since I rent an apartment, I only have electric heat--and the night-time temperatures had been dropping into the low 20s since the storm had moved in. Come Tuesday night, it was looking somewhat grim. It was getting really cold in the apartment, and I was starting to worry not only about my betta in his unheated tank, but also about the cockatiels and my daughter and myself. Granted, going outside and checking about brought home the fact that the apartment was warmer than the outside--but it wasn't by much. My daughter and I spent most of the time napping in our beds while being wrapped up in three thick comforters. While I read while there was daylight, my daughter was on the phone on occasion to her Internet friends since they were wondering where she was. I would have called my own friend down in Arizona had I had her phone number physically written down somewhere (an oversight that's now been fixed once the power came back on).

Apparently the heavy, wet, sloppy snow we got dumped on us was too much for one of the wooden utility poles to handle. The top crossbar broke off the pole proper and a power line snapped. That apparently set up a chain reaction that blew the transformer on that pole, the next transformer on the pole just to the east and then something further down the street to the east since I saw the PUD crew move down and check something down there about ten minutes before the power came back on. Imagine my dismay when I walked out to see how they were doing on the broken pole to see them down the street a ways and we're still without power. I was rather worried they'd leave without the electricity having been restored and have to come back on Wednesday to finally get it fixed, but it worked out. As I said, the power came back on about ten minutes after I returned to my apartment.

It took us about a couple of days of the heat constantly going before I started feeling finally warmed up. I'm certainly glad I wasn't one of those on the northeast side of Arlington. I heard on the radio news they were without power for five days rather than two.

Granted, what we get over here is mild compared to other places in the country. I admit, being a native Seattleite, I'm essentially a weather wimp. However, sitting around in temperatures ranging from 20 degrees F. to 32 degrees F. with no heat, no way of cooking or warming up food, and only a battery-powered radio to hear what's going on isn't exactly my idea of fun. It struck me as being a camping trip without the tent or campfire.

Here's hoping that was the worst we'll see for winter this time around.

Computer fixed! Yay!

2006-11-09T02:05:08Z

So, ever since my last entry, I've been dealing with an ailing computer. It turns out that this system has what's called a RAID array. Essentially, there's two physical hard drives that are then managed together as a single unit that shows up as C: on my computer. In my system's case, it's a RAID level 1, where the two physical hard drives mirror one another for data redundancy. Had my computer been a RAID level 2 and done the "striping" bit, where the storage on both hard drives is used as the total capacity of C:, I could have ended up with a computer completely unable to boot up.

What essentially happened was that one of the physical drives that makes up my RAID failed. Restoring the computer to factory specs allowed the boot-up information to be replaced upon a good area of one of the disks, which then allowed me to be able to boot it up. And the messages I kept getting were that one of my hard drives had failed, but the computer would boot up first try with maybe a bit of a delay.

Until Saturday. Suddenly not only was there a little clicking sound coming from my computer, it took four tries before the computer would boot. And the message I was getting had changed from a RAID member failing to a RAID member completely missing. So I called up the manufacturer. Turns out the hardware's still under warranty. After three techs, two runs of BIOS-based hardware tests and a call-back on Sunday, they authorized sending out one of their techs with a replacement hard drive. Not only that, but the third guy I talked to had me go through the restore CDs that came with the computer. It's a good thing he had me confirm what I have, since it turns out that I didn't have restore CDs for Windows XP itself or some of the nuts and bolts software for running the computer. Had I had a RAID level 2 or my RAID completely failed, I would have been SOL for manually reinstalling my operating system.

Last night the tech came and replaced the bad hard drive. It booted up just fine, rebuild the RAID and now everything's just hunky-dory. I'm a happy person about that.

The warranty expires come February. I'm going to look into buying an extension on it as soon as I can afford it. It certainly saved me a good chunk of change with this hard drive failure.

Yuck!

2006-10-19T13:04:58Z

Yesterday turned out to be something of a negatively eventful day to someone like me who stays on the computer quite a lot.

My computer suddenly decided that booting up to Windows was so horrible, it could only get so far, then hung up at the door, too afraid to continue on like some child forced to enter a scary place all alone. Looking up the problem and error message I was getting before the computer froze in its tracks on the manufacturer's website (I was using my old computer for that; my daughter now has that one as her own computer), there were only two solutions: Unhook all the USB items save the mouse and keyboard and see if that solved it--or do a dreaded rollback of the system to how it came from the factory.

I tried everything I could think of to restore to a more recent save point, but no go. It either froze or I got the lovely Blue Screen of Death. In the end, I had to do the full rollback.

The computer boots up now. But ever since I did a full hard drive disk error scan, I'm getting notices in the bios screen that something's degraded but bootable and one of the hard drives sensed has an error. It may be time to look into getting a new hard drive. Running through some of the diagnostics in the bios, the computer so far passed all the tests. I'll probably run another full error scan on the hard drive again, just to be safe.

It took me all afternoon after that to do all the updates to Windows, my sound card, my video card and my Norton's. I have yet to reinstall all of the programs I lost. Luckily, I have a USB hard drive that had most of the pictures and files, and my friend had copies of most of the other stuff on her computer that she passed back over to me. But I'm still in the process of recovering, and man, it sucks.

Sayonara, Second Life's Fox's Den

2006-10-13T17:45:27Z

Well, it's been a couple of months since work's hired on more coders and as a result, I'm back to working just for my main hospital. The overtime was great, but now it looks like it's over with.

As a result, I just cannot spend as much as I have been on luxury, ego-stroking things like Lopayzanilaya in Second Life. As of today, the Den is no more. The land is sold; everything's gone. However, I did take a bunch of snapshots before hitting the dreaded "Return all objects" button. And I thought Friday the Thirteenth was an appropriate day to bring SL Lopayzanilaya to an end.

For just over a year, the Den's been in Second Life. It had a good run, and thanks again to those who came to visit it and liked it. I enjoyed creating it and I will miss it, but it'll live on in my memories and on my computer's hard drive as screenshots. Still, it'll be nice being able to create something that I then don't have to worry about someone next door creating some ugly eyesore or lag-inducing club/mall that rather detracts from the effect I wanted to achieve.

My creative efforts in this sort of thing--trying to bring to 3D "life" areas I see in my head as I write my stories--will be transferred to the toolset from Neverwinter Nights 2. I have the pre-release, preview version of the toolset and there's so much more control over virtual land in there than I ever had on the mainland in Second Life. Best of all, it's free; the only fee I have to pay is the one-time cost of getting Neverwinter Nights 2. Of course, in order to share, someone would have to have Neverwinter Nights 2 as well, download the module files, and run the module on their computer before seeing what I'd created. And right now, there's no Asian-influenced things in NWN2; Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms is Western-inspired. So I won't be able to do Aizvarya there as I was able to do in SL. However, give the NWN community enough time, and I bet I'll see Asian buildings and stuff I can add, so eventually I may be able to create Aizvarya in NWN2. I do have a NWN 1 module that's Aizvaryan based still hanging about.

So while I'll miss the Den and what I created there, I can do more elsewhere. And I have to be a responsible person after all. I can't afford to keep it; it would be irresponsible to not let it go and let my financial situation get really bad as a result. Real life takes precedence over Second Life, after all.

"Where Were You?" (Rest in peace, brave innocents)

2006-09-11T14:57:08Z

Seems like that's invariably one question that gets asked when discussing momentous events within living memory. And each generation, sadly, has its own event that it thinks of when that question gets asked. For my grandparents, it's probably Pearl Harbor and other moments from World War II. For my parents, it's probably the assassination of President Kennedy. I wasn't even born when that happened. To me, it's just another moment in American history.

For my generation (and those alive when it happened), it's probably going to be September 11, 2001.

I'm one of the lucky ones. Not only do I live on completely the other side of the country from the areas attacked, I'm not aware of anyone I even remotely know who was one of the victims. I can watch and be horrified all I want from watching and hearing the footage and transcripts from that day, but I will never know the true horror of those who were there. Anything I feel has to pale in comparison to those who lost a family member--many of whom actually heard from their loved one on that day as it was all happening around them--or ran for their lives when the buildings were first hit, then the towers collapsed. I've seen the footage of people having to face an absolutely horrid, terrifying choice: stay and burn or fall multiple stories to the unforgiving ground below. I can only hope that those who chose to jump or fell because they could not hold on to the windowsill any longer had the mercy of blacking out before they hit the ground. But no matter how moved I am by any of record of that day now five years past, it pales compared to what the people who actually survived it or lost a loved one went through.

I'll always be able to know how long I've had my current job. I was hired on in mid-August, 2001, and I was still going to the company headquarters for my month-long training when Sept 11 happened. Being on the West Coast, I woke up to the news of the first tower having already been hit. The rest of the events unfolded as I commuted to the company and concentrated--away from all the news--on learning how to code hospital charts. I didn't hear about the loss of the towers until my lunch time, when I went out to my truck and sat there, listening to the news radio going on and on. When I got home, I kept the TV turned on CNN and got caught up in what had been going on over there while I was a coder in training at work. I remember how proud I felt when I started hearing that the reason why United 93 crashed in a field was because the passengers--after hearing what had happened to three other planes--had decided to not sit back and complacently fly to their certain deaths. I'm sure they all hoped they'd be able to actually take back the plane and get help trying to land it and that they were taking the one chance they had to actually survive. It's a tragedy they didn't live and that the plane crashed, but at least they didn't take anyone else out with them. "Now that's the American spirit!" I remember thinking when it first became known the passengers of Flight 93 fought back. I consider them and the police and firefighters who died that day to be true heroes.

For my daughter, it was just another day at school, far as I know. I'm sure they talked about it some, but she was only ten at the time--old enough to remember the main details, too young to really "get it". Last night, we watched a Court TV documentary on the 9/11 Commission which also ran through the timeline of the attacks and showed footage from then, and I could tell from her questions that while aware it happened, she just didn't know the details of it all. I answered her questions as best I could and let the TV program answer a few more.

Though for me the memory of that day has blurred some and needs prompting by the footage to really see how bad it truly was back then, I'm certain it's not faded near as much for the families of those lost and the few who miraculously survived. To all those caught up in fate that day, my thoughts and prayers go to you. May we truly learn the lessons such a tragedy can teach us, and may the souls of all those lost rest in peace.

Happy Rez-Day, SL Fox's Den

2006-09-05T16:11:30Z

And so it's been a year since I first began building Lopayzanilaya in Second Life. In that year, the Fox's Den has grown from four plots next to Sibine to nearly a half a sim, located mostly in Apoda. And once I settled upon the Japanese-style keep and moving the hot springs away from the future road, the core areas of the Den haven't changed horribly much at all.

Even so, I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it. There's a few people who come and enjoy it--and I like walking around the Den myself--but neighbors do things that ruin the effect, it's expensive to maintain and very few people would miss the Den were it to disappear. I can do much the same thing--put places together that are fun to walk around in--for free in Neverwinter Nights.

