Catching up .... Part 1

After kicking my lazy self back into action yesterday and in between many, many hectic moments of flying around like some demented PA (which I am NOT despite my managers thoughts on the subject!!). I was thinking about changes, since last years Blog entries (Gods is it really that long since I wrote anything!!), to the OneFinalDarkness & Oceans End Sims and the events that take place there. I was also thinking about some wonderful events that have taken place on other Sims which have been organised and marvellously run by some very good friends of ours; topics for more Blogs ... Yayayay!!

Anyway back to my musings today. I think the first incident that crossed my mind related to the redesign of the beach areas that blend between Oceans End and OneFinalDarkness (I was thinking about this while standing in a queue for Coffee ... not for me ... please don't ask me to explain why I do these things; I must have push-over tatooed on my forehead!).

Some months ago now Babette and I were shopping and generally chatting in IM when she suggested that she thought the beach front areas on the two sims looked rather plain and could do with being re-vamped. This thought was not entirely without some background as she had recently completed a project doing the exact same thing for an aquaintance who was trying to set up a new club. I had seen the truly wonderful difference that Babette's inspiration had bought to the beach area she had transformed at that other sim and couldn't wait to see what she would do with ours. For those of you who regularly visit our sims and have the time to explore I am sure you will join me in thanking her for a brilliant job. If you have yet to visit the Sims then for the beaches alone I would have to say (and yes I know I am biassed LoLoL) it has to be worth it.

Several hours later when I eventaully had 5 minutes to sit down and briefly slip my heels off (why do I wear them for work ... at times I really do wonder!!) I was drawn to think about tonight in pub (The Pig & Whistle) when Cosmic Beres our good friend and latest addition to the DJ's plays his weekly set. I always look forward to Thursdays and Cosmic's choices he is just a little younger than Babette and I and always produces some truly wonderful sets that make great and relaxing listening. In addition to looking forward to Cosmic I mused on the recent dramatic change to the way The Pig & Whistle looks. Once again it started during a shopping trip (I am beginning to realise that I may have to Blog about those as Babette and I do a lot of shopping LoLoL) and Babs said 'I think we need a new image for the pub!' This one was a little trickier for us to settle on but after quite a bit of searching we came up with the new bar and related furniture which set the new theme and which frankly makes a much better use of the space within the pub area. There was quite a lot of work done but I am certain that anyone new arriving would think it had been like that forever because the design is just right ... all the elements mesh together and compliment each other and yet again we have our resident style guru and image director Babette Bellios to thank for the superb new look Pig & Whistle.

On that note I have several more ideas ... but for now I am off to The Pig & Whistle to enjoy Cosmic's set and hopefully see a few regular faces at the same time *S*

Wiping the cobwebs off the Blog ....

Well it has been quite some time since I was inspired to write anything .... So what has changed?

To be truthful nothing fundamental has changed but I was reminded of my woeful lack of Blogging by some wonderful articles written by two very wonderful and interesting friends in Second Life, Mericat Ireland and Jellie Arrowmint.

I recently updated the OFD website with new pictures and videos following a series of quite major changes in recent months to Oceans End and more recently to The Pig & Whistle.

One of the changes to the website was to properly implement the Contact Info form and the 'Other Questions' form.

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to find a message from Mericat telling me how she had mentioned The Pig & Whistle in her new Blog article and would I like to check it out.

Even with my wooly overnight brain still huddled in the warm corner behind my left ear Meri's Blog looked just lovely; even without her name at the top the lady's inimitable style shines through crystal clear.

Lots of great pictures are surrounded with a superb set of prose which bubble along in a bright refreshing way. By the time I reached the bottom of the article I was wide awake (well ... Awake enough to go jump on Charlie LOL).

After the Neanderthal had shuffled off in search of food I went back for another look and slid across on the link to Jellies Blog. You really have to read this lady; sharp style great energy and very engaging!

I will have put the links in for you to hop over with by the time thyou read this and if I can coax my brain into life tonight I will do some whizzy Blog link recomendy type thing in the sidebar (I know there is a proper way of describing it ... but I am old LOLOLOLOL).

In short.... These are great ladies and you can't do better than follow their spotlights (or is that Bloglights!!) onto the worlds we span - RL & SL!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Builder's Buddy ....

This strange title is inspired by my recent foray into the LSL Portal in a bid to work out how to build/write the custom rezzing system we needed for the colour change furniture layouts in the newly Theme Change equipped Love's Trinity event area.

I had expected this particular task to be full of pitfalls and problems which would take some serious thinking time to work out. As it turns out it took just 5 minutes of searching to find 'Builder's Buddy' in the LSL Examples Library. Builder's Buddy is a fully fledged scripting solution for managing rezzable builds; aimed primarily at the ever tricky problem of moving large unlinkable builds into place it turns out to be exactly what I needed.

Builder's Buddy offers two scripts, one is the main rezzing/derezzing and package creation script and the other it's companion item script which manages positioning. I very quickly had a prototype system working which allows a control panel to store large quantities of packaged rezzable layouts and a simple but effective graphical selection system allowing the user to decide which package they want to rezz out.

I was truly astonished to find such a polished and rock solid script solution such as this freely available for use/adaptation. A little further thinking made me realise that many of the existing commercially available systems in Second Life where clearly modelled EXTREMELY closely on these scripts; some of the commercial products are particularly expensive as well! Undoubtedly there are many value added things in the commercial packages but to be truthful with such a large chunk of the rezz/derezz problem solved the rest of the bells, whistles and flutes are easy to write in. In less than 6 hours the access control list I needed to implement was working fine and the control of options on transfer was already handled by the original script so with maybe another 2 - 3 hours of fiddling with notecards and some info passing to managed theme package the whole thing will be completed and at ZERO cost!

It really does seem that with some persistence and experience it is possible to have an awful lot of things and systems in Second Life without it having to cost Lindens ... you just have to be prepared to do some research and apply some serious thinking and common sense!!

I can highly recommend to anyone looking to spend lots of money on either things or systems in Second Life to at least explore how difficult it really would be to create the solution yourself ... you may be surprised!!!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device