Oh, hay! I’m brushing the dust off my blog long enough to join in on the ‘dress me up’ challenge everyone seems to be doing!

If you check out my Flickr, you can see the kinds of things I normally wear. Also, I normally spend next to nothing to dress myself.

For the challenge, I’m willing to spend some money, but I still want to be frugal. If I’m spending money, I want to be sure I’m getting a lot of ‘bang for my buck’.

All right, folks! Dress me up! :D

*brushes the dust off this thing*

So, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. That doesn’t really bother me, as blogging isn’t my thing. In fact, I don’t really have a ‘thing’.

The virtual world we live in gives us an awesome opportunity: we can have everything we’ve always wanted. All we have to do is make it.

Now, for some of us, this is great. You’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer, so you get to dress Second Life’s finest. You’ve always wanted to be an architect and now you get to spend your free time creating beautiful builds for everyone to enjoy. Hell, you even wanted to be a slum lord, so you buy a bunch of OpenSpace sims (well, maybe not anymore) and rent them out to unsuspecting noobs. It almost reminds me of a typical MMO, where everyone has their skill points and gets to put them into their attributes. In Second Life, everyone can do something.

What gets frustrating though is when that something you can do doesn’t really line up with what you want to be able to do. When you rolled your characters stats, it turned out you’d probably make a better scripter than a builder… which is what has happened to me.

I would love to be able to create things that people can see and that the average avatar can appreciate. Instead, the only ability I have is scripting, and I’m not even all that great at it. I’m at a point in my life where I need some way to express myself, but LSL doesn’t exactly lend its self to that. I wish I could build, but it’s like square peg/round hole as soon as I bring up the build menu. Sure, I’ve put some things together, but there’s no feeling in them as I don’t have the ability to put my emotions into prims like others can.

Maybe I need to practice, but practice doesn’t make perfect. I could draw and paint all day long, but I’ll never gain the natural ability that some have, the same way that reading a bunch of wikis won’t make scripting click for others.

Being ‘Joe Avatar’ didn’t used to bother me… until I realized all of my friends have some niche. They blog, they network, they create… but I just consume. Sure, the world needs consumers, but when the world is as small as Second Life, you quickly feel out of place if you don’t have some sort of accomplishment attached to your name.

I guess what I’m getting at is this: ARE THERE ANY AWESOME BUILDERS WHO WANT TO SWAP THEIR AWESOME BUILDING SKILLS FOR MY MEDIOCRE SCRIPTING ABILITY?!

…I’d love you forever… D:

Okay, maybe I am, lol. Seriously though, I just haven’t felt like blogging. I’ve been Plurking and uploading pictures to my Flickr, but not blogging any of it.

I have moved onto my own parcel, thanks to Marx Dudek. It’s totally awesome, I’ve built what I call FUTUREHOUSE there. One of these days, I will have a party… maybe.

I really don’t feel like blogging anything else, so I won’t. Peace!

So, there’s a new meme going around the blog-o-verse, and I’d figure I’d join in!

Here are 5 things you may not know about real life Jessica:

1.) I’m bi-racial. My mother is white, my father is black and they’ve been married for 25 years. I don’t find I identify with one race or another, I just try and do my thing. People tend to get nervous when they ask me which of my parents is black, what race I identify with or other related questions, but there’s no reason for them to be. I’ve never met another bi- or multi- racial person who is offended by questions like this. Ask away!

2.) In middle and high school, I played percussion. I was usually first chair and was the section leader for the percussion section in high school. I marched the snare drum all four years and never had a desire to move to another instrument like quads or bass drum. Although I can play what I call ‘functional drum set’, I’ve never been a wiz at playing the kit as it never really interested me. I was the only female in my graduating class all through middle and high school, but there were a few other girls in the drum section in other grades.