Speaking of which, I'm starting to play around in NWN again. I'm also looking forward to getting NWN2 and seeing what pretty areas I can make with it and its toolset. (I really need to learn how to dink around with things in Photoshop--well, Paintshop Pro X which is what I have on my computer--so I can make custom textures for NWN and NWN2 in the future. Building in NWN isn't as flexible as in SL, but at least that doesn't cost me a monthly fee to keep my work in existence.)

Still, I am proud of the Den and I'm glad there's people around who like it. Now to figure out how to minimize the impact of the eyesore, huge-ass barn my new neighbor's plonked down on her land . . .

Disappointing

2006-07-26T16:24:28Z

After eighteen months of thinking it over, the WA State Supreme Court released their ruling on the constitutionality of the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act".

They upheld it.

In a decision that was 5-4, the Court decided that yes, the state legislature had the power to declare that only unions of one man and one woman are legally recognized marriages. However, the majority opinion also states that there's no reason to believe the legislature itself or the people--through our initiative process--couldn't one day in the future extend the privileges of marriage to same-sex couples.

Regardless, to me it just makes no sense to discriminate in this manner. Couples are couples, no matter the biological make-up. In this day and age, when we have already what? 6.5 billion humans worldwide? the whole bit about procreation rather falls flat. We're not an agricultural society that needs to breed like crazy just to have enough kids survive into adulthood to keep the society going. And let's face it--in this day and age, there's many same-sex couples who started out trying to fit in and now have children from those past relationships, yet those children will not have the same "stability" society seems to think they need by allowing certain rights and benefits to marriage (I'm thinking of what the New York Supreme Court had said in their ruling, about restricting "marriage" to heterosexual couples because it's an incentive to get people who could have accidental offspring to form a stable family through marriage) that their playmates who have a more traditional parental set have.

Children are children. And the divorce rate's at 50%. Marriage doesn't seem to make things "better" in this day and age. A same-sex couple with children is still a family, regardless. Again, society today is not what it used to be. We're not constantly fighting for survival any longer. If anything, our species is overbreeding for our planet's biosphere.

Anyway, though I'm disappointed, I can't disagree with the majority opinion either. The Court is there to help interpret the State Constitution, and that's how they ruled. I was very disappointed and angry at the legislature when they passed that damned Act, because that's not what I wanted my representatives to do. They've looked it over and ruled that yes, the Constitution gives the legislature the power to make such a law, so no law-making from the bench.

Well, here's hoping the legislature and/or the people decide it's worth getting rid of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Errata

2006-07-17T00:31:07Z

All right, in my previous entry, I stated that the Lion's Arch Club's interior looked much like the (usually empty) club across the road from the Den in Apoda. I made a mistake. Not only did I get the name of the other club wrong--it's !Wolf's Heaven!, actually--I did that club a disservice saying the Lion's Arch Club's innards looked like it.

!Wolf's Heaven! looks better. For comparison: Here's the interior for the wolfy place. Not bad, really, and there's not all kinds of flashing, color-changing lighting either.

Now here's the lionish place. It's busy with all sorts of flashing and color changing, but what really makes this pic are the four tiger-headed (side note: The place is called the "Lion's Arch Club". You can see all sorts of heraldic lions in the decor, as well as one silver sparkly-poo panel that changes from a lion's head in profile to the words "Lion's Arch Club"--visible here under the balcony. So WTF is up with tiger heads for the beg box?) panels scattered about. Each one of those is a not-so-subtle command to "Pay me! Paymepaymepayme, NOW!" tacked up to the wall or made a part of the stage by the guy who bought the four plots of land. (He's also the same guy who I was talking to yesterday, who was as dense as a fence post about what lights I was even talking about and complaining about neighbors making him change things.)

Don't get me wrong. Donations of Linden dollars are one way to keep businesses and places you like to visit in SL going. I have two donation things on my property as well, but they're subtle and fit in. One's the money tree itself. Anyone can donate money to new people through it by paying the ring around the tree. Sure, the Lindens go into my account, but then the tree kicks them right back out, so I don't get to keep or spend those donations. And in the shrine itself--where it's entirely appropriate because you'll see the exact same thing in a Shinto shrine in the real world--I have a saisenbako (a Japanese Shinto donation box) that has kanji on it that states it's for temple donations. That money I do get to keep, but I generally turn around and donate that to the money tree.

But the Lion's Arch strikes me as so desperate. Not only does the landowner have four "tip jar" panels, there's also a tip jar on the dance floor (you can see it in the picture of the interior, if you know what you're looking for) for a dancer that'll be working there when it officially opens, and four other tip jars at the entrance (two on each side of the front door) for four other people who will apparently be working there as well. At least it doesn't look like they're going to just plonk it down and hope people show up. That's one point in their favor. Although I can't find the Lion's Arch in Search in either Places or Classifieds or Events, their business groups are showing up under Groups. With DJs, dancers, security (who don't go in for drama! Right. One of the members of that group was the landowner I was talking to and he seemed to be making a big deal out of my question), and management, it looks like they're going to have events. I'm looking forward to seeing what events will be happening at "SL's hotest club". (I wish I were kidding, but that's exactly how it was spelled in the group information. They also have notecard dispensers stating how to turn on the SL 1.10 lighting system, with the text having a couple of misspellings there too. What's funny is they apparently have no clue that not only are SL 1.10 lights not blocked by walls, any computer can only render six individual light sources at once. They have far more than six packed into a relatively small area, so people are going to be constantly shifting light sources they see as they move around . . .)

(Please note that at least !Wolf's Heaven! isn't a frigging shoebox club. It has a bit of style. It actually stands out some from all the other shoebox clubs dotting the SL landscape. And man, I still hate staring at that huge-ass windmill . . .)

And a rant about a neighbor's rather ugly build just isn't complete without illustrating what exactly I meant by a "shoebox 'mall'". The textures hadn't quite loaded up all the way when I took the snapshot, but I don't think in-focus textures would make this look much better. As you can see, he's actually got three suck--er renters;yeah, that's the ticket--occupying his wonderful shopping experience. It's pretty drab overall, and very blah in the world of SL. Places like this are more than a dime a dozen, but he's probably hoping on the club being the actual draw. My point is . . . he's got nothing to draw people. At least, not from what I can see right now. Who knows? Maybe they'll have fun events that get people there . . . but I'm betting it's going to be the same-old, same-old as all the other shoebox clubs are doing to try to generate traffic so that people buy stuff in the nearby shops or donate to the tip jars.

Yeah, I'm biased, but I think the Den is a bigger draw than this pretentious, overblown attempt at making a Linden buck. Sorry, Arch guys, but your place isn't going to be the "coolest ever". You know what it strikes me as? Some teenybopper's first personal webpage on the Internet. You know the kind . . . a ton of animated .gifs, funky pointer trailers, marquee text, "creative" uses of color. Your club is that website in SL. So unless you have a ton of friends willing to spend time there and donate their Lindens to you, or you have some really good music or events going that no one else has, you will not make it. I've seen two clubs far more creative than that come and go (Club Tiki on what was formerly Rina Nino's ranch, and the Club at the End of the Universe, which was next door to the garden in Bhima--and that one may have only moved to a private island sim rather than go away entirely), and the much better built !Wolf's Heaven! sits empty most of the time. All three of those were far better builds and much more "professional" than the crap I have next door to my shrine to Lopayzu in the far northwest corner of the Fox's Forest.

O.o

2006-07-15T23:36:25Z

Okay, so about two weeks ago now, one of the castles making up the two properties along the Hecta side of the Fox's Forest in Second Life was sold to first a land reseller, who divvied it up into five parcels, then sold to other people. One parcel became someone's home and the four parcels closest to the Forest were bought by one guy.

Who then proceeded to plonk down a night club and a small mall that's essentially a three-story, nine-room shoebox on the land. No biggie, really, but I can't help but think that with all the other clubs in Second Life, this new one's not going to get much traffic just being there, existing.

Now like the second day it went in, the guy did some local lighting using the new system. That's well and dandy, really--only he had these half-lights on the walls with a light radius of like 10 meters. The wall in question is right along the Hecta/Apoda border, so while the pale yellow lights at 10 meters were certainly "adding to the ambiance" of the club on the interior side of the wall, the same sphere also lit up the 10 meters behind the wall too . . . spilling out into Apoda, of course, and making a dark, romantic walk along one section of the forest suddenly quite a bit brighter than before. See, the lighting sources can't be occluded by walls; they shine through, filling the entire sphere.

Now I've waited to see how this club and shopping space was going to pan out, since the guy is still obviously working on it. The lights that lit up the forest didn't change over that time, so when I happened across the owner sitting away in the club, I took a moment to stop and say in regular chat, "You know, you may wish to consider using a smaller radius for the lights along the wall since it bleeds over into Apoda and the castle next door."

I then walked back up into the Fox's Forest. He'd added sodium-like street lamps, and all of them were not only orange lights but also at a decent light radius, so the only thing I found mildly objectionable were the lights in question. When I was in the club, I checked around for the source of the lights in question; since I also use such lighting in what little things I create, I have my client set to show me the light radius of anything I click Edit on. So I knew what things in particular they were that were lighting up the forest path.

As I was walking back to the shrine, I got shot at by something. It missed, but a second shot didn't miss and I got shoved back a bit. I checked the new window we have for bumps and stuff. It wasn't the neighbor I talked to, but someone else entirely. Not happy getting shot at in my own forest, I sent in an abuse report. A bit later, I finally caught sight of the avatar that the script that had shot me belonged to. He was like some Jedi knight guy riding around on a landspeeder, zipping through the forest and almost ran me down . . . He quickly zipped off and I didn't see him again.

Getting to the shrine, I logged off. A bit later, I get an email notice that's a saved IM from the neighbor, basically saying "Gee, I've had this place two weeks now. Why not say anything before and you really could have asked nicer, you know."

Ara? All I said was maybe he should consider a smaller radius. That's it. No death threats or "I'm going to sic an Abuse Report on you." And he did say, "Come show me the problem because I've been on your land and I don't see it."

I log back on and IM him back going, "Sorry, but I was sure I was being nice." He offers me a teleport to where he is, which I take, though I could have easily walked back there. The moment I get there, I click Edit on what I had before . . . only to see it was no longer a light source at all. I should have said right there, "Okay, those lights aren't lights any more. Problem solved," and walked off, but I really wanted to work with the guy. You know, find a compromise where he has lights and I have my walkway still rather dark at night.

But no . . . I swear, this guy was either a "typical guy" or being intentionally dense. He not only whined about "I've only had this place two weeks and already I've had to change my vision to suit picky neighbors"--I got the impression his other neighbors must have said things about other things--but also about how he can't do anything about local lighting.

"No, no, the builder can set the light radius to a smaller area," I said.

He goes on about how he was using local lighting because that way it's less drag on the server, and how because I was unhappy that rather killed the ambiance of the club and how he had Adam Linden come over (personally, I bet. That's the jist I got) and everything was all right and on and on . . .

