Looking For An Older Male (Avatar)

Used to do my own research mostly but hey, what’s the use of having friends and contacts if you can’t’ badger them every time you need to know something, amirite?

So, are there better older avatars in OpenSim for gents these days? Asking for a friend, of course. I’m thinking one that looks like about 64 or so. Why 64, you ask? Well, mind you’re own damned business, would you? I’m asking a question here, can a person get some help? Now yes, of course, I’ll be checking Kitely Market but guidance is helpful there too, Probably been three years since I was there, I has me some Kitely$ or whatever they are called, I don’t remember! I do have an older av in a Danko inventory, I’ll have to find him. I liked him but wasn’t sure if he quite “fit.” He looked a little too much like Charlton Heston in a very bad mood. I would prefer someone who gave the appearance of a more pleasant mood (not to mention someone who leans left and yet mention it I did). I might use him for another character. All that aside, my typist, who fancies himself a writer, advised me he had a premonition that his main character may be moving to a new hometown which he will not disclose to me for some odd reason. I kept badgering him for an answer but he just kept saying, “Elsewhere, I told you, Elsewhere.” Whatever.
Anyway, if you know if of some good older male avatars in OpenSim that have been made in the last three years or so, leave a comment. Thank you.

AvatarFest One More Time

Hi! I’ve disappeared for a long while. I plan to post something soon but meantime, AvatarFest has come around again. And it’s the last one! So you’d better get there.

Opening Weekend: Friday, 5th October to Monday, 8th October 2018

Click on the link below for details.

http://avatarfest.net/

Time for AvatarFest 2017!

Chicken Fried Country Radio

Re-posted from George Miner’s personal blog. This post also appears on the Chicken Fried Country Radio blog.

Last September I posted that my country music stream was going off the air. It’s a very long story but that never happened. It’s a difficult time in the webcasting business these days and it’s even more difficult for hobbyists like me. I’ve been wading through the muck for a couple years and have recently found an oasis of sanity on a platform run by people who have been through the same thing. Who knows what the future holds but for now, I’m running an eclectic little  country mix that could just be that country stream you’ve been looking for. It’s called Chicken Fried Country Radio and I invite you to tune in, add it to your faves, spread the word.

We’re all moved in on the new platform (TorontoCast – it’s great!). If you love today’s country-pop sound…sorry, we ain’t playin’ that.

Thank you for listening!

Chicken Fried Country Radio
Country Music 24/7, Now Commercial-Free!

OUTLAW COUNTRY / ALT COUNTRY / BLUEGRASS / CLASSIC COUNTRY / HONKY TONK / ROCKABILLY / WESTERN SWING / OTHER GOOD STUFF!

Listen Now
(click or paste in your browser or virtual world viewer)

bluford.torontocast.com:8430/stream

Webplayer and recent tracks list

http://bluford.torontocast.com:2199/start/yvcaqozz/

We’ll be adding more ways to listen soon.

Website
https://chickenfriedcountryradio.wordpress.com

Are You Experienced? Sansar, Day One

Sansar, the new virtual world from Linden Lab, opened it’s beta period to the public yesterday. Last night, after reading Ciaran, Inara and Daniel’s alerts and advice about getting started, I created a Sansar account – ten years and ten days after creating my Second Life account.

But the symmetry ended there as I waited until this morning to log in. First, I had to dust off the headset I finally bought last year after logging into High Fidelity for the first time and discovering that if I ever did figure out how to move or go anywhere, I was going to need a headset to communicate. I haven’t felt the urge to go back to High Fidelity since I bought the headset but now that I’ve used it to login to Sansar, that return visit to HiFi is likely to happen soon.

I’m talking about an audio headset by the way, I don’t have – nor do I ever expect to have – a VR headset. No thanks. And since it took me nine years of virtual life to buy an audio headset – the same kind of device I used in my real life work everyday for thirty-five years – you can take my word on that. I use a PC.

