Morning Walk Architecture

Notice the brickwork all the way to the right. This house is SO LOVED.

What a joy! When I woke this morning it was already 60F degrees!! I’d blocked out time in the afternoon to walk, but it was early enough and warm enough that I could walk before I sat down to work.

I need to trespass some day to see this from the back.

One of the fun aspects of walking is seeing what everyone else has done with their homes and property. I’m planning to have someone do some small building work for me outside this spring, based on ideas I’ve gotten over the last few months as I walk. I like Craftsmen/Mission style and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style. When it comes to art work or selecting items for my home I’m always attracted to stone/metal/wood. You’ll see that in the privacy screens.

This for the privacy art work along the back property line.

There are also some homes that tickle my fancy every time I see them. The small house pictured here is so appealing – the colors, the facade. Attractive and makes me smile every time I go by. I also love the carve out on this very old house – what a clever way to get light and air!

Brilliant! Reminds me of how I customized my broom closet in the kitchen renovations.

I want to build a privacy screen along my back property line. I’m being very careful to NOT call it a fence, because for that I’d need permits. 🙂 But I’m calling it a piece of art that I can position in such a way that it gives me more privacy AND is attractive to all who see it. I also want to grow ivy and/or other plants on it. I want it to have some sort of bin at the bottom for additional soil. But I need a swinging panel as well between the existing privacy screen and the new one, because I’ll need to get to the back side of both. Mark says “not a problem”.

This has wheels – I’ve seen it move about. I want this for my driveway which gets LOTS of sun.

I do need to fix my brickwork from last fall, and I’m not going to change it – just level it – but I do enjoy seeing what others have done. I love the grass in the one photo. I could definitely see myself pulling up my lawn and putting in something much ‘wilder’ instead, especially if it meant I no longer needed the lawn mowed. 🙂

Love the grass. and the back brick work.
Come- walk with me! Doesn’t this pathway just call to you?

Redecorating With Roses

After finding Ample Clarity‘s one-prim chairs with poses at PrimPossible, I went on a mini-shopping spree. Oura and I both had gift certificates for Cheeky Pea, one of my absolute favorite furniture stores, owned by Isla Gealach. You can see her furniture all over my homes – piles of pillows, chairs, swings (:CP: Auntie Veda’s Garden Swing), baskets, chaise lounge. I just love Isla’s style. She was having a clearance sale so that, combined with the gift certificate, was irresistable. Of course once I had everything home, it was time to unbox and rearrange. 🙂 I put my new pile of pillows (:CP: Old Pillow Pile) by my new chaise lounge (:CP: Lounge). (I did like the old one, but it had only 2 poses and it was getting a bit threadbare. I think Bamboo must have been playing on it when I wasn’t around.) I also added a campfire down (:CP: Beadnell Beach Retreat) by the water so it would be warm enough on cool nights to still visit the ducks. I tossed my old swing set and put in the Cheeky Pea one.

As I flopped on my pillows, I could see AnnMarie Oleander’s endless stream of vehicles on the road. I mused that it would be nice to have some sort of privacy screen up on the patio. Then it hit me – I’m a builder. I can MAKE my own privacy screen. *grin* Imagine that. I forget that I can do that.

So I went through my landscaping materials from my days as Head Gardener at the office. I played a bit and tried several versions. Gold screen, short rose vines, long rose vines. multiple rose vines. *grin* It was fun. I’m not 100% pleased with any of them but I AM pleased with knowing that I can build what I want and need. 🙂

Hmmmm. Maybe I should do wisteria instead?

Summer in October

It’s October. It’s time to celebrate autumn. Build my harvest booth, more commonly known as a sukkah. I’ve been doing that, battling mosquitos and time and heat. It’s 85 degrees F out there. Many years we sit bundled in jackets and gloves outside. Not this year, apparently. So Bamboo and I came in to cool down and visit the ducks.

Wow. Did Bill, Drake and Mallory have a major complaint. Seems our neighbors have started having some sort of racing (honestly, there was so much quacking going on I’m really not sure WHAT they are racing). But I DID see the HUGE Finish line with checkered flags. Sigh. Hey Rodvik – WHEN are you going to implement the feature that lets me NOT SEE my neighbors????????

So I put up a hedge to make sure that the ducks had some privacy. Then the five of us settled in to enjoy the soothing sounds of waves and seagulls. Ahhh.