I tell him to turn the lighting back on. He goes on about a light pillar and a dance machine--one of which has local lighting set at 10 m, but that's a purplish light and darker colors don't fill that sphere quite the same as the lighter colors do and the other is a light script. I told him those weren't what I was talking about. I repeatedly told him to turn the light back on the object I was talking about so that I could A: Show him how much that radius bled over into the Fox's Forest and B: work with him to find a radius that still lit his club up nicely and didn't make my trail suddenly brighter in a certain area. But no! Would he do that? Of course not! It took me five times to try to point out what the objects were in the first place, and then when I said, "Please just turn the lighting back on," he responded with, "Why? So then you can complain to the Lindens about it?" And in the end, instead of turning the light source back on . . . he just takes the thing off the wall. "There, happy now? Have to change my club just to please the neighbors. There, no light in your land now," is pretty much the attitude I got then.

I just repeated, "That's not what I was asking. I was only asking maybe you should consider a smaller light radius. That's it," and walked off. Haven't heard from him since. Hopefully, that'll be the end of it, but we'll see. I have a feeling he's going to look for a way to get back somehow, like make me make sure all my plants don't overlap the property line.

Now I don't get where in all this I wasn't being nice. I figured he didn't realize the wall can't block the light in the first place. As I told him, a light on a wall will have the wall as the center of a sphere illuminated by the light source. Bugs me a bit that he apparently had a Linden come over and personally inspect--that's what he claimed--but if he did, then he probably killed those lights in question before calling the Linden over, because I know they were light sources when I went checking. They were light sources when I chatted at his away avatar. They were not light sources any more when he teleported me over after I logged back in.

Now I didn't Abuse Report him, so I have no idea why he was being so defensive and stating I was not nice about it. Though I have to wonder if a Linden contacted him in regards to my Abuse Report on the other person because I did mention I'd just got done talking to a neighbor when I was shot at on my own land. I specifically said in the report that the one stated as hitting me with a script was not the same person as my neighbor--but I mentioned the timing because it did seem suspicious that right after I talked to the away guy, I was hit with something. That's the only thing I can think of to make the neighbor act as he was.

What's rather amusing is that when I rezzed in from the teleport, the neighbor had a couple other friends of his there going on about how the club was going to be a really great place once it opened up. Honestly, in my humble opinion, there's nothing stand out or spectacular about it. It's as busy and glitzy and box-like as any other of the multitude of clubs within SL. Heck, the interior looks much like the interior of the (mostly standing empty) club across the roadway from the Den's keep; all that's different are the decor bits marking it as "The Lion's Arch" club as opposed to the "Wolf's Den" over in Apoda. That and the numerous HUGE ASS boxes that scream "PAY ME TO DONATE TO THE CLUB". He's got like 4-6 of those in there on the walls and when I saw those, I couldn't help but think "Desperate much?" So unless the guy has live events there and advertises like hell, it's going to sit empty, empty, empty. If he thinks that just by existing it's going to make him a bundle in Linden dollars, he's sadly mistaken.

On a related, happier note, I showed up again in the Metaverse Messenger. :) Look on Page Five to start. And as a result of that, I got an IM from the (I think) Alliance Second Life Library 2.0 asking if I'd like to come to the Library to talk about my writing and then take people on a tour of the Fox's Den. So it looks like July 22, if anyone's interested, I'll be doing just that.

ARGH! The hazards of mainland living in SL

2006-07-01T01:15:17Z

Okay, so now that I'm done with work for the day, I decide I'm going to wander around Lopayzanilaya like I normally do. Even though I have the land to auto-return anything not placed by someone in Clan Lopayzom, I still keep an eye on things a lot.

Now, there's been a relatively large plot next to the one I bought in Bhima that's one of those I've been watching. After being for sale for close to two months--maybe more--it sold to someone who then promptly dumped a house very close to my property line. Now I have a 'gateway' there--two fox statues marking an entrance--so I was a little tweaked they had all that room and put the house practically on my doorstep. Figuring they'd done that so they could enjoy the view of the keep's grounds from their house's windows.

So three nights ago, I do my usual prowl of the Den and I noted that that lot was back up for sale. The next night, the plot of land was listed with Governor Linden as the owner. That normally denotes land abandoned for some reason. So imagine my surprise when I log in to see not only that plot back up for sale again--apparently it was abandoned in error and someone got hold of Linden Lab to get the property returned to them--but now there's also THIS on the property, rather borking over the Den's skyline.

I suppose it's a ploy by the owner of the plot to get attention so that people in the area see that the land's for sale. I can't buy the plot itself because not only do I not have the Linden dollars to do so, I can only buy 144 sq. m. now for how much I pay in US dollars now and that plot's well over that in size.

So here's hoping someone who likes the Den and wants to live next door comes along and buys the plot. Since it's the mainland, there's no "zoning" to keep a theme going in adjacent plots or keep builds that don't "fit in" out. It's a free-for-all where the only rule is you can't have anything of yours hanging over the property line if it annoys your neighbor.

Bah. How annoying. Hopefully I won't have to have that hanging around long.

The big 4-0

2006-06-30T16:05:36Z

Once upon a time--long, long ago--the thought of me and the age of 40 just . . . didn't compute. Waaaay back then, no way in hell could I imagine me being 40.

And now it's here. Given the average lifespan of an American these days, this is statistically near the middle-of-the-road mark.

It's all downhill from here. :P

All things considered, it's not too bad--so far. I'd heard that people started "falling apart" after 30, or even 35, but the worst I have at the moment is a bad right knee that I have to be very careful of if I'm kneeling on it or the patella slips out of place and it's hell trying to A: straighten my leg at all and B: get my kneecap back where it belongs. My other knee is a bit better, but I'm feeling twinges in that joint at times these days, especially as I bear down on a bike pedal. Still, it's better to keep biking and staying active that way than the alternative.

Everything else is going along well enough. I'm totally enjoying being able to work from home, and feel good showing off my virtual land in Second Life. I'm still being creative as well--which reminds me, I really need to add some more drawings to my website. I haven't stopped doing those on occasion and venovel still loves doing all the computer coloring on the line drawings I produce. Since the computer coloration looks so much better than anything I did with colored pencils and ink pens, I don't bother coloring my line drawings any more.

Still writing too, especially on Aizvarya and occasionally picking up Megaloi as inspiration strikes. I just haven't posted them on the website only because, well, they're essentially originals and one day I'd like to try publishing something. I've heard it's harder to sell a manuscript if it's already been "published" out on the Internet, so I'll probably never post everything I've produced in either the Aizvaryan stories or the Megaloi ones anywhere so that I can try to sell them to an actual publisher at some point in the future.

Not that anyone's really all that interested in my stories. Outside of a handful of people, that is.

And though money's still sometimes tight--these next two weeks are going to suck, but that can't be helped--overall I'm doing better that I have at other points in my life. At least I'm not begging for paid work in one of the only public posts on my LJ in order to have some sort of an income. :)

And so, when it comes down to it, it's pretty much yet another day. Though looks like Nature's decided to shake it up a bit. It's sunny and supposed to get to the high 70s for the high temperature.

It's usually dreary, grey and rainy on my birthday. And on the Fourth of July. This is probably the fourth or fifth birthday I can remember where it wasn't overcast and misty or rainy.

That'll make biking to the store this afternoon rather pleasant. :)

More on the Fox's Den in Second Life

2006-06-06T06:09:21Z

Another batch of pictures uploaded to Snapzilla:

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=74947

A side view of the hot springs in front of the keep's doorway. I'm standing with my back against the fence right on the edge of one of the onsen streams in order to take this snapshot. To the left can be seen one of my Lopayzom Clan banners that flank the doorway into the keep and straight ahead's the open-air dojo. I took this after playing around with a particle system script, replacing my "dry ice" emitters that were serving as steam from the heated water. The steam present now at the hot springs are coming from the water objects themselves along with a couple of invisible emitters I made and placed here and there. Denser steam rises up from near the source and less dense steam comes from areas closer to the keep's foundation.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=75157

This shot was taken from the raised ground next to the advertising signs in Bhima. Here you can see more of the particle effect I'm using now for the onsen steam as well as some of the SL 1.10 lighting I added to lamps I own inside the keep itself. The falls dropping into Bhima can be seen, as well as a Lopayzom banner.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=75205

When I bought the Bhima lots, I took out a couple of sections of the bamboo fencing in order to allow the stream I added to pass unimpeded to the land below. Now I know from a long time ago--back in September of 2005--just letting a stream run under a fence looks dumb to me. Way back when, when I had only five plots of land (the current main entrance, hot springs, keep, guest house and eastern garden) and decided that I really needed a fence along the Sibine side because Apoda's a mature-rated sim and Sibine was intended to be a PG-rated sim, I had not only been using fencing sections more suited to a Japanese castle, but I had also put the wall around the whole of the grounds, fencing off the rough trapezoid I owned. I ran the stream that made the moat under the unbroken fence--then stood back and decided that really looked dumb.

Now that fencing I originally used was primitive-heavy too. Each section was 5 prims and in order to surround as much as I was wanting, it added up to the prim count very fast. Hence replacing the fencing with the simpler, 2-prim style I have now and then only running it from the keep, past Sibine and then along the road to the large torii. In the case of Second Life, where every prim counts--especially if you own only a little bit of land--the simpler the better.

So anyway, in adding the new waterfall and the rest of the moat, I ended up with my fence along Bhima just . . . ending. I needed something more there, and this snapshot shows what I built in order to give that section a more finished look.

Now I'm debating replacing one section of fence to run from this gate to the keep's foundation, but for now it remains open.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=75250

All this time, of course, the skyline of my keep was lacking something and looked "off". I've known for quite a while what that something that was missing was, but I've now finally gotten around to doing something about it. Finding a photo of some shachi on the Internet, I asked venovel to clean the graphic up and toss in a transparent background. Once she'd passed the graphic on, I made these to put on the top of the keep. Granted, as the comment says, Lopayzanilaya Keep doesn't really have to worry about fires and lightning strikes that might cause a fire, but the keep was certainly missing its protective, ugly fishies. The skyline looks like it should now.

By the way . . . All those trees out there between my castle's roof-line and the two castles in the background? The majority of that forested space you see is mine. That's the extent of the Fox's Forest on the north side of the road through Apoda.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=75251

A view of the protective, dolphin-like shachi again. I think I got the proportion to the keep correct; they look to be the "right size" from the ground. Now granted, they're thin pictures of shachi, not shachi in the round (I suppose I could try to make some out of prims, but--naturally--that pair would be more "expensive" to have on the land than the two prims I have up there now), so you get far enough away from the keep and they disappear against the sky while the rest of the castle remains in view. Still, I think I can live with that, since they're quite noticeable when you're near the keep.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=75298

Another snapshot of the Fox's Den. This time it's from across the road toward the secondary roadway entrance. To the far left, you can see the main gate, and to the right's the large torii. The shachi are quite visible against the dark blue skyscraper in the background.

http://www.diasilv.com/SL/RoadwayBridge.jpg

This isn't a Snapzilla picture but rather one I saved onto my hard drive. This is the Roadway Bridge, which I said had a bit of a story attached to it. The shot here is standing on the far side of the bridge, with the roadway and then the Pink Pavilion beyond. As I've mentioned before, the first group of land plots I owned was everything in Apoda south of the roadway. Not sure what to do with the long, narrow strip between the then-empty protected land and Bhima, the sim to the south, I decided to run the stream from the hot springs all the way to the end of my land where it borders Hecta. But in doing that, of course, I cut off easy access to the protected land to the plots along Bhima's northern edge.