My first “experience” in Sansar was the Golden Gate Bridge. I figured something simple would be a good start.

The bridge must have been closed as there was no traffic which was good because all I could do was walk down the highway, listening to the sounds of waves and seagulls and foghorns.

I used the arrow keys to move around. I did not find a way to look around without turning nor a way to look up or down. By turning backward I could get my avatar to (sort of) face the camera.

Okay, so there seemed to be nothing to do here except stand around in the fog and watch other people arrive and leave after coming to the same conclusion. But that doesn’t stop a virtual world explorer! No, I had to walk all the way to the end to see what happens!

Nothing. You get to edge of the sim and you fall off the end of the world. And you’re stuck for a moment and then you are returned to the arrival point for that experience, the middle of the bridge in this case. And yes, I started walking toward the other end. At least I think it was the other end, there was no map or anything to confirm this but I noticed the shadows from my avatar’s body and the bridge structure itself were on my right instead of my left as on my first walk. I did question shadows in this much fog but I decided to accept it rather than lose the immersion. I got about halfway to the other end and got too bored with the slow walk to continue. The only interesting thing about walking to the edge is that, as slow as it is to walk around in Sansar, it’s nowhere near as slow as doing the same in Blue Mars. Thank the virtual gods for that!

I used the controls on my screen and jumped to another experience. Now, I use the word “jumped” loosely here. I recall the hysteria in OpenSim when Kitely came on the scene and people complained that a world/region/sim had to boot up first before they could visit. Although it was usually as fast as a Second Life teleport, sometimes it took a whole minute. In Sansar, you can forget about the sometimes, all three of the experiences/worlds/regions/sims/places/thingies I visited, took at least a minute to load.

I forget the name of this place…

It was reminiscent of places in Myst and its sequels. There was a rocky staircase that led to a door. I climbed the stairs but nothing happened when I got to the door. Later, I saw this same door on the Sansar website in another experience. Since I don’t have enough experience(s) in Sansar, I can’t shed any light on that.

The first two places I visited were created by Sansar Studios, so for my last experience on my first visit, I chose a user’s creation, Maxwell Graf to be exact. It seemed fitting as, when I started in SL ten years ago, I spent my first two weeks exploring in my default avatar look and would end nearly every day at a beautiful pub in Max’ region.

This experience is called Rune and, as with any place by Maxwell Graf, it is gorgeous. You arrive on an old sailing ship. Disembarking took me two takes. I walked around, followed what looked like it might be a path but I later found I’d gone the wrong way. I followed that path up and over a snow-covered mountain, down the other side…to the edge of the experience. (That’s a cool phrase!) I fell off the edge of the world and into the abyss for a moment, then was back aboard the ship.

I ventured out again and followed the green markers along the right path. At the third or fourth marker there seemed to be nowhere to go. Once, I bumped into the edge, I guess, because I re-rezzed on the ship again. I followed the green markers again and came to the same spot…and could not find anywhere else to go, so I logged out.

What did I think? I dunno. If this was my very first virtual world experience, I think I’d be jazzed and would probably still be logged in now. But since I’m already experienced in virtual worlds, it’s left me with the same feeling I’ve had after looking inside at a new restaurant and checking the menu: Okay, looks nice. Maybe I’ll come back sometime.

 

Dankoville Reconstruction Project, Phase 2

The basic layout of the new Dankoville grid has been online for a few weeks now. All of the regions from the old layout are here, they’ve been spread out across the much larger space on the new grid, leaving a lot of empty space between them. That is my new canvas, my new blank page.

I’ve tinkered with things here and there and made some new things for the familiar places and I’ve created a few new places in the open space. Now I’m ready to figure out how to bring all these places together as I fill in the blanks.

Connecting the existing places might be a good next step so I’ve been thinking about how the road system should be laid out. The idea of building a tunnel or a bridge somewhere seems like fun but that requires having something to tunnel through or under and having something to put a bridge over. I’ve been messing around with the tunnel idea in a sandbox and now I’m studying the map for just the right spot to put in a river for a bridge (or bridges) to cross.