If it’s not AnnMarie’s cars crashing off the road into my front yard, it’s the neighbors incompetent guests creating huge wake for resting ducks. 🙂 /me scribbles indignant letter to the editor

Everything You Know is Wrong

Or should that be: “Everything, you know, is Wrong”? That was the name of the lecture Grady Booch delivered from SL today. And the revised punctuation was ALSO his construct. It was my great fortune to meet Grady in the course of some software development I was doing. We discovered that we were both fans of virtual worlds and have remained friends since. As I rarely have the opportunity to attend in person many of the conferences at which Grady is a keynote speaker, I’m delighted when I can hear him inworld. (You can find Grady’s blog here.)

Grady was speaking at the Software Experts Summit 2011, being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. But Grady wasn’t in California either, he was giving his talk from Second Life, so I got to attend as well.

I’ve heard Grady talk on similar topics before. Each time I learn something new, grasp a little more. (As I’ve told you – by my mother I’m a techie, but by a techie I’m no techie. *grin*) One of my favorite ‘slides’ is the one that says “Develop in anger”, which was all the more amusing as I’d just been posting on the topic of anger. I also like the other points at the slide about listening, but not TOO much. *grin* I do like the way Grady thinks.

I was able to reach Honour and Shenlei in time for them to tp over and expand their software knowledge as well! We’ll have Honour coding in NO time….. /me ducks and runs

Obnoxious Neighbors

This is one of the reasons why people hate the mainland. This is one of the reasons I dislike my next-door neighbors. This is one of the truly annoying issues of SL. I am up in the sky – WAY up in the sky. For months, nearly a year, it has been me and my skybox. In the last few weeks, 2 of my neighbors felt obliged to build sky boxes right at the same level as mine. Isn’t that thoughtful? I can almost ignore the skynet looking globe-thing. But a plywood box???? Oh for heaven’s sake. It’s UGLY. Do you hear me????? Not only did you place it right next to my personal space, but it’s UGLY. You put a landing field in the sky above your house so all your friends and flying machines are buzzing overhead. You put HUGE ugly artwork right up near the border, forcing me to build a wall for a time to block it out. You don’t have a single tree or flower in your entire parcel. And now you stuck a plywood box right next to my quiet personal retreat. You have no class. The sky is a BIG place, folks. You had SOOOOOOO much sky, so many meters, where you could have rezzed your totally ugly box. But no – you had to intrude. Yep, you are a real class act. Not.

So Rodvik – I want walls that neighbors cannot cam through. I want to enclose my retreat in impenetrable walls so I can relax in peace and quiet. ALONE!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I’m a bit annoyed at the moment.

There Goes the Neighborhood

SL has a new CEO and interviews with Mr. Humble are showing up in many, many blogs. This will not be one of those places. 🙂 I’ve read many of the interviews (Dusan Writer had a very good write-up), listened to Phaylen’s interview, read other people’s feedback and comments on the interviews (I really like Lalo Telling’s summary). I’ve read Mr. Humble’s post on the SL site and the multitude of responses. It is not surprising that in most of these places, people fall back to pushing their own agenda. Daniel Voyager posted a list of and links for the various interviews. I don’t know where SL should go. I know that I hoped my company would continue to do business there and that I would have a part in that work. That does not appear to be likely, but I’d still like to believe that corporations could find a profitable, secure home in SL. I want interoperability – I want to take my customized avatar and my inventory and hop from grid to grid. I don’t want to figure out the details – I just want to do it. I want more prims, less lag, simpler controls for new users. I want to be able to build and create if I feel like it, and to go buy content when I’m not interested in creating it myself. I want live music. I want to socialize and meet people from all over the world. I want to live in my home and enjoy my land and live my life here.

One of the most interesting comments that I saw (and it appeared in the comments on Tateru Nino’s article in the Metaverse Journal) was by Winter V:

In two years time, I’d like things to change. I’d like the ability to hide my land from my neighbors.. creating a sort of “you can only see it when you’re on my parcel” system. This would open up a world of privacy, removing petty annoyances like “security orbs”. At the same time, I’d like a companion setting to allow me to hide my neighbors objects from my own view, when I’m on my land. THIS one option would remove the need for all these “privacy walls” that people put up constantly, to block out their neighbors ugly builds.

