The house that Penn built, pt. II: The cottage

So after the harbour, the next thing was to find a house. My home island has a distinct building style influenced by Breton architecture. Houses tend to have steeply pitched rooves, thick granite walls, and small windows. It's a cosy look.

I found one place that was selling a Breton cottage for only 999L, but after buying it and plonking it down I started finding all sorts of faults with it, like the walls being too narrow (granite walls have to be thick, for stability), and the fact that it had two chimneys and only one fireplace. It also had cutesy little window boxes and a front lawn which didn't work at all for me.

At first I was going to modify the heck out of it, but I needed to mock something up to know what I was aiming for. Here's the translucently psychedelic mockup I created:

But then, I started texturing...

And adding doors and windows...

And by then, I'd built a house. Isn't it cute?

(To be continued)

The house that Penn built, pt. I: The harbour

So after the dissolution of my old island, I found myself inhabiting a section of an OpenSpace sim with my old prim count. But on an OpenSpace sim, that's like half a goddamn sim.

I wanted to make it something like home... my RL home that is. I'm from a picturesque little island in real life, but I live in a city. However much I love being here, I still love the quiet, rural island life.

So I started by building a little harbour:

It's not really functional... in fact, there seems to be a cute little seating area:

Here's a close-up of the end of the quay:

I like taking people for rides round the island in the little floaty boaty.

And if you dive into the harbour, you'll find this underwater garden:

I'm thinking of putting a 7 Seas fishing thing in, and then trying to build the motor boaty you can get out of it. Definitely one of those invisible aquaria down in the harbour so there's some fishies down there. And maybe a sunken galleon.

Sweaty armpit dance

I have to share this picture.

Left to right, it's, Laleeta, Charisma, Asthenia, me, and Sai I THINK.

[2008/09/24 14:57]  Asthenia Pinazzo: its like the sweaty armpit dance

ARC Rant

I've seen a lot of posts pointing out that ARC (Avatar Rendering Cost) is arbitrary and imperfect. Peter Stindberg even said it has been "debunked".

http://stindberg.blogspot.com/2008/08/avatar-rendering-cost-debunked.html

http://www.secondeffects.com/2008/05/arc-from-here-to-infinity.html

That's like saying that graded exams have been "debunked". We know it's not perfect, but it's what's possible. Yes, it is only a rough indication. The idea is that an avie with ARC 5000 is harder for your machine to draw that an avie with ARC 1000. There may be no difference between two avies with ARC 4900 and ARC 5000, because yes, there is a big margin of error.

That was explained way back, when Pastrami Linden introduced ARC on the Official SL Blog:

Note that these weightings, and their resultant totals, are not a *perfect* measure of your cost- but more of a relative counter to weigh against other avatars. Point: it’s close, but it’s not scientifically perfect. For that, you’d have to delve deep into batch sizes and draw calls. These weightings and their description/rationales were written by Runitai Linden, one of our most senior graphics engineers and a man who knows rendering efficiency!

We all get fed up with our machines turning to molasses in busy sims when we're surrounded by people wearing bling, long flexi hair, flexi skirts, etc. 

ARC is just a way to tell people when they're getting it wrong.

So people get rude about it? That's the fault of rude people, not ARC itself.

So there are edge cases like a particle emitters which emits one particle every other year? So what? Who wears one of those? And even if they do, it's only 16 points. ARC is only meant to be a general guide. 16 points either way is nothing. You'd have to wear hundred of the little buggers for your ARC to become seriously wrong.

As for "expression" - this is like people playing their tinny MP3s out loud on the bus. Maybe they're expressing themselves, but they're forcing me to experience it, and I don't want to experience their music. Likewise, in a busy sim I don't want to experience your blingy, flexi, 300-prim furry avatar. Feel free to wear it whenever you aren't in a busy place where you're making my computer groan under the load.

Summary: 

i) If you don't think ARC is precise, then congratulations, you just got the goddamn point. It's rough, and for general comparison only. 

ii) If you got yelled at for having a high ARC in a busy sim, then the person who yelled at you is rude but for pity's sake please go and take off some of that junk.

Angry man

I did make a comic. Clicky here.

Back once again with the renegade hamster, D for Damager, Power to the people

My home has been destroyed!

The lovely island where I lived for more than 8 months, made friends, laughed, loved and frollicked, was finally shut down forever on the 25th of September. I took a couple of pictures of the final hours.

Here I am with Charisma, standing on the site where my house stood before I dragged a big selection box over it and returned it and everything in it:

All alone in the middle of a very big ocean.

Over on the other side was the home of my freinds Jaken and Anni. I took a snap the day before of their island, still with their stuff on it, surrounded by... wide, flat sea:

I brought Charisma over here and stood there getting all nostalgic for a bit (8 months is a long time in SL), talking about chapters in my life and how this one was coming to a close. Her response was beautiful and profound:

[13:57] Penn Euler: and now, you're the new chapter in my life

[13:58] Charisma Kingsford smiles

[13:58] Charisma Kingsford: there will be new memories

I haven't seen you in church lately

Sorry for my recent quietness, and indeed generally low attendance in SL. I've been feeling kinda sleepy all week, combined with the fact of having finished the piano, and a fairly stressful time at work, means I haven't had much spare energy... and a new relationship has cropped up, which is where the energy I do have is being invested :)

So apologies to all the people who think I'm ignoring them. I'm not. Well, I am, but it's not because I hate them :)

I need to watch silly YouTube vids, play directed games (as opposed to SL's very undirected experience), curl up on a sofa with Charisma and recharge the the ol' batteries a bit.