I’m leaving Dankoville online 24/7 while I’m working and planning. Feel free to visit.

HG address:
dankoville.outworldz.net:8002

 

EXCLUSIVE: Maria Korolov Now Calling the Shots at InWorldz, Magnuz Binder Now Sets Policy for Great Canadian Grid, New York Times Runs Story About New Jersey! Oh the Humanity!

Okay, now that I have everyone’s attention…

Maria Korolov has decided that InWorldz will no longer release grid stats to the general public.

I know, you’re thinking, “When did Maria Korolov become the big cheese at InWorldz?” I was wondering the same thing. In the past, the management of InWorldz would be setting policy but now, they kowtow to the whims of Maria Korolov. Weird.

This is great for the management at InWorldz because now they don’t have to think. They just put out their information, see what Maria does with it, and if they don’t like it, they don’t put that info out anymore. And if anybody questions it, they can blame Maria. And everybody else can blame Maria too. It’s fun, try it.

InWorldz top dogs can pretend to be innocent — “InWorldz never wanted to do this, we were forced into it by the all-powerful Maria Korolov.” And, at least among those who eat this BS up, InWorldz management is completely free of taking responsibility for their own actions. And they get to play victim too. It’s perfect!

Meanwhile, at Great Canadian Grid, Magnuz Binder is now in charge of important policy changes. Because of Magnuz’ omnipotent influence over the management of GCG, that grid will no longer release its stats to the general public. Same deal as InWorldz and Hypergrid Business. GCG doesn’t like what Magnuz does with their numbers. What does he do? He reports them. Well, we can’t have that, can we?

So now, no one gets to see them. Well actually, GCG is still making the numbers available, if you know the secret handshake, they’re just not going to put them where the general public can see them.

In the real world, a business doesn’t get to tell a reporter or editor how to write the story. They can try but it doesn’t work that way. Imagine an RL business announcing they are no longer releasing information because they don’t like the way one reporter at one publication reports it. That business would be a laughing stock. Late night comedians would be cashing in on the jokes for weeks.

InWorldz and GCG may be virtual world playgrounds but they are also real world businesses. They don’t want people to see the numbers about activity on their grids because they are embarrassed by them. (They shouldn’t be, by the way.) But if they blame one reporter or one publication, they can put up a smoke screen and make the discussion about something else. The grid bosses try to make it about the reporter’s credibility because they don’t want you to think about their own credibility.

(For further reading on this strategy, see: Nixon, Richard; Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl; Bradlee, Ben; Post, The Washington)

The whole thing is quite laughable. The funniest part about InWorldz’ gripe with Maria Korolov at Hypergrid Business, is their argument that she’s not allowed to cover them in her publication because they don’t fit in there. Because it says Hypergrid in the title and InWorldz is not part of the hypergrid, they say she shouldn’t be covering them in the first place, it’s bad journalism. Would they take this same stand if they liked the articles Maria was writing about them?

I think not.

Seems to me there have been puff pieces about InWorldz in Maria’s rag in the past. I don’t remember them complaining or asking that it be removed.

Oh, here’s one…
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/10/inworldz-launches-mobile-fitness-app/

I didn’t notice InWorldz management demanding there that Maria not write about them because they’re not on the hypergrid. Seems a bit inconsistent.

And while we’re at it, what’s up with The New York Times? Every day I check their website and I see stories about New Jersey and Connecticut! Even more difficult to comprehend, they do stories about Chicago and Japan too. Even New Zealand! Hello, NEW YORK Times – you’re only supposed to be doing stories about New York. Look, it says so right there in your title! In fact, as I study your title a bit more, how is it that you think you can publish stories about theatre or politics or sports? You’re not The New York Theatre or The New York Politics or The New York Sports…you are The New York TIMES. You are only supposed to do stories about what time it is in New York. Nothing else.

