Wyre dance floor

Here are a few shots of the large dance floor I built for Wyre Warming Day. These were taken a few days later, when we had an impromptu dance party.

[many photos lost]

I’m very proud of how the steps turned out:

There was a bonfire on the hill above the dance floor:

Paavo came by for a little boating:

Taking a carriage ride along the sea road:

Asha’s home (built from scratch!):

Hatchie home building contest

There’s a hatchling home-building contest happening on the Isle of Wyrms now through Saturday, when members of the Council of Wyrms, Council of Wrymlings, Council of Hatchlings, etc., will get to vote on best home and most likely to take over the world. I decided to go for taking over the world:

Whoops! I see I made the images too wide. Oh well, so it’s not tidy.

Goodbye to Hurricane

Well, I’m just a flip-flopper! I decided to sell my land in Pockwock and just rent instead, and I picked land in a very nice sim, Hurricane, owned by HolyHell Cassell. I created a small hill with a spring and stream, and modified the Rockridge home that I bought:

But I remained ambivalent, and sympathetic to the philosophy of immersion, and also became enamored of the cobblestone roads on the Linden lands in some of the mainland sims. This morning I discovered a sweet parcel in Pruni for sale at quite a reasonable price by Sarah Nerd. Yay Sarah Nerd! She runs a couple of freebie locations and also sells land at really good prices. So here ’tis:

(I own the land to the right, as well as a little slice between the road and the water on the left; I also bought another plot in the opposite corner of the sim.)

Quaker land in Quaker

I decided to buy land for the group I created, so that if someone clicks through to a location they can find a space and materials focused on Quakerism, instead of just finding my personal space. So I went searching for 512m2 beside protected land in a PG sim. There are some interesting little spaces out there. None just grabbed me, though.

And then I found it: There’s a sim named “Quaker.” It was fully owned, mostly by two groups, and it’s a Mature sim. But really, how could I not want to have a Quaker space in Quaker? I contacted someone from each of the large landowner groups, and one of them was willing to sell land. I completed the transaction yesterday, and now I’m working on a meetinghouse and benches that will stay under the 117-prim limit. It will be a bit of a challenge to create something that’s attractive.

Here’s the SLURL to Quaker/156/22/31.

My first flexi-prim

The Peace flag hanging from my porch is my first successful flexi-prim. I used a do-it-yourself flag kit, so I had instructions–but it still required a fair bit of tinkering because I was doing a banner-type flag. I made the texture in Photoshop (with some gnashing of teeth), it’s 256px the long way. I can’t tell if it’s a good size for 2.5m, because when I get up close the type is definitely pixelated, but it may be anti-aliasing. I’ll have to try a straight graphic, I guess.

New home at Dragon Hill

17th December, 2006

This is the Rockridge, a prefab Craftsman bungalow. It was an absolute breeze to put together (there’s a box that rezzes and positions (and repositions) everything. I’d like to change the shingles, but I need to find the right texture. The darker shingles I have are too small at the same size as these are (and these are a bit too small–it makes it look like it’s brick). I took out the kitchen cabinets and accessories to save prims (and really, who needs a kitchen in a SL house?), and then I needed to redo a wall. Well, I got to know it a bit better that way.

Building and landscaping

I’ve been busily landscaping and building a nice lot in Geoje. The house is a free version of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired architecture.

I’ve acquired “splashable water” and “splashable waterfall” objects, scripts, and sounds, so I’ve put them to good use as well.

d’oh!

I realized while reading Second Life: The Official Guide this morning that I can stretch one dimension of a texture to fit the factor-of-two square for uploading, and then take care of it in the object texture tiling controls. (Although the stretching/compressing effects of either The Gimp or SL may end up having a negative effect on the final image.)

And I really need to find out how large a surface in SL a 512pix will adequately cover.

(The book, by the way, is pretty good. It skims over a few things, but it provides a comprehensive overview so far. I’m just starting the chapter on LSL.)

Wallpaper

Here I am with my first attempt at making Arts and Crafts wallpaper.

It’s William Morris’s willow bough. The repeat isn’t square (or 1:2), so I couldn’t just resize it and let SL tile it. I used The Gimp to make a 1024x1024pix TGA file, which I applied to a large panel.