3.) I wear fake glasses. I’ve always loved the look of glasses and I never understood why people would choose to wear contacts. Since freshman year in high school, I’ve been wearing glasses with prescription-less lenses. When the popular style of glasses changed from wire to heavy plastic frames, I bought new glasses. Thankfully, it costs me a fraction of what it costs other people since all I’m buying are the frames.

4.) I drink diet sodas for the taste, not the reduced calories. I’ve been drinking diet soda for so long that drinking something with sugar in it is a chore. It’s just so thick and it’s hardly refreshing. There are some sugar sodas I don’t mind as much as others, like grape and orange soda, but if I can get it as diet, I do. I’m also a Coke drinker and I can’t believe I used to prefer Pepsi. It’s simply disgusting to me now.

5.) I don’t match my socks. Starting late in middle school, I just stopped. The only thing that matters is that the socks are the same length, but other than that it doesn’t matter. I will even go out of my way to mismatch my socks. If for some reason I happen to pull a pair of matching socks from the sock drawer, I’ll put one back and try again. I don’t really know why people care to match socks, especially when you barely see them. It’s a waste of time to hunt for matches when you can just throw some on and be done. It also gives you something to talk about, should someone notice you’re wearing pots of gold on one foot and crayons on the other.

Here are 5 things you may not know about virtual life Jessyka:

1.) I’m not as old as my rez day says I am. I created my account in 2005, back when even free accounts had to be verified by credit card or PayPal. After I registered, downloaded and installed the client, I got a message about my graphics card not being supported. I was just giving it a random try, so I deleted the client and I thought I put in a request to cancel my account. Fast foward to Feburary 2008 when I get a new computer with my tax return. My younger brother had started playing a few months after I gave up and it reminded me to try again. Turns out my account never got deleted, so I got a password reminder and here I am! I’m grandfathered into 300 starting dollars and a weekly stipend of 50 dollars. Free accounts now get nothing.

2.) I’m a terrible snoop! I like to head to the mainland and cam around, peeking in peoples houses. Honestly, there isn’t that many interesting things going on. Sometimes I’ll TP into an adult club of some sort and hide in a corner, camming around with highlight transparent on, looking for people with invisible genitals on. Actually, I do that anywhere there’s a crowd. How hard is it to just DETACH it when you’re done with it? Are you really going to find yourself a position where you won’t have a few seconds to put it back on?

3.) I have a free account and I plan on keeping it that way. For some reason, I pride myself on the fact that my account states ‘payment info on file’, but not ‘payment info used’. This is because, as I mentioned before, even free accounts had to be verified. If I ever need to purchase some currency, I’ll do so through a 3rd party or my brother and not through the companies website. I don’t plan on paying the company for the privilege to use software that’s full of bugs on a totally unstable platform.

4.) My avatar is me, from my shape and the shade of my skin to my name. My real and virtual selves have the same initials and even the same number of syllables. The only difference between my first and second first names is the switch to a Y and a K instead of a I and a C. In high school, I started going by Jessyka instead of Jessica because I thought it was cool. When writing my real life name, I often find myself using my virtual last name, but it’s not hard to correct as they share three letters in the same place (the first and second letters and the second to last letter).

5.) I’m wearing the same set of skins I have from the beginning. My real life brother, who has been active in world since 2006, pointed me in the direction of a few places to get free things. I ended up in the old Calla store where I picked up several packs of freebies. Included wear Eloh Eliot’s ‘Another Skin’ in SE, the second brow option with freckles. I have yet to find another skin with similar eyebrows, skintone and freckles that I like for ANY price. It doesn’t bother me though, because they’re beautiful skins.

So, those are 5 things about me that now you know! I’m not going to tag anyone, since not too many people read my blog since I don’t update as often as I should, but I encourage you to tell us 5 things, even if it’s just about your virtual life.