As a time traveler, I’d probably still check their website daily if they went this route. 🙂

I like InWorldz and I like Great Canadian Grid and I like the managers that I’ve had contact with at both of those grids. I like them very much in fact and it would be much easier for me to keep quiet. But on this one, I have to say, come on folks, get a grip. Outside of your own circles, you look rather silly right now. If you don’t like the coverage you’re getting, don’t run and hide. Make it so they have to give you good coverage. And don’t give me that whiny, “Oh we begged and pleaded with her but she wouldn’t listen!” Don’t be a wuss. Forget about her. Go get some good coverage elsewhere. Make it happen. It’s incredibly easy if you know what you’re doing. It’ll even force your perceived enemies to do coverage you’ll like too.

Unless running and hiding is what this is all about. That’s certainly the appearance it gives.

I think I’ll just sit here and wait for the non-denial denials.

 

---

Note: in paragraph six, the words “and Hypergrid Business.” have been added to the original sentence “Same deal as InWorldz.” for clarification.

Time For A Reboot

First, this Hypergrid address…
dankoville.outworldz.net:8002

(If I didn’t do that, my buddy 111shawn would bust my chops loudly enough to be heard throughout the Metaverse. And I just can’t have that.)

Ahem…

Real life hasn’t been treating me well and it’s screwed up my virtual life. While they’ve been kicking me around, health issues have limited my virtual world activities for quite awhile now. Recently, when things calmed down for a few days, sort of a time out, I changed things up quite a bit to bring some order to my virtual life, to make the structure of it fit the circumstance.

In December and again at the beginning of March, I had a few better days in a row. Each time I messed around with a new toy, Fred Beckhusen’s (FerdFrederix) Outworldz/Dreamworld OpenSim Installer. It’s changed my VL massively, like Sim-on-a-Stick did at one time. It’s a free program that makes it easy to create and manage your own OpenSim virtual world, connected to the hypergrid. Just takes a few minutes to set it up. It’s so flexible, I was able to test a bunch of things in a very short time. Somewhere along the way while I thought about the different ways I could use this new tool with my many virtual world projects, I realized that the advances in OpenSim of the last few years, along with what I’ve learned about how to get the most out of those features and now this new software had led me to a place where…

I can do anything I want. There are no more limits! Not only can I have any kind of virtual world I want, I can have EVERY kind of virtual world I want, as many as I want. And if I choose, I can do all of this without spending a dime.

I made a plan that would not affect the projects I already had online. I’d take all of my other virtual world projects and put them online, connected to the hypergrid. All of them, even the ones I was sure were too big to ever get out of Sim-on-a-Stick. I’d put all of them online and have a mini-grid of projects in various stages of undress and fully dressed, works in progress and completed projects, projects from the past, anything worth showing or working on, studying, testing.

I run my worlds off my PC, so I wasn’t going to put all of them online simultaneously. That would be silly, silly. Instead, I’d rotate them, as needed. I would create a separate OpenSim instance for each project and only run a few regions at a time. I’d boot up whichever project I felt like working on that day or that week. I’d have the same welcome region on each instance with easy-to-update info for visitors about which regions were online today, with direct teleports. And because the welcome regions would all have the same name, I’d only have one HG address to publicize. Not that I’d publicize it much because it would just be a personal mini-grid, a place to work on stuff, test stuff. I wouldn’t have it on 24/7 like with Dankoville or past projects. But once in awhile I’d put one of those past projects online and say, “Open House!” and keep it on 24/7 for a couple weeks. I would actually be creating multiple virtual worlds but to a visitor, it would seem like one grid that changes its regions around rather often. It would all be pretty flexible, well-suited to the situation.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? I suppose it is, in a way. But Fred’s software makes things so easy, I set up all those instances (twelve!) and their regions, loaded my content (via OARs and IARs), tested everything and was done in an afternoon.

Wow. Now I had everything all ready to go whenever I was ready.

And that’s when I bumped into a limitation.