Wow. Yes. This one strikes home IMMEDIATELY. Because my home has become blocked in on 2 sides by a ton of houses, sky boxes and even a landing strip. On one side – I own the land and I put trees. On the fourth side – it’s Linden road. That has been fine until recently. But the last few weeks there has been a steady stream of vehicles down the road. When I say “steady”, I mean approximately every 60 seconds some unavatar’d scripted vehicle is creeping its vacillating way down the road, in full view from my living room. I gather from reading blogs that other people have experienced these vehicles as well.

I enjoy people coming by and stopping to say hello. I don’t mind newbies who appear, as long as they answer when I try to chat with them. One lovely woman was embarrassed when I logged in and found her on my bed. 🙂 I assured her it was fine, I didn’t mind, but I don’t think she believed me. You see – I LIKE that other people can see my art work, see what I think is attractive and fun. Yes, I’ve found people in my pool. It’s okay as long as they are polite. I’ve made several new friends this way. I like the idea of land where others can see the things in which I take pride and delight. I have scripting and rezzing turned off, so there is a minimum of damage that can occur.

A few weeks ago when I was checking my prim count, it seemed a bit high. When I checked to see who had prims on my land, there was indeed a new, non-group member, in the list. The prims were a wrecked truck. A few days later, she had a wrecked car. I returned them and didn’t think much about it, as I was spending most of my time in my sky box. But lately I’ve been in my house and the steady stream of traffic is distracting. I wouldn’t mind avatars – somehow that would feel like community. I am not sure how I feel about this stream of automated vehicles, but I think for the most part I don’t enjoy it. They’ve stopped wrecking and remaining on my land, but they aren’t especially attractive or interesting. The shapes repeat. They don’t do anything visually stimulating. It reminds me a lot of the advertising circulars that get tossed on my RL walk every week – someone else’s garbage.

I’ve tried to hire a detective to look into the situation. *grin* I’m hoping for a full report: who? why? why here? I don’t hold out much hope because you know how difficult it is to get good help these days. In the meantime, I’m contemplating putting up a BIG wall to block the view of the road. A PHYSICAL wall to ensure that the vehicles don’t meander onto my land again. And if one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, I’m wondering if one woman’s advertising delight is another woman’s annoying trash.

Wizard At Work

Between the brutally cold RL weather and my weighty SL obligations (such as serving on momentous juries), I need a bit of time to mellow. So I was playing cowgirl and riding my rocking horse when I began chatting with Dale. Dale is rarely idle, preferring to script, build or meander about. This time the work to hand was building a new look: new skin, new shape, new clothes. I pointed out that since Dale IS my Script Wizard, there was no reason not to come and create at my place, while I watched.

I was a bit taken aback by Dale’s new look. I’m used to having to reconfigure my pronouns depending on whether it’s g-Dale or b-Dale who comes to call. But this new look was something much different. Definitely alien. I think “stately” and “regal” capture my first impression. I liked the shade of green as well. Being the consummate back-seat-driver that I am, of course I began offering suggestions and comments. *grin*

One of the COOLEST looks Dale achieved was the result of a viewer mishap. Maybe “mishap” is too strong a word. Probably it should be called a nuance or a foible. At one stage of the creation there was a white line on the top of the outfit. Because of how it was rezzing, the line appeared to be flickering, moving horizontally across the dress (think of a ticker tape running along the bottom of screen, but more as moving white dots). It was GREAT. Unfortunately, if you adjusted your camera angle at all, the flickering stopped. Of course we immediately tried to figure out how to build or script to make that line move like that all the time. Given that it was late and we were both multi-tasking, we didn’t solve that puzzle then, but it was fun spec’ing it out.

Building in SL is such fun because you can be working hard even as you are playing. Notice that although Dale APPEARS to be riding the rocking giraffe, you can see the little dots leading from hand to prim, indicating that Serious Work Is Being Done. *grin* Alas, one of the issues with prims is often that they are not flexible, even if made flexi. Camera angles also have major impact on appearance.

What didn’t change that evening, however, was my enjoyment of my wooden pony!

The rocking giraffe is from D-LAB, created by dazai Voom.
The rocking horse is from HPMD, created by Sasaya Kayo.
The bubble chair, as you might recall, is also from Sasaya Kayo and Happy Mood. *grin* Happy Mood is a WONDERFUL place.

Dusting Off the Scripting Skills

Hanging about at Carriage Trade has made something abundantly clear: I have LOTS of chocolate and wine in my inventory, but not too many horse treats. I headed over there the other day to take some photos of the shops and stable. I was hoping In The Habit was open (it wasn’t then but is now) so I could perhaps add a bit to my clothing inventory. Because you know I NEEEEEEEED more boots. 🙂 After taking some pics around the shops, I went to the stable.