When Bhima was brand new and first settled, it was ocean-front. But Linden Labs was in the process of creating a new continent, so eventually they added Apoda--much to the dismay of at least two people I know of who bought land along the ocean and were now my neighbors. They thought they were getting ocean-front, but a couple weeks later more sims were present where the ocean had been.

At least when they saw what I was putting there, they were glad it wasn't some ugly or loud build. The first Bhima neighbor I ever met was one next to my narrow strip of land. She'd ended up being blocked in by the somewhat ugly, square buildings of her neighbors on her other sides. Seeing what I built, she deliberately turned her house around and set it back on her plot some so that she could enjoy the view of my stream. Aware that she'd been blocked in by her other neighbors, I felt sympathetic to her. When I realized that the protected land was actually a future roadway, I decided I wouldn't add to my neighbor being blocked in. So I bought a bridge and placed it across the stream where it lined up with her front door.

When I bought my land that's now the core of Lopayzanilaya, that neighbor had her land up for sale. She'd fallen for someone in SL and they were going to find a bigger place to live in SL together, hence her selling her property. Since I knew she had a SL love, I set up a beach towel lounging area long her side of the stream that had a couple's snuggle pose in it and used landscaping to make it a private little bower in the greenery along the stream. I never told her why I had that towel and plants there; I figured that if she ever decided to snuggle with her honey along the stream, she'd know she was welcome to do so.

Her land remained for sale for quite a while, but it eventually sold to someone who rented land out to people. He kept the house there as is, and I kept the bridge to the now-existing road as well.

At the turn of the year, that landlord decided to move on--buying a private sim or two to rent them out to tenants--and he put his Bhima land up for sale. Someone bought the lot that had my old neighbor's house on it. The house was gone, and the land remained free of anything for a couple of days. Not seeing anything going there, I got rid of the bridge; no house, no reason for it to be there. But the very next day I did that, the land went back up for sale. So I had to wonder if the bridge had something to do with it, that now that it was gone and you had to wade through my stream to get to the road, the people decided the land wasn't what they wanted after all. Curious, I replaced the bridge.

The land was taken off the market and the new neighbors built on the land. It's a shop that specializes in swords and the like, and the build was intended to blend in with the Den's lands. They added a pool of water and a stream of their own, with a waterwheel "providing power" to the ceiling fan in the shop. Walking along, I saw where their stream stopped right at my property line--so I played along. I shifted my stream around so that the water prim under the ground on my land touched theirs and I made the water level match theirs even though it meant my taking out one of my little waterfalls. So now it looks like the stream from their pond flows into my stream, and I added another bridge over the new cut in the land. So completely by consensus, without any IMs or talk between us, the shop owner and I came up with landscaping that complimented and flowed into one another's.

That's how it stands now. I've replaced the Roadway Bridge with one of my lighted ones, so the way to the sword shop from the road is lit at night. It just was interesting, I thought as I was looking at my old screenshots, how some things in SL have picked up a story. That bridge is one of those, placed because I liked that one neighbor and didn't want to help box her in.

More fun with the Fox's Den

2006-06-02T05:41:00Z

I can't help myself. I like what I've accomplished with Lopayzanilaya in Second Life.

I've gotten around to adding a page for the Fox's Den as it appears in SL on my website. You can find that page here. There's still a few screenshots saved on my computer I need to upload and link to that page, but the really early stuff I recorded is there.

I've got a new group of pics I've uploaded to Snapzilla.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73247

The south entrance into the grounds immediately surrounding the keep, as of May 28, 2006. Already this view's changed just a little bit were you to go stand where I was and look at what I snapped the picture of. I've added banners and changed one of the non-Linden-made trees since I took this pic. This is the parcel in Bhima I bought, thinking it'd been for sale for so long because it was too "depressing" having a Japanese keep looming over it. I don't think it feels so depressing there now, and it does make the moat go all around the base of the keep's foundation these days.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73252

A picture of the west side of the keep. I did my best to try to get in the same spot the other resident did when he took the pictures he sent into Snapzilla back in October. The only thing changed since I took this is I modified the Japanese red maple you see into having the new flex property added to SL in version 1.10. So now the tree sways in the wind slightly along with most of the other plants on the grounds.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73317

The dark brown torii by the Forest Treehouse. As you can see, I went ahead with my plan to make the kanji graphic look better. Now it looks to be carved into a piece of wood. Much better looking than that dark blue on pea green the original graphic is, I think.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73678

This was venovel's idea, and I really love how it turned out! I'd gotten her to log in to see what I'd been doing lately--I'd made the Chinese-style lanterns and the lighted bridge--as well as show her the land that had been added to the Fox's Forest. When she saw the new waterfall I'd put in, she said she thought it needed some sort of lantern there. I asked her "What kind of lantern?" and her reply was "Just something simple." I'd asked because I thought she'd noticed the other stone lanterns scattered about the property (again, Mustelid Carnot's gorgeous work!) and thought she had a particular one in mind. Needless to say, I rather surprised venovel when I started pulling Japanese stone lanterns out of my inventory; to her, it looked like lanterns were popping out of thin air to crowd around us.

I told her to pick one, and she suggested the one designed to arch over streams or low spots in the ground. I picked the others up, and with venovel standing back and giving directions, I parked the lantern, the oil lamp and a SL 1.10 light source over the falls just as you see here.

Now I have yet to hear back from Mustelid on a new version of her little stone oil lamps that use the SL 1.10 lighting system to actually glow. So today I looked up in the SL Scripting Wiki particle scripts--I'd figured out from looking one of the oil lamps over that one primitive was a particle emitter making the flame and the other was a hollowed out half sphere covered with a texture to look like it was stone--and found one to play with. I whipped out one of the oil lamps, made a prim and started changing variables in the particle script until I finally got something that looked close to what Mustelid's lamp was doing. I then made that prim see-through and turned it on as for being a light source under the new lighting properties and quickly whipped up a cup. I rather expected the texture on my stone cup to not match Mustelid's--after all, a lot of builders make or upload their own textures--so I was startled to realize that she'd used a granite texture that was in the resident Library (Everyone who rezes into SL for the first time is given not only a few items to get them started but also a library of objects, textures and the like from Linden Labs). So it turns out that my stone cups look just like hers, though my particles act slightly differently. I went around this evening trading out her oil lamps for mine, since they cast light and still "cost" only two prims each on my land; to add an invisible light source prim on top of her cups makes each lamp three prims. It's not much, sure, but it does add up.

Anyway, thanks again for the suggestion, venovel! It looks gorgeous, I think, especially at night.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73680

The edge of my land bordering Hecta. This snapshot shows my first go-round of making a Japanese-type heraldic banner featuring the Lopayzom Clan symbol. As described in the story about Arjuna going to Kaykolvayshti to take home the dead Ravens and try to sign a peace treaty with Irya, this is what the banner looked like that the Derkaryan warriors were carrying denoting Arjuna's presence there as the Lopayzom chieftain. The four bars at the bottom signify this is an Aizvaryan chieftain's land or presence. Three bars would denote a member of the clan's royal blood (someone close enough in the family tree they could be considered a potential heir to the clan's coronet), two bars would signify a major noble not of the royal blood and one bar would be for your average knight/samurai.

In making the flag part, I played around with the new flexible path feature for the first time. I was also tired at the time I worked on the banner, so I couldn't for the life of me figure out why--when I slapped my Lopayzom banner texture on the prim--it was rightside-up on one side and upside-down on the other. Puzzled, I made another flag prim, put them back to back and called the flag done. Of course, the next day I figured out what I'd done wrong, so I remade the flag--but the one here is a version 1.0 flag. :)

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73683

The Den's main gate again, showing off more of my Lopayzom banners version 1.0.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73750

The Den's keep at night. The light's coming from the lamp in the Eastern Teahouse.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73810

Here I am keeping warm and toasty by the campfire. After reading someone's suggestion on the SL boards about how to add flex to campfires, I went to my free to copy campfire and started playing with the prims that made it up. I not only added the flex values suggested on the message board to the prims making the flame, I also turned them into light sources under the new lighting system. This let me do a blend of yellow, orange and red light as well as put back into inventory the invisible light source prim I tossed into the fire when the lighting first came out. One less prim on my land and the fire now stirs with the wind. Very cool! (or maybe hot in this case.)

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73907

The beginning of sunset, and the view from the road of the keep and the largest torii on the property. As you can see from this, the heraldic banners do their part. I can see them from quite a distance, though I'd have to get closer to actually make out the symbol and the chieftain's bars.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73908

River's End at sunset. Here you can see one of the Lopayzom banners version 2.0. This is the fixed version, with three prims instead of four, and I've got the flex path working nicely. The flags drift in the wind at the bottom and look to be fastened to the crossbar in how they move. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and I've also got a banner blank for sale up at the Pink Pavilion that I left as copyable and modifiable. I intend for someone who buys one (if anyone ever does) to be able to Edit Linked on the flag and put on their own texture to make the flag whatever they want it to be. The Lopayzom Clan banner, though, I'm keeping for myself.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=74313

The eastern garden in the early evening. If you look close--back over by the dojo and guest house, you'll see that there's some different trees back there. While perusing the SL boards, I noted that Khamon Fate had mentioned a couple of times that he'd updated his beautiful trees, adding new features including the flex and lighting systems of Sl 1.10. Since I have a number of his trees at the Den, I teleported over to Fate Gardens to take a look--and liked what I saw. I spend some Lindens on the updated versions, replacing old ones with the new--in the case of the magnolia trees--or something else with his plants (such as the cherry trees by the dojo being switched out for acer trees with the white texture showing and totally something else bamboo being traded out for Khamon's current, very beautiful bamboo stands). He's not yet got an updated version of the weeping willow--I have a lot of those along the Den's streams--and I'm planning on buying a version as soon as he's got an updated willow available for sale.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=74316

Looking into the Bhima plot of land, you can see the stone lanterns now glowing as a result of my cobbling together a stone oil lamp based off the ones Mustelid Carnot made for use with her Japanese stone lanterns. Much better to me now that they "make more sense" by shedding light as well as looking like they have a flame in them. I walked around and replaced all the oil lamps with my glowing ones, so now all the lanterns actually light up the world at night.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=74323

A shot of another of the stone lanterns now lighting the world, this time near the Forest Pavilion in the Fox's Forest. In the background you can see one of my lighted bridges--that one leads to the Kitsune Cave--and one of the updated versions of the magnolia trees Khamon Fate makes as well as one of my new acer trees set to the red texture. Like that, it looks pretty much like Khamon's old red Japanese maples.

You know, as I was going through my old screenshots and getting them set up for the page on the Silverlands site, I realized that there's a number of pictures there that trigger memories. One such case is my so-called Roadside Bridge. That particular bridge spot has a story attached to it that goes all the way back to the time I realized the strip of protected land would one day be turned into a road. I'll have to take some time to link to the screenshots here and tell some of these stories. I just found it interesting that already I have memories of this or that that perk up when I see some of these older snapshots.