I can turn worlds on or off, edit them, save them, bring them to a different place, even give you a copy so you can do all of those things. But I don’t have that kind of power over Time. Even with all my experience as a time traveler, the control of time is beyond my reach. There is only so much time available at any given point in time. And, at this point in my time, there isn’t enough of it to use all of those worlds as outlined above. But it’s still a damn good idea and if I had the time, I’d pursue it. But since I don’t, here’s what I decided to do…

I’ve shutdown all but one of the places I had online. (More about that last one in a moment.) I’m going to focus on one virtual world project, a new one. I’ll keep a couple others handy so I can play with them a little when inspiration strikes or I need a break. Everything else goes on my virtual shelf, where it most likely will collect dust. If my situation changes someday, I can dust them off and play with them again but otherwise those projects are inactive and I don’t have to worry about them anymore.

The new project is actually a new take on an old project. Dankoville has been my main virtual world project since it first went online in September 2013. The configuration of regions changed a number of times as OpenSim advanced and I got better at using it. If I could do then what I can do now, I’d do some things differently. Hey, there’s a thought!

I had that thought four weekends ago. Then I ran a couple more tests using Fred’s DreamWorld. And I thought about that “I can do anything” bit. When it got to the part about “I can do anything but I can’t do everything anymore,” I asked myself out loud, “Why don’t I blow Dankoville up and start again?”

So I did.

The idea is to make it a much bigger world, (because we can!) depicting the fictional town of Dankoville, which appears in some of my stories, and the surrounding area. I want it to cover a big enough land area that I’ll never be able to finish it. As I’ve said before, a virtual world is the model train set of this time. I want a world to build out, tinker with, revise, play with…forever. And to use for inspiration and feel in my writing. I have new ideas to pursue, new characters that I want to build-in to the story and the virtual place. It’s fun to live in a make believe place you are writing about. Creating it in story and then standing inside it, is still awesome, as is the reverse, building something and then writing a story about it. And then there’s writing and building at the same time. Each process is fun, rewarding. A lot of learning goes on. It keeps the creative mind going. Some call it, “storybuilding.”

I came up with several ideas for the new grid layout. I may try more than one. This is a project best done in my own sandbox rather than connected to a grid. And, if I’m working on a new Dankoville – and that new version will be open to the public as I’m working on it – then it’s time to close the old version. I let Nara Malone know what I was up to and gave her my thanks. I’d like to thank her publicly too, for hosting Dankoville on Naras Nook grid (Nook is a virtual writers colony, check it out!). She came to my rescue at a time when I wasn’t sure if Dankoville would survive and during my two years on Nook, Nara was as gracious and supportive as could be. I can’t thank her enough.

When I can, I’ll do a separate post with specifics about the new Dankoville project.

The one region that I did not shut down is on Craft-World, it’s called Elsewhere. It’s a wooded area at the intersection of two small state roads somewhere. I’ve got a house there that’s been a retreat at times. It opened in July 2015. The region’s content was originally from an early version of Dankoville and I’ll be moving it to the new Dankoville and using it as my home there, keeping the name Elsewhere because when people notice I haven’t been around much – not that it happens often – and they ask where I’ve been, I like to say, “Elsewhere.” I’m thinking about using the Elsewhere region on Craft as a showcase for some completed projects of the past, the region name still fits. A couple of these projects had been on OSgrid for a little while recently but I never got the chance to promote them.

I saved this part for last because it’s the most difficult, special, important. My tenth Rez Day in Second Life comes this June. I started out just awed by the whole thing. I explored non-stop, chatted with people along the way. I met so many nice people my first two weeks in Second Life, how could I not be drawn in? It was beautiful, it was crazy, it had everything. I’ve had lots of great fun there and I expect there will be more…but I’ve given up my last remaining parcel there as part of The Great Shutdown of ’17, as it shall be forever known in Whitfield family lore.