Chancy, a beautiful buckskin, was there when I arrived. We started chatting. She asked me about the group rules and about the sim. I really didn’t know much more than what it said on the sign and said so. Moonsorrow, a lovely Arabian, showed up while we talked, asking the same questions. When Mute, a handsome palomino, came seeking the same information, I IM’d to Georgianna. Help! We all have questions. It was truly fascinating. The horses can join the group, rent stalls and some other benefits. People can come to the livery to ride or take out a carriage. There will be a cost for that. The horses and the sim will share in that. *grin* I think that’s great! It’s a wonderful way for people who would like to ride to find a mount willing to take them. The horses make money and have fun and don’t have to support the overhead.

It apparently sounded fine to Mute also, who rented a stall. I looked for a suitable stall-warming gift. I was SURE I had an apple somewhere. I found it finally – rezzed one on the ground and passed one to Mute. But that wasn’t satisfying. It seemed to me that a stall-warming gift or a treatsie should be more interesting than that. I resolved to do better.

I returned home and built a basket. Yes, you read that correctly. I dug out my building skills and made a basket. (I confess – first I IM’d Honour and whined that I needed her to build me something. And then realized – hey – *I* know how to do THAT.) My friend had already passed me carrots and sugar cubes and a better apple. I put the foodstuff in the basket. I’d forgotten how to wear the basket properly. I IM’d to Shenlei for help on that one. Oh, right – poses and script. Done. My wonderful script teacher HellspawneD had taught me how to make a script that offered a choice, so I modified that for carrots, apples and sugar cubes and headed back to the barn.

I tested the basket on Belvidere and Apollo. They seemed to like it. I noticed a problem, however. Given the choice between nutritious carrots and sweet sugar cubes, the horses chose sugar. Repeatedly. THAT is NOT healthy. *grin* So I resolved to brush off my scripting skills and modify the script again. This time I’m going to LIMIT how many sugar cubes a given horse may have in a given SL day. That’s right, Mom is watching. 4 carrots, 2 apples, 2 sugar cubes in an SL day. I’ve already put Dale and Hell on notice.

I also met another of the barn cats – Midnight. I LOVE SL animations. If you touch Midnight, there are options for petting, following, meowing. 🙂 We all went out for a ride, and Midnight followed right along. I can see that I will have to add cat treats to my basket.

Voilà!

I DO remember how to do some things! My AO has been throwing off errors lately. I thought I’d fixed it – I noticed a typo in the notecard and corrected it. But the error kept appearing. Since I wasn’t there much lately, usually just bopping in and out, I didn’t devote much thought to it. We did a test last week, however, and my AO was throwing off the error like crazy and other people (Noobs) were noticing it. *red face* We explained what it was, but yeah, I was embarassed. So I went in tonight to fix it, once and for all. I didn’t see a typo, but I recopied and pasted. Error. Removed the pose. Error. Big duh. I saved the notecard and RESET THE SCRIPTS!!!! Tah Dah!!! Error free. Now that I look at that pose – I don’t know why I tried so hard to put it in. *grin*

Kohelet

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What profit has a woman of all her labor which she takes under the sun?
Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 1.2-3

So, perhaps you remember my garden? Remember my project leader J??? Remember how J always ultimately undoes my garden? *smile* Whether by making me pull the plants, or by removing the region or by returning them to my lost and found, J has a way of reminding me that all is vanity, nothing lasts. Funny, I never pegged J as a traditionalist, but this IS the season when we read Kohelet. And this is the season when J has yet again begun to remove my gardens, my trees, my work.

“Your object ‘Weeping Cherry Tree’ has been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J from parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 42, 242
Your 7 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 3, 179.
Your 4 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 2, 221.
Your 8 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 61, 249 due to parcel owner return.”

Sigh. Mene mene tekel upharsin. My trees have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Maybe if I’d learned to make better shadows? /me mutters several things under my breath that I’d prefer not to have overheard. *grin* Okay. Everytime J does this to me, she ultimately finds a better project for me. Or gives me a garden of my own in which to play. So I’m going to hope for the best here. And remember that I not only have my own region elsewhere, but I actually have my own opensim grid.

BUT. On one thing I stand firm: Touch my ducks, J, and you will be very very very sorry. 🙂 After all – YOU are the one who insisted on arming me. *grin*