Let there be light!

2006-05-28T05:47:03Z

Last Wednesday, Second Life released version 1.10. Among some of the new features added was the ability to turn any primitive you're editing or building with into a light source.

This means that candles, lamps, lanterns, fires and the like can now actually shed light into the world rather than just look like they glow. And that light can be colored light.

Now I'm a born romantic. Candlelight at night and all that are things I really enjoy. With the version of SL that came out just before, Linden Labs gave us all the ability to make it always day or night as far as the client was concerned. Though each sim would continue to cycle sunlight and moonlight as always, you could make it be always be one of four times and never see the in-world cycle of day or night. This is on the mainland areas; private "islands" have always had the ability for the owner to set how long--or even if--day and night in their sim would cycle.

Because of all this, I've been dinking around in SL, making things that glow. Right now, my attempts at making something to sell for in-world money has been limited to a small round ball that gives off a glow like firelight (I left it editable, so that someone could turn the ball invisible and slip it into an already-existing fire so that it now also glows), a set of Chinese-like cloth lanterns in both small and large sizes, a shoji-type low floor lantern and an Asian-influenced garden bridge with two shoji-type lights mounted to a couple of the corner posts. I've been pretty pleased with the results, even if I may never sell any. :) It's fun to dink around with things that add that romantic glowing touch when nighttime falls in SL.

I also walked around Lopayzanilaya, taking snapshots of the estate as it exists now and posting them to Snapzilla. So under the cut are more URLS to Snapzilla, showing off more of the Fox's Den than the other resident did back in October. These are contemporary, having been taken today.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73106

This is the main entrance to the Fox's Den. The wooden gate's been there ever since I decided to move the hot springs from this corner and place an entrance at the future roadside. I have a pic that I'll be posting some other time showing this gateway back in September, 2005. Just to the left of the corner of the fence is the PG-rated sim called Sibine. The fact that Sibine's rated PG and Apoda's rated Mature is what prompted me to not only put the fence in, but also make sure enough vegetation surrounds the hot springs that if I wanted to soak in the water with a nude avatar, someone next door would have to go out of their way to see something "mature".

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73110

No place based on any noble estate of the Lopayzom Clan would be complete without some place for the most-accomplished swordsmen and swordswomen of Aizvarya to practice their sword-art and for the masters to teach their apprentices. Here in Second Life, such a place takes the form of this wall-less building. Four shoji floor-lamps sit at the corners to light up the space for night-time practice. The statue of Inari--made by a different resident than the one that made all the other fox statues you see around--stands in for a statue of Lopayzu in fox form. There's a tanto drum and gong in the background and a sword chest sits before the fox statue. The framed kanji hanging from the ceiling beams are the seven virtues of bushido, a set of virtues the Lopayzom swordsmasters follow as well.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73115

Here's the hot springs, the idea that started it all. When I was flying about the SL world as a new resident and going from place to place by the telehubs to check out all the places in Find that mentioned having Japanese-, Chinese- or Asian-influenced items for sale, I happened to be flying from a telehub when I saw a number of plots of land for sale. The edge along Sibine was lower than the PG-rated sim, and the corner by the protected land (what I later figured out would be a road in the future--something I'd guessed correctly back then) strongly suggested to me a perfect place for water to be coming out of Sibine and pooling up in Apoda. I landed and took a look around, wondering what else I could do with such an idea--and then it struck me. I could create some version of the hot springs mentioned in my Aizvaryan stories as existing at the Swordsmaster's estate. So with that in mind, I bought the two lots for sale bordering Sibine, packed up all my stuff from my first land out in Gnoma, and set up house in one lot and started the hot springs in the other. However, further explorations of the SL world pointed out to me that one day the protected land would be a road. Not overly fond of the idea of anyone just "coming off the road" to plonk into my hot springs, I bought a third plot (the land on the south side of Apoda was all up for sale save for two small 16 sq m plots at the roadside up by Sibine), decided that what I was making here wasn't the Swordsmaster's estate per se so much as something much grander and glorious. Hence deciding then I was making the estate in the Celestial Court of Lopayzu himself, that's when I picked up the Japanese keep, plonked it on the third plot of land and moved the hot springs to the corner plot next to Bhima. Henceforth, the hot springs have been in front of the keep's door.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73116

For months now, I've seen the plot of land in the shadow of the keep in Bhima--the sim to the south of Apoda--sit there for sale. Going down and walking around on it, I had to wonder if the imposing presence of a four-story Japanese keep made the land too "gloomy" or "depressing" to sell. Since I'd already given in to temptation and increased my monthly fee for the next tier of land from what I had owned before, I figured I may as well get more land--especially since looking that lot over gave me an idea. This snapshot is the result of that idea, of having a waterfall spill over from an upper pool of the hot springs and create the missing section of a surrounding moat. Before this time, all my land was exclusively in Apoda--I'd abandoned the 512 plot in Gnoma when I realized the prim count didn't add in with the Apoda count--and the river made by the hot springs only ran partially along the front and back walls of the keep and only fully along the north side of the stone foundation. Since I was already getting a lot in Bhima to make my monthly fee more "worth it", I also grabbed another lot for sale that had some advertising on it as well. Now there's more advertising nearby in Bhima--there's two 16 sq m plots with billboards, one of which is abusing the land sale listings to further their exposure in Find--but since I now own the land between the keep and the billboards, I've been very happy having blocked the billboards with greenery. I look out of the keep now or over the fence and just see more trees. As you can see, this is where the Redwood Pavilion's new home is; it used to sit by the fruit orchard along the Bhima border.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73117

This is the Eastern Teahouse, which is the teahouse I have on the castle grounds proper. Through the planter and above the flowering cherry tree can be seen the upper edge of the largest torii on the property, which was shown on the other resident's snapshots. The object with the big round disk that can be seen to the left of the teahouse is a combination of two objects. The disk is a "sun clock" which is synchronized to the in-game sun as it travels over and "under" Apoda. The disk turns with a click, indicating the "hours" and I have it set up to project text stating what time it is (Dawn, Morning, Noon, Afternoon, Evening, Dusk, Night) in Apoda and where the sun's position is in relation to the horizon. The clock itself is only the disk, and so to make it not just float there, I parked it on top of a torii-gate fountain so that the fountain looks to serve as a holder for the rotating disk of the clock. It turned out pretty neat, I thought. Inside the teahouse, I have it all set up with a meal of rice and green tea. There's two pillows in there an avatar can kneel on, and I have a scroll and candle decorating the back wall. A lamp sits in one of the corners. With the advent of SL 1.10's lighting system, I slipped in an invisible light-source ball for both the candle and the lamp, so the teahouse is now well-lit at night.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73120

The orchard of apple and orange trees. The planter now sits where the Redwood Pavilion used to sit.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73123

The shrine to the Great Fox Spirit. Yes, it's one of two shrines to Lopayzu, but I made this one more of a general one. Whether you see the Fox Spirit as being Inari, Reynard or just the Master of Foxes--or you just happen to like foxes despite not being a furry--this was intended for anyone to come and actually pay respects to some fox spirit or just sit and meditate. I do the latter, though in character my avatar pays respects to Lopayzu. Despite having Fox for a real life last name, I've never been furry and thought I was actually a fox and was stuck in the wrong body. I do have an affinity for foxes; I like them and what they represent in the symbolism of various cultures, and because of my family name, I've always felt some association with foxes. While it's completely in character for Lopayzu's Celestial estate to have such a shrine, this was also intended as a celebration of foxes in symbolism and mythology. This shrine's pretty much the focus of Lopayzanilaya, even though the hot springs started it.

It's pretty much unchanged since I set it up back in October of 2005. All that's different is that I've added the white Inari statue once Mustelid Carnot started making her lovely Japanese-inspired works in SL and the candles and Japanese caged cricket as well as the temple donation box (I made certain to pick up the one Mustelid made with kanji on it that states it's a temple money box). The prayer wheel and bowls of offerings have been there since the shrine was set up. The most recent addition (other than the actually lit lanterns I just made) is the temple bell. The lanterns replace others that were that same shape and size.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73125

This is a shot along the road that runs through Apoda. The river formed by the hot springs flows along the left and the part of the Den known as the Fox's Forest is to the right. This is looking away from the keep, toward the sim called Hecta.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73126

The end of the river, along the border with Hecta. What you see here is a rehashing of the original river's end from back in October of 2005. When I first had it set up, though, I'd used a smaller ring of water. At the time, I thought it looked a bit dumb, what with the torii in the water on a stone ring, so I'd ripped that out, put in a square of water and rounded out the land best I could. Then I'd put in a disc of planting soil and parked the Prosperity kanji picture on it. It sat like that until April this year, when I talked venovel into getting a free basic account and log in long enough to take a look around at the Den. After she'd done that, I found a snapshot from months ago, showing the original River's End, and she asked why I changed it. When I said I thought it looked dumb, she replied that she really liked it.

So I logged in and redid the original configuration. I couldn't edit parts with the original water pool I'd used, but found one I could do such editing. From the newer stuff, I kept the fox statue and the kanji; you can't see it, but the kanji picture is submerged within the innermost ring, shining through the water for those who step over to the river's end and look down.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73127

The southern "entrance" of the Fox's Forest, with the roadway behind me. I didn't always own everything along the north side of the road that I do now. Rina's ranch (then Club Tiki, then the wedding chapel) took up the entire roadside to the north to this point and someone else owned three 512 lots along the road from the Hecta border in. So when I bit the bullet and tiered up my monthly fee the first time and bought a plot of land for sale on the roadway opposite what I already owned, it made me the owner of a narrow strip going in toward the center of Apoda. Since I'd gone ahead and tiered up, I grabbed more land, picking up three more plots for sale bordering my one plot across the road. Hence the original shape of the Fox's Forest was a narrow roadfront that opened up behind a house on the roadway at Hecta and ran along the border of someone else's land in a straight line. My son--he's the one that told me about SL and got me interested in it in the first place--said he'd love a cave to live in, and a cave fit in with Lopayzu's estate. After all, the Aizvaryan fox spirit used to be a mortal and he was born in a den. In looking around for waterfalls and the like, I came across a pre-fab that was a series of waterfalls covering a cave. Bingo! I bought a copy, took it to my new plots, combined the land into one plot and set the cave up. From there, I just sort of filled in the area with two streams that flowed into one that then flowed "under" the roadway to join the river from the hot springs, a pond and a bunch of Linden-made landscaping trees. Once the cave was set up, I subdivided the land right around it so that I could set different permissions (and the streaming hard rock my son wanted for background music) for the cave since I was going to let my son use it for his home.

Anyway, as a result of the original configuration of the plots I owned, it was intended that someone would walk from the roadway along the store (the "Pink Pavilion") and the stream to get to the rest of the forest. This is a snapshot of that intended walkway.