I spent a lot of time in SL for several years and got a lot of enjoyment out of it. It was a great escape from RL, to state the obvious. When I wandered into OpenSim – here it comes! – it opened a whole new world(s). No? Didn’t think so. Well, if I can’t do a pun, I’ll do a cliche: …it truly broadened my horizons. Truly. With a cherry on top.

Eventually, I spent nearly all of my time in OpenSim, never intending to choose one over the other. OpenSim gave me many more possibilities. And it worked well with my writing. But I never left SL completely.

I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t let go of Winterfell. It’s magical. There’s something about it that you just can’t shake. It must be The Mists. I arrived there seven years ago this month. I’ve kept a home there all through these times that I’ve been away. And now when I’m in Winterfell, which recently adopted the new name, Rosehaven, I’ll be the old friend visiting from out of town. Or out of century. To Lady Twilight and Princess Selena, a salute to your excellence in leadership and management, thanks for making such a beautiful, fun and extraordinary place to live and play in and for cultivating a fun community. My first community involvement in Winterfell was posting RP stories on the old online storyboards. (Which have had a recent rebirth in Rosehaven, nice to see.) It was fun to be writing about a world other than the real world. It still is and I hope to get back to it soon. I always smile when I think of how it started in Winterfell.

And finally (just for now, I mean, don’t get excited), I still plan to be a tourist in new worlds too. I’ve visited one briefly and will explore there and Elsewhere (got it in there again!) as time allows.

Dankoville hasn’t been online for the past week but since I’m posting this, I’ve fired the grid up for the next few days. There isn’t going to be a regular schedule but I certainly hope there’ll be many days when it’ll be online from morning to late night and I’ll be in for a few hours. I’m running four adjoining 4×4 varregions (1024s). Sometimes I’m running a sandbox or two. Sometimes I’ll run some crazy test, so enter at your own risk! But do feel free to stop by, look around, maybe say hello.

The website needs updating but here it is…

http://dankoville.weebly.com/

And that HG address again…

dankoville.outworldz.net:8002

Thanks for reading.

How do I save one section of a Varregion?

Another in our series, “Using OpenSim” (i just made that up)

Question: How do I save one section of a Varregion?

Short answer: You can’t.

Longer Answer: You can’t but here’s how to do it anyway…

I’ve been working on a project in a 768 var. Usually I work on each section in a standard region and then load it to the var. This gives me complete flexibility in arranging or re-arranging the var and in loading the latest updates without having to reload the entire var.

The other night inspiration hit while I was inworld on the var and i made a bunch of changes to one section. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” a little voice in my head said. “I’ll just have to keep working on the var as a whole, I won’t use the single region production system anymore,” I replied. “You’ll be sorry,” said that voice. But I kept going anyway and when I was done, I was very happy with my changes. But I scolded myself for doing it that way and changing my production system without thinking it through first.

There isn’t a command at present to save one section of a var. So how can I do it anyway?

I knew from using the –displacement feature that I could move a single-region-size section to a new position. I’ve moved buildings with all of their contents in Dankoville from one spot to another within the same section (or into other sections) via OAR many times….just one building at a time without affecting anything else. If you know how to do that, you know how to do this…

The 768 var I refer to above is a work in progress. If we think of it as nine squares in a 3×3, so far three squares are filled – the center square, the square to the east of center and the square in the northeast corner. The other squares are empty. It’s that center square that I worked on inworld the other night. I want a copy of just that section.

So I moved the whole thing over one section, toward the southeast corner. I loaded the OAR of the var and included the command:
–displacement <-256,-256,0>
Now the center square was in the southeast corner. I went inworld and cut a parcel around that section/region. I then deleted (Return) all of the prims outside of that parcel. Then I joined the two parcels again. I saved an OAR.

I loaded that OAR into a standard region. Then I saved an OAR.

Now I have that center section with my latest work in an OAR file all by itself, ready to work on in a standard region or load to a var and place it anywhere I want.

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Load_Oar

AvatarFest 2016