Stuff

No interest in scripting?  You might like to skip this article 🙂

For those of you who have done any advanced programming in LSL, you’ll know that one of the big things missing from the language is that there is no persistent storage mechanism.  For example, you can read a notecard, but you cannot write one from script, so there is no way to store information that will survive a script reset unless you resort to using an external database via http (or other depreciated) functions.

All that might be about to change, as Rider Linden has just created a wiki page called LSL Linkset Data, in which he describes a set of LSL functions for writing, reading, and deleting up to 64K of key/values pairs associated with a linkset.  The memory to support this is not associated with any script memory, so it will survive script resets.  It will also survive object copy and the transfer of the object to a new owner!

This is very exciting news!  Using http to talk to a script on a webserver is slow, and programming it is cumbersome and difficult to debug.  This new functionality is something we scripters have been dreaming of for years.  Let’s hope it’s not just a proposal but the real deal!

It’s my eighth rez day in SL today, which in case you don’t know, is the anniversary date of your account creation.  Inspired by Chic Aeon’s post, here are my stats from last year.

As with Chic, I use my blog to look back, fondly remembering outfits found, parties attended, building accomplishments, friends found and lost.

I’ve been off the air for nearly two weeks due to the recent severe rain in some parts of Australia, which flooded part of my building and drowned the NBN box.  I’m hoping that the problem will be fixed shortly and I can find the time to get some posts up!  See you all soon xxx

We’ve been publishing this blog since the 25th of September, 2015.  Since then, until just recently, we hadn’t missed a day, a fact that I was very proud of.  That’s 2150 days of posts, sometimes twice a day, if Aeon and I got our wires crossed about who was posting when.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been under enormous pressure to get part of a major RL work project out the door, and to start planning for the next phase.  It’s totally exhausted me, and the first day I managed to log back in to SL, the only thing people wanted to talk to me about were “can you organize this?” and “here’s info about what’s happening with such-and-such and can you help?” and so on.  It totally stressed me out when all I wanted to do was log in, listen to some music, and relax for a couple of hours.  So I ran away.

Sadly, that bought the run of continuous blog posts to an end.  I’m writing this on my late Friday afternoon, just after I’ve done with yet another exhausting day with four hours worth of meetings.  I sat down, logged in, and wondered if I could catch up the days I missed blogging.  Aeon is also exceptionally busy, and hasn’t been able to post for a long time, considering the effort required for her photo artistry.

And I decided that no, the run is over.

The pressure at work does not look like letting up until perhaps the end of the year.  So… if I miss a day (or a week), you know what’s going on.

My friend Kat showed me New Berlin today, specifically the German Newbie Center.  I’m not much of a fan of the word “newbie”, I prefer “newcomer”, it sounds much more welcoming!

The reason Kat wanted me to visit is because the GNC has a stack of FREE clothes to help newcomers get started!  Both guys and girls will find some great starter outfits here.

I grabbed a dress and some heels to show you at least one of the outfits you can easily create.  The dress is sized for Lara, Venus, Physique, none of which I expect a newcomer to have.  But it also comes with fitmesh versions for the five standard mesh sizes including an alpha, so that will fit a classic avatar right away.  A good idea might be to include a notecard with a pointer to the standard body size information, and an explanation of the sizes.

The heels are called “Ribbon High Heels Black” which is super confusing, and they are really mids (at least they are on Maitreya).  I prefer Slink as you probably know, but I use Lara’s mid feet because I only have a very small collection of mid high shoes.  The shoes are in sizes for Maitreya, Slink, Belleza, and Ocacin.  Again, a newcomer would hardly be expected to have any of these, so fortunately it comes in a size to fit Map feet too, which are FREE on marketplace.  Again, a notecard would go a long way to helping someone new to SL.

The GNC is worth a visit if you’re a newcomer, or helping one out!

Dress and heels available for FREE at the GNC

I’ve mentioned EEP fleetingly before.  EEP, or the Environmental Enhancement Project, is available in Linden Lab’s Viewer, but is currently only available as a public beta in Firestorm, and is a replacement for the currently Windlight system.  I’ve played around with it a little, but I’m waiting for an official version in Firestorm before I get serious with it (for example, defining a per-parcel day/night cycle).

However, while running it, I was at a friend’s place, and I was struck by how much better normals and lighting reflections look with EEP.  Also, light falloff appears to be much more realistic.  So I took a couple of photos.   You can compare the two below.  The only difference between these two photos was using the beta viewer with EEP, verses using the stable production viewer with Windlight.  All camera settings, graphics card settings, resolution, and so on, remained the same.  Oh, and I “froze” the fire so as not to be distracting 🙂

Take note of the reflections from the fire and the lamps on the floor and the wood to the left, and the more realistic falloff, particularly in the corners of the room.  I’m looking forward to playing with this more when it’s officially merged into Firestorm.

Windlight

EEP

I think this is a first for the blog, showing you a building that’s been languishing in my inventory for a couple of months.  This 20 LI skybox is really well done, and I got it for FREE via the PocketShop HUD (which now seems to not be working, however the skybox creator has at least one other FREE building, so if you like this look of this one and the price, be sure to check them out!)

The building is done in mostly mesh with a couple of prims to do the scenery out the window.  The textures are baked on, but everything is modify so you could easily repaint if brick is not to your liking.  And being a skybox, there is no door, so you’ll need a teleporter.

Having said all that, it’s a great little skybox for a small shop or a secluded getaway spot!

Skybox: New York Skybox (FREE) by Infinite (marketplace link)

Welina mai kākou!  Hello, my friends!  It’s my pleasure to introduce you to a new contributing blogger for Blues Fantasy!  Jazaar Silvermoon is a dear friend of mine who is an artist in RL and a photographer in SL and she’s going to join us on the Blues Fantasy blog!  She has a good eye for cute outfits, and I’m sure you’ll love to see what she brings to us here.  Please help me in welcoming Jaz!