By the way, I have yet to sit down and create what inspired me to tier up in the first place and get that land on the other side of the road. You see, I got that thinking it would be neat having a huge torii gate straddling the road. Since protected land is set so you can't build on it and it kicks off anything that gets moved over onto it--but if you make something hang in the air high enough and it's linked to something with its center off the protected land, you can make something straddle a road. There's plenty of bridges and the like going across roadways around the SL world that I'm betting I could figure out how to make a torii go across the road and not get kicked. I just have yet to take the time to give it a try.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73128

Another one of the Zen rock gardens adorning the Den. This section of land used to be part of Rina's massive section of Apoda. It runs along the roadway in a triangle from the road along another of the subdivisions of the ranch that now belongs to someone else and connects to my original narrow roadway piece.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73129

The third and last Zen stone garden I have is in the foreground here. This is the south end of the pond in the Fox's Forest. A pavilion with an ever-burning campfire is here, as is the bridge crossing the stream to get to the Kitsune Cave. The Inari statue which was shown in the other resident's snapshot of the Forest in October can be seen here in its current location.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73130

The north side of the pond in the Fox's Forest. The pavilion and couch there rest on a plot I finally broke down and bought (which tiered me up again; it's the reason I'm going to pay more a month starting in two weeks) because it had sat for sale for a long time, was bought but wasn't used for long and put up for sale again and who knows what I would have ended up having next door to my teahouse in the forest? After getting that land and setting up the pavilion, I extended the pond to flow just under the floor of the pavilion. Originally a walkway of land ran along the pond and the property line toward the teahouse.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73131

The forest teahouse as of today. The stream is new--I did it last night--and the bridge there is one I fashioned, with the two shoji lights actually casting light under the new system. The brown torii's an interesting thing. It has a script in it that allows you to drop a texture in and it'll project it onto the torii. For a long time, I had a picture of Lopayzu there but after setting up a shrine specifically to him, I changed the texture to a kanji graphic I found on the Internet that actually reads "Fox's Forest". I plan on grabbing the pic and tweaking with it--sharpening it up, changing the colors, making it better than that--but for now, it works as a placeholder of sorts.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73132

Since I'd already tiered up and it doesn't matter how much more land I add until I hit the limit, once again I figured it probably was better to try to "get my money's worth" out of my new monthly fee. So when one of the shops in Apoda put up a big chunk of their land for sale, I bought it. It spanned from the three plots I'd added (the one I mentioned above that put me in the next tier up, and the two lots that had been a neighbor's house right behind the teahouse) to the lot I picked up in the corner near Hecta and Chiron. The lot at the corner by Chiron was going to be left empty, until I got this chunk. Since it all now connected . . . Hello, more forest. As you can see, it looks pretty wild in there. Lopayzu could probably have a huge skulk of spirit foxes living in there at this rate . . .

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73133

More water. I love water. I love listening to streams. As a result, the new expanse of forest seemed wrong without water. So last night I made a third source for the stream that flows under the roadway. This one bubbles up from the ground near the northern entrance into the Fox's Forest and winds its way through the trees, past the teahouse and pours into the pond created by the waterfalls of the Kitsune Cave. This snapshot shows the beginning of the new stream.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73134

The northern entrance--or back entrance--to the Fox's Forest. As the comment says, this was taken at in-game dusk, so the new lighting system's starting to show up. Mustelid's made her stuff all copy yes, modify no, transfer no--which basically means I can make as many copies as I want, but I can't mess with the primitives themselves nor can I give the objects away or sell them to someone else. Were I to sell this land, they would remain mine and get kicked back to my inventory by the new landowner instead of becoming the property of the new landowner along with the land. Since I can't mess with the primitives myself, all those nice stone oil lamps Mustelid made for her stone Japanese lanterns look like they have a flame but don't cast light under the new system--and I can't tweak the ones I own so that they can.

Each one of the guardian foxes here has, between its front paws, one of those stone oil lamps. Since I can't make them glow (And Mustelid's not yet made a version that does under the new system--I've IMed her and told her I'm interested in buying such a version, but she wasn't sure what I meant by the lamp's lighting properties. I've IMed her back an explanation of what I meant, but she's not IMed me back in regards to a new oil lamp yet), I added invisible balls that glow and set them in the stone cups. You can see some of the lighting effect in this shot.

Now for some pictures showing off more the new lighting system that got me somewhat inspired to dinking around with making lights.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73136

This one is cool. I love the moonrise over the open-air dojo. Another snapshot of the main gate, taken from a different angle. The light's being thrown off by a pair of cloth, Chinese-like lanterns that I made and placed on the gate.

(Edited because I accidentally hit post when I didn't intend to do so. :P )

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73137

The hot springs at night. Like I did with the oil lamps at the guardian foxes' feet, I added invisible light source balls into the three shoji lamps that came with the pre-fab Asian hot tub that makes up part of the hot springs. The shoji lanterns are scripted to be flameless during the daytime in Apoda and to show a flame inside at night. Granted, the light balls I placed glow all the time--at noon, you can still see, faintly, the yellowish glow from them (at least on my computer, I can)--but this way the flames that are visible at night "make more sense" because now they do actually cast light.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73138

The south end of the Fox's Forest pond from a different angle. To the right, you can see one of the bridges I made and how well the shoji lamps on them light up the path. No excuse for not seeing where the bridge is and stumbling into the water at night. To the left is the campfire, glowing now courtesy of another of my invisible light balls.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73139

The northern end of the Fox's Forest pond, looking toward the Forest Teahouse. This shows off very well that the new lighting system allows you to make the light being cast colored light. The green and blue are coming from green and blue Chinese-style lanterns I made. You can see another of my lighted bridges there, and by the teahouse is another stone lantern (this is one I bought before Mustelid started making stuff in SL) that is lit up--yes, you guessed it--by yet another of my see-through lightsource balls set into the flame of the lantern. The pink sparkles you see around the flowering cherry tree is a particle effect intended to look like cherry petals falling off the tree. I thought those were so neat when I ran across them at a shop where I bought a sword kata animation that I took a copy since they were free to copy and then set two of them up by the Eastern Teahouse. I put that one in there when I put that pavilion in on the north end of the pond.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73140

In the heart of the forest in the middle of the night. This shows off my lighted bridge very well. This one here is the original one I built last night--all the rest, including the one I have sitting in my inventory from which I can rez new ones--are copies of this one. I'm really happy with how my bridge turned out and I like how well the lamps light the path.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73142

Here's what the northern entrance to the Fox's Forest looks like at full night, showing off the new lighting system some more. The bridge in the previous snapshot is the one in the background here.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=73150

Ending the nighttime pictures on the same note they began, with the moon beginning to set over the Kitsune Shrine. This one's another pretty one, even if--thanks to working to get the moon in the pic--I'm looking out into the very commercialized Bhima sim. The large Chinese-type lanterns I made are better shown here, and three more of my invisible light balls cast the light for the two candles by the Inari statue and the glowing prayer wheel down below.

Lopayzanilaya, the Fox's Den

2006-05-19T22:38:16Z

I've mentioned before that I've got virtual land in Second Life and have dinked around with putting an estate together as well as making or modifying items. Now I know I've promised screenshots of my SL estate, but I've yet to upload any to a website to link here.

However, there's a website that specializes in screenshots--snapshots as they're called--from SL mailed in by residents. I stumbled across some of the Fox's Den taken by someone else back on October (which would have been about two weeks after I bought the final plot of land for the original forest area and had created the forest itself) of 2005. So here's links to the snapshots of Lopayzanilaya:

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35827

This is the original location of the white fox statue within the Fox's Forest. To the right can be seen the waterfall that makes up the Kitsune Cave and is the main source of water for the pond in the middle of the forest, while off to the left can be seen the Forest Teahouse. In the foreground can be seen burning incense sticks and a memorial candle from Burning Life 2005, which was going on when I stumbled into Second Life. Since then, I've sunk those little islands and moved the fox statue, incense and memorial candle to a bigger island I raised in the middle of the pond. I also, two weeks ago now, expanded the forest by three lots that were for sale and put in a new pavilion on the pond edge you can sit on and look over the pond.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35828

This shows the inside of the Kitsune Cave, which has been allowed to be my son's SL avatar's home. You can see his nice furniture set, the pool of water intended to be in the cave and--in the back--a tall freezer that has a disturbing tendency to swallow SL avatars. (Seriously! You can right click on it and choose "Freeze" as an option . . . then sit back and watch the fun as your avatar changes positions in a block of ice as the freezer door opens and closes. At the end of the series, your avatar pops out unfrozen. Cracked me up the first time I ever tried it out; I laughed for quite a while.) The cave looks pretty much the same today; all that's been added has been a stereo set, laptop computer and flat-screen TV my son recently got. Unlike the rest of the estate, I have streaming hard rock music there by my son's request. (And it's good hard rock too. I'll often park my avatar there on that plot and listen to the music since it's all something I like as well.)

This cave is intended to be a representation of the cavern into which Lopayzu, the Aizvaryan Fox-Spirit, was originally born way back at the beginning of time when people and the animals weren't much different from one another. Though always a "fox that walked on two feet", Lopayzu has become more human over time as his clan has become more civilized. Of course, since the SL land is supposed to represent the estate in Heaven that Lopayzu has now among the lands of the Celestial Court, things are grander and more perfect than the earthly den the originally mortal Lopayzu was born in.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35829

This is the roadside entrance to the Fox's Forest, showing both the stream that drains the forest pond and one other stream that bubbles up from the ground near the entrance to the Kitsune Cave and the pink pavilion that one day may hold a shop of fox-related artwork. Right now it sits empty, a placeholder for a time when I may get more ambitious. The red lantern is an on-line indicator I made by modifying a freebie I picked up. When my avatar's on-line, it glows green and when I'm off-line, it glows red. You can also click on it in order to type out a message for me that I'll get when I come back on-line next. The stream then runs "under" the cobblestone and weed-strewn roadway to the main river that runs along the other side of the road.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35830

An aerial shot of the Fox's Forest, taken from the roadway looking to the west into another sim bordering Apoda. The pink apple trees are at the back of the Pink Pavilion shown in the shot before (Today, there's only one pink apple tree there, but most of the rest is the same save I have eucalyptus trees making up the forest along with the two sizes of poplar trees you see here). Today, you'd see two castles from that same vantage point; the open area to the right has a large, brooding, Goth-type castle and where the one you see now is, there's a different one that has been there a while.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35831

Sacred Island and its Shrine to the Fox Spirit and money tree. The island is formed by a split in the main river running along the south side of the cobblestone road that runs through Apoda. I own that entire side of the road from the Sibine border to the east to the Hecta border to the west, and those lots are the core of the Fox's Den. (The Fox's Forest is on the north side of the road.) Like almost everything I own, the three fox statues, the pavilion, the money tree, the temple donation box--just about everything save the portrait of Lopayzu--was made by someone else. Like fanfiction, my talent seems to like in putting together the pieces someone else makes into something new. This view is pretty much unchanged today; were you to stand your avatar where this person took the snapshot, the only difference would be how many hong bao envelopes would be waiting in the tree for a newbie to SL to pick.

When I was brand new to SL, I stumbled across the money trees. They're a way for new accounts to get free Linden dollars to spend while you're learning how to make things and sightseeing around the grid. I was so impressed by others' generosity that I hunted down the hong bao version--I'd already decided upon creating a version of Lopayzu's Celestial estate for my land, so things would have a decidedly Asian theme--of the money tree and set one up. Although with the ending of the telepads and point-to-point teleporting that we have now, I sometimes wonder if giving away Lindens--even to newbies--is really worth it. Add to that the ending of getting a Linden bonus for having people hang out on your land and it becomes even more questionable if it's worth it. Still, it does get new people to come to the Den and perhaps walk around and enjoy the environment, so I may keep it going.

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35832

A view of the keep itself from the secondary roadside entrance. In the foreground is the largest torii gate on the property, while behind it is the moatside teahouse. The torii-looking structure in the background is the changing room/lounging room of the hot springs swimming pool. To the right, hidden by a poplar tree, is the redwood pavilion. Two weeks ago I bought a piece of land bordering the keep in the neighboring sim of Bhima; that's the new home of the redwood pavilion along with the south side of the moat that now surrounds the keep. (It originally only ran along two sides of the keep's foundation in Apoda only.)

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35833

Another view of the west side of the keep (the photographer is facing eastward toward Sibine), this time further into the property; the former shot was by the roadside. This one better shows the original location of the redwood pavilion and some of the fruit tree orchard (which still exists there today).

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=35834

A view of the Zen garden along the main river just west of the Fox Spirit shrine. It's one of three different Zen sand gardens scattered about the Den and is best viewed from the neighbors' lands in Bhima. I've taken out one of the Japanese trees seen here, but otherwise this shot is unchanged today.

That's the last of the snapshots taken by the other avatar back in October. Interestingly enough, he didn't send in any shots from the eastern end of the Den, where the onsen and main roadside gate are located, but that area's less "wild-looking" than the Fox's Forest and the western end of the main river course.

And back in the second week of January of this year, I got an IM from a guy from one of the SL newspapers, the Metaverse Messenger. He does a feature every paper called "The Sim of the Week" and Apoda had been randomly selected to be the object of his column. At the time, I was the holder of the second-largest collection of land in Apoda, with my across-the-road neighbor Rina Nino being the one holding the most land in the sim. Happy to show off Lopayzanilaya, I answered the guy's IM and then consented to an interview as I showed him around the whole of the Den. His column on Apoda is at http://www.metaversemessenger.com/PDF/MM-2006-01-24.pdf

It's a PDF, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see it. As you can see from the front page, the column can be found on Page 9. What's rather interesting is that within the second week after the Apoda feature, once the Goth wedding was done, Rina split up her land and put it up for sale. I bought a piece bordering along the road and the rest has been divvied up among other owners. One major owner had tried to set up a nightclub with male strippers for female avatars, but one day all that land suddenly reverted to the Lindens--the two large plots remain "government land" right now. I've picked up four more plots in Apoda since that column, so now I'm the largest landholder in the sim. I got the land more to preserve what I already had, and though I probably am spending far more real life money on this than I should, I plan on holding onto it as long as I can with what I earn simply because I'm pretty happy with Lopayzanilaya and how it looks. It's nice being able to bring into some semblance of reality a vision I have from my stories.

Later on, when I get a chance, I'll post more snapshots of the Fox's Den that I've taken over the months I've had the Fox's Den.

Well, darn.

2006-02-06T05:47:37Z

The Seahawks lost.

They did well, but not as well as they could have after the first quarter. Still, seemed like the refs were out to get them as well.

But at least we got there. That's better than the twenty-nine years before. And at least it wasn't an utter blowout by the Steelers. That would have been really embarrassing.

Thanks again, 'Hawks, for a great season! You didn't win, but you gave it a decent shot. Hopefully, we'll be back for Super Bowl XLI, and win it then.

On another note, happy birthday, Mom! Hope it's gone well for you!

And, believe it or not, my parents are the new Baron and Baroness of Aquaterra, our local branch of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). It's really hard to believe that, but I'm thrilled for them. What a big deal!

That's enough for now. Back to working on a story based on White Wolf games that I started with a co-author years ago. (Yeah, I continue to do my best to just keep myself busy so I don't have to think about what gets me down.)

We're going to Detroit!

2006-01-23T03:37:12Z

Woohoo! Seattle's Super Bowl bound!

It's been thirty long years, but we're finally going to the big dance! I'm really excited, to be honest. Just finished watching the NFC championship and it was a damned good game. I'd heard at the beginning of the week that a lot of national sportscasters were picking Carolina to win by a small margin, but I'd figured it was yet again the national trend of discounting Seattle's football team as "not that good" because we're way the hell up here in this corner of the States.

Sure, the past few years have been dismal. It's been hard to see the team struggling so since the really good team from 1984 (To put that into some perspective, '84 was the year I graduated high school). Seemed like we were always rebuilding, always trying to get the pieces together to make things click well again.

Now we've done it, and Seattle's once again shown how much of a football town it really is. We've got the loudest crowd in the NFL, and we've gotten more false start calls on our opponents during home games than any other. If you'd ever gone to a University of Washington Husky football game, it'd be easy to see that Seattle has long been a football town. I'm thrilled we now get to finally watch the 'Hawks play in a Super Bowl.

Thanks, Paul Allen, for buying the team and keeping it here. Thanks, King County, for putting together the tax package that helped finance the new stadium. Sure, I have a touch of nostalgia for the old Kingdome, but Qwest Field's a gorgeous stadium. And, thanks, 'Hawks, for coming together so well and having such an outstanding season and playoffs.

So now let's kick the Steelers' butts and bring home those rings at long last! Go 'Hawks!

Merry Christmas, all!

2005-12-25T16:25:51Z

I hope the holiday season is a bright, happy and safe one no matter what holiday it is you celebrate at this time of the year.

Go, Seahawks! They won the game against Indianapolis yesterday, and looked pretty good doing so. I thought it was rather neat of Coach Holmgren to put Alexander back into the game so that he had a shot at tying that NFL record. You could just tell from the way Alexander was bouncing on the sidelines that he really, really wanted to get in there and score that goal to tie the record. I've got hope that the Seahawks will actually get into the Super Bowl for the first time, ever. That would be so cool if they finally got to the big game--and even more cool if they won it as well. It's been a long time waiting for us 'Hawk fans.

Work's keeping me busy, which is a good thing, and I'm very much enjoying being able to not leave the apartment in order to go to work. Makes everything seem far less hectic, even if it's much harder to call in sick or something like that. I have to work tomorrow despite it being a holiday off for my company, but that's no biggie. The line of work I'm in, you have to have people working on the holidays, and since I work from home, it's not a big deal to plug in the work computer and do charts as usual. I tend to have the afternoons to goof off anyway.

Still having a blast in CoH/CoV. I've got a Mastermind up to level 30 now, and my Stalker's 28. Since they gave me four more character slots on all the servers because I bought CoV, I recreated my Peacebringer on my heroes' "home" server, Guardian. This way I can pick Kitsune Samurai's pockets for enhancements as Sothis levels up. Over on Champion server, the original Sothis had a much harder time of it because I didn't have another hero on there with pocket loads of influence. Granted, my villains all face the same thing, but since they're in the first wave of villains created, it's not as bad. Pretty soon they'll have enough infamy to start outfitting lower level villains. My level 30 Mastermind's starting to get decent amounts of infamy, I've noted.

So anyway, Happy Holidays, all! I'm off to keep leveling Sothis up. Need to get him to level 20 so I can earn a cape. Since he's based off Sailor Sirius from my Sailor Moon fanfics, his superhero outfit really needs to get the cape to finish the look. I just wish male superheroes could get circlets as costume pieces like the heroines do. That's really all Sothis would be missing from recreating Sailor Sirius's outfit.

How about those Seahawks!

2005-12-06T22:09:54Z

Yeah! Go team!

I've never been a big football fan. As a kid growing up, I always rolled my eyes when my grandparents (Grandma was a die-hard 'Niners fan) or my father parked the only TV in the area on a football game. But as I got older, I got more tolerant of watching it--and I actually like watching it now or listening to it on the radio, but only if one of "my" teams is playing. "My" teams are the University of Washington Huskies and, ever since they were created, the Seattle Seahawks. I used to be able to tell you the entire first-string of the 'Hawks in the first few seasons. I still follow them every year, but lately they've not been so great--not good enough to actually put the games on the radio or on the TV.

This year, they're roaring through the season. I wasn't too happy with the move to the NFC (I still don't know why the NFL thought they needed to be moved out of the AFC West into the NFC West), but it seems like since that move, they've been starting to rebuild into the kick-ass team of the Zorn-Largent days. And now they've handed the Eagles the worst blowout in Monday Night Football history.

Would be great if, after long last, the guys got into the Superbowl. Here's hoping they don't choke in the playoffs, which has been their usual history. As I was listening to the game last night, I certainly wasn't expecting them to have such a commanding lead over the Eagles throughout the entire game. Yet as the game went on, it was certainly pretty much going the 'Hawks' way--especially the interceptions leading to a run to the end zone.

It was quite the fun game to listen to on the radio last night. Now if only all those East-Coast-based sportscasters will stop acting like Washington State football teams are beneath their notice.

Sorry again for not posting for so long, but again, I keep myself busy. How? Mostly playing CoV, with a bit of dinking around in Second Life and reading my usual group of websites. I've also kept writing--just haven't added to what I have publicly out there--and, of course, there's work. They've been keeping me busy there, especially at the end of the month.

However, after pretty much a month of silence, someone bops over here and trolls. Yeah, fed the troll, but hey, it was just so darn entertaining. And now poor Old King Crow has decided that he got cooties for my reading stuff he's put out there for the public and has retreated into his castle and pulled up the drawbridge.

Don't you feel sad that now you, the general public, have forever been robbed of the scintillating pearls of wisdom Old King Crow was tossing out there? And you can blame it all on the Big Bad Vixen because, wow, she read that stuff and "oh no! She's surely out to get me and do me and my family harm! Didn't she say somewhere she was a stalker? Her reading my public stuff SO pegs her as a stalker in the future!"

As I said, Old King Crow, grow up and get yourself looked at for paranoia. The only stalking I do is play a character class in City of Villains called "Stalker". I know your addled brain must have fixated on that word, but where I mention that word clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with you.

However, I certainly take umbrage at you trying to frighten your yes-men. I'm only a "potential stalker" in your own mind, but none of your friends are "potential targets in the future", so there's no reason for you to be convincing them they are. In fact, that is bordering on slander or libel depending on the medium used by you.

See, I really think you clammed up because you knew you had no leg to stand on, nor could you utterly control the situation. "Cooler heads" probably pointed out to you what I did, that nothing wrong was done nor is there evidence anything wrong was being done--but you were laying in evidence of being unstable and controlling. "Feed the troll"? Well, once again, here we are with you having a different definition for a word than most everyone else speaking American English. If anyone was a troll in this, it was you, Old King Crow. If anyone fed a troll, it was me, and the result was highly amusing.

As for "potential stalking", what pattern of such is there? None. Go ahead! Ask every single one of your LJ friends, Old King Crow, if there's a post from me anywhere in their journals in the entire time since I stumbled across your new journal. I know what the answer is: NONE. At all. Period. If I've not done so in the past, there's no reason to do so now. So stop trying to scare them with your unfounded paranoia because it has no basis in reality.

I've finally put my finger on why the Crow's posts were so entertaining. It's classic Portal of Evil site-owner behavior; I've seen it happen many times there, when the owner of a site finds out they're featured on Portal of Evil and there's an entire forum dedicated to making fun of their site. They come on over to the forum and--in the parlance of PoE--have a "fagsplosion" and "do the fagdance" about how they have no life if all they do is make fun of other people, they are "teh mean!!!!11!1!" for saying what they're saying about the site and they're so going to be slapped with a "lawsuite".

That and it reminds me so much of kids under the age of ten with their annoying, "MOM! She's looking at me! Make her stop looking at me! MOM! She's STILL looking at me!" in the back seat of a car.

Heh

2005-11-03T19:08:50Z

Missed writing anything here for the whole of October. Been keeping myself busy.

It's what I do to counteract the depression.

So, it's November again. No, I'm not going to do anything for NaNoWriMo this year either. Again, a certain someone completely ruined it for me, since I'll forever associate this exercise in power-writing with him and frankly, I don't like the reminders.

Though I do find it amusing that he's got one word, no idea what project to work on and is bummed out because nearly everyone else close to him is begging out of doing it this year because they sound like they're too busy with more important things.

On a related note: I liked the other layout better (the one replaced by what he's got now) and that avatar pic is just . . . meh. The one on the now deleted journal was much better. Oh, and "Epicarican Delights"? Really? Mirriam-Webster online has no such word and Dictionary.com lists "epicarican" as "\Ep`i*car"i*can\, n. [Pref. epi- + Gr. ?, ?, a shrimp.] (Zo["o]l.) An isopod crustacean, parasitic on shrimps."

Um, okay. Your journal now states that you delight in being a shrimp parasite? Somehow I find that horribly unlikely. Given your motto of "Laughing at your pain since 1975." (I take umbrage at that as well, considering that from what I recall of your age, you were born in '75. So unless you were a very unusual newborn, there's no way you could be so full of epicaricacy--yes, a good, proper, English word, so let's get rid of that "shadenfreude" interloper!--from the moment you first drew breath), you were probably trying to go for "epicaricacian delights" and therefore utilize this lovely but neglected English word.

I'll give you props on knowing the word, even if you couldn't figure out how to transform it from a noun to an adjective.

PS, Andrew, were you really that embarrassed or rebellious against society to slap a post on your journal about how wonderful your baby boy was now that he's home from the hospital only to delete said post (and one other) later that same day? I found that behavior very odd, but hey, that's just me.

So anyway . . . On to more pleasant things.

Still writing here and there, though haven't posted it on the site. Really no reason to since only one person even cares about what I've been writing now and she gets the latest directly from me anyway. Heard from one of the old AOL gang; that was pretty cool, but after the initial e-mail reply to me, there's been nothing more. Still, it was rather nice hearing from her.

Participated in the City of Villains closed beta testing and had a blast with the end of beta event. My main villain character is a twisted version of my main hero character. As Kitsune Samurai is based off Karavasu and what he'd be like being reincarnated in Paragon City, RI in the Crypticverse, Khuradasu is based off, well, that part of Kara that was the assassin known as Khuradasu. What would the Demon's Claw be like had he given into his dark side after all and was reincarnated in the Crypticverse? That's the concept behind my Stalker in CoV.

I've also been playing around in Second Life. I don't actually create things there yet (and probably never will be heavily into that), but I have bought stuff other people have made to cobble together an idealized version of what Lopayzu's mansion in the Celestial Court would be like. If you're interested in seeing it and you play in Second Life, do a search for "money tree" in Places or All. One of my plots of virtual land shows up as "The Fox's Den -- Fox's Fortune Garden: Money Tree". The rest of Lopayzanilaya ("The Fox's Den") is all along that side of the road in Apoda as well as a forested pond across the road. Just look for the pink building with fox statues by it to the entrance to the Fox's Forest.

At some point, I may post screenshots from both the end of beta event in CoV and from Second Life here for those who are curious (though I doubt anyone is; I'm pretty unpopular, after all).

Work's going well, especially since fall's here and I don't have to go out into the rain to catch the bus there and back. The only "eh" thing is the fact that they've set a daily goal of 85 charts for my regular hospital to do throughout November in order to meet their production goal.

The only problem with that is the simple fact that my hospital doesn't usually see 70 charts a day, let alone 85. The only time I can actually make that goal is on Monday and Friday, when I have two days of charts to do. Tuesday through Thursday, the case load's more like 45-65. As mentioned before, I certainly can't go down into Seattle and start hurting people in order to try to drum up more business for my regular hospital. :P

That's enough for now. I'll try to chatter a bit more often here in the future, for what little it's worth.

Still just . . . wow . . .

2005-09-02T16:28:26Z

Looks like Someone may think it's time for America to just not have New Orleans, LA, on our maps. First there was wind, then water--and now fire. Wouldn't that just be beyond surreal if that area gets hit with an earthquake in the next couple of days?

A chemical plant along the waterfront in New Orleans exploded this morning. Just what they needed--more chaos. It's bad down there, and the harder hit areas along the Gulf Coast aren't much better.

"Displacement of historic proportions -- More than half a million people seek shelter after Katrina" runs the headline of a Washington Post article by David Von Drehle and Jacqueline Salmon. Two paragraphs in particular caught my attention.

"Katrina has scattered more than twice as many people as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and unmoored more people in a few days than fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Estimating from Census data, roughly 150,000 of the displaced lived below the poverty line even before they lost everything. Far more than 50,000 of them are past retirement age."

Part of that, of course, is that present-day America has more people living in it--and in all population centers--than it did in 1906 and the 1930s. But even taking that into account, Katrina may end up the second-most disruptive disaster America's had. (Katrina didn't stop all air traffic in the US for days while the second World Trade Center bombing did. That's probably more disruptive in the big picture.)

The other paragraph that caught my attention was this:

"Porter was probably wise to take the long view, because the few lessons available in upheaval of this scale suggest that the metropolis flung apart by the hurricane may still be in pieces years from now. More than 300,000 Japanese were left homeless by the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and some were still in makeshift camps three years later. Closer to home, the sudden influx of 125,000 Cubans in the 1980 Mariel boatlift was only partially absorbed by families and volunteers across the country; some of the refugees remained in camps into the late 1980s."

And we've got 500,000 to deal with from this? Sadly, some of the more poverty-stricken victims could end up among the permanently homeless from this. Hard to say, but it's going to take the devastated areas a long time to pick up the pieces Katrina left behind. Who knows how long it's going to be before the New Orleans area's inhabitable again? Though I wonder if, at this point, it's worth it to rebuild the Big Easy, I'm betting we do. The American spirit's one that hates being defeated, even by Nature. It'll be back--maybe not bigger and better (the only way they can do that is somehow fill in the soup bowl so that the whole city's above sea level)--and be ready to give Katrina's future relatives the finger in true American style.

Wow. Just . . . wow . . .

2005-09-01T18:51:39Z

I remember how bad Hurricane Andrew was back in August, 1992, scouring Homestead off the face of Florida, but Katrina seems far worse. They're saying the death toll could be in the thousands. Yes, that's tragic, but compared to the tsunami in Asia a few months back, the deaths Katrina caused are relatively few. Thank heaven we have the National Hurricane Center and all the early warnings we do; could you imagine the death toll had no one known Katrina was coming and were all there when she hit?

New Orleans is being completely evacuated of the remaining citizens. Despite Katrina turning aside at the last minute and showing the Big Easy her backside winds, two levees broke the following day--which means that below sea level bowl of a city became a soup bowl after all. What's downright amazing in a very scary way is now I'm seeing reports that people are shooting firearms at the rescue helicopters trying to locate survivors and get them out of there. Add to that the degeneration into lawlessness and the whole situation's surreal.

New Orleans is getting a lot of the attention, probably because it's the most "famous" of the affected cities. Mississippi took it up the ass from Katrina. The coastal areas, in a lot of cases, were wiped clean by a 30-foot storm surge. Considering our penchant for developing waterfront properties as well as paving over every square inch of our urban areas, Katrina may have been assisted by our own lifestyle. Still, the images I've seen from the destruction zone are almost overwhelming. And please, media, remember the other towns that got hit harder by Katrina.

My thoughts go out to the survivors in the entire destruction zone.

For America, this is a terrible disaster. (And putting it in a global perspective, America seems to suffer less overall than other areas of the world.) I think what's flabbergasted me the most is how swiftly people can descend into anarchy and lawlessness in the chaotic aftermath of a natural disaster. It makes me even more afraid of what this area will be like when we finally get "the Big One", the 8.0-9.0 earthquake scientists say the Puget Sound area's due "at any time". (Considering they're geologists, "at any time" can still mean hundreds of years in the future.)

I am glad, however, to be in the northern Puget Sound area. We don't get hurricanes, though on occasion we get hurricane-force winds. We don't get tornadoes that last longer than a few moments and do more than maybe mangle a billboard before the funnel disappears. Tsunamis from earthquakes in the Pacific could be a problem, but that's another rare possibility. Wildfires? We get some, but not like California does. Most wildfires here are in the forests along the Cascades. Volcanoes are a possibility; witness Mount Saint Helens. But again, rare there and limited in scope to the rivers draining off around the volcano and ash going to the prevailing winds. Floods are always a problem given our rainfall, the snowfall in the Cascades and all the damned paving we do in our urban areas--but that's only if you live in a flood plain. The land here's so "wrinkled" that flat areas outside of river plains are rare. No, the biggest threat I personally have is an earthquake--and even then, there's only been two in my entire life of thirty-nine years that have frightened me because the ground was noticeably shaking.

On a side note: Only 44 charts for yesterday, so my hospital fell about 20 charts short of the overall goal. Told you so, Boss . . .

See Boss? Told you so!

2005-08-30T21:07:02Z

Today and tomorrow's it for August. Still hanging over me's that goal of 95 charts for my hospital for Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Here's how it's shaped up so far: Friday, 95. Goal met.
Saturday: 40
Monday: 117. Add the 40 and the total's 157. Goal met, with 62 left over.
Tuesday: 67. Add to it the 62 left over and that's 129. Goal met, with 34 left over (unless the "leftovers" don't count. Then goal not met due to lack of charts).

So unless I end up with 61 charts tomorrow, my hospital will fall short of the total number of charts. Now it's entirely possible my hospital could see 61 people today, but that's way up in the air. The case load for a single day can run that high--but it's normally 48-58 charts. In order to do as many charts as possible for this push, I've coded everything my hospital had ready to go, including a couple of people seen today. I'll do the same tomorrow--code everything they have available--but it may not be enough.

At least not meeting the goal won't be my fault. I'll have done everything possible on my end--and I think, in the end, that's what really matters.