Avatar sits on no mod furniture.
If I can make the HUD say OHI IM SITTING automatically, I’ll do it.
If not, I’ll make it a menu or something.

default
{
state_entry()
{
llListen(theChattinChannel, “”, NULL_KEY, “”);
}

listen(all that junk)
{
if (I heard the HUD say I’m sitting)
{
llSensor(Blah, Blah, Looking for AGENTS, really small, area);
}
}

sensor(k whatever)
{
Find out the key of who’s sitting on me;
Start the sitting/pooping/handstanding/whatever sequence with that key;
}
}

I’m so proud of myself! I actually built a cute little wall scroll!

Granted, it’s not like I’ve never built ANYTHING. I did have to built my HUD. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, really. I figured this picture needed something better than just to be slapped on a prim on stuck on my wall.

If you would like a copy, just pop by my beach house and take a copy or send me an IM! It’s set to no transfer because I don’t want anyone to sell it, but feel free to take as many as you want. :]

You can read about the picture at the artists website here: http://pop-monkey.blogspot.com/2008/06/pac-samurai.html

So, the latest up-in-arms seems to be regarding the coming ability to travel between our virtual world and those being hosted by normal users using OpenSim. The problems seem to be arising because residents are concerned about what this is going to mean to the economy of our world and how the company plans on protecting our intellectual property rights when it comes to our assets being moved from one sim to another. I think the solution is pretty simple, honestly.

Don’t move our assets. Don’t let us access our company owned inventory anywhere but on simulators owned by the company. Don’t bother trying to figure out what we’re going to do about the economy and if there should be some sort of global currency or whatever.

I don’t see the harm in leaving things exactly how it is right now with the only change being the ability to physical move my avatar from one space to another. If I’m on a company hosted server, let me access the inventory and deal with the economy that’s stored here. If I want to teleport to a friends server, I’ll be perfectly fine having only the inventory stored there to access as well as any currency systems they have in place. If that means I’ll be stuck with a Ruthed avatar, so be it.

I don’t think this will be a serious issue for a while. As far as I know, there aren’t any groups of OpenSims that are nearly as developed as the simulators we exist on in our primary virtual world. It will be a while still until they get that far AND the user base of the company’s virtual world catches up. I’m sure the vast majority of residents don’t even know there’s a such thing as OpenSim.

If someone wants to sell their wares both in the company’s and another simulator, go for it! If a resident wants to have a product both places, they’re either going to have to buy it twice or the seller is going to have to make provisions for you to get a copy for both your primary and other inventories. To me, this seems like the only choice that’s going to matter.

With a set-up like this, the only problem I can imagine is a problem that already exists: content theft. Anyone with the know-how can steal texture or copy prims and whatnot. I don’t personally know the details as I haven’t really looked into it because I’m not planning on doing any theft any time soon. When content theft happens on the company’s grid, the terms of service we agreed to helps protect our property rights. The company has to help us deal with thieves, even if that means taking them to court. If someone decides to steal content and then display, or even sell it, on an OpenSim, there may not be much the company can do, although according to the terms of service (:clears throat:):

3.3 Looooo Loo retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own.

You agree that even though you may retain certain copyright or other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create while using the Service, you do not own the account you use to access the Service, nor do you own any data Looooo Loo stores on Looooo Loo servers (including without limitation any data representing or embodying any or all of your Content). Your intellectual property rights do not confer any rights of access to the Service or any rights to data stored by or on behalf of Looooo Loo.

Yes, I censored it, lol. If you didn’t know this, you might want to read it twice. It’s honestly NOT a big deal as things are now. If I understand it correctly, it means the stuff you create in-world is YOURS, but you can’t take it outside of the company.

What I’m not quite clear on is what this will mean for taking content you created in-world to other worlds. For example, I create some shoes. If I decide to take those shoes with me to my OpenSim and sell them, am I in the wrong for taking something that is technically the companies property elsewhere? If someone else steals my sculpt map and creates my shoes in their OpenSim, are they in the wrong because they took my content or because they took the company’s content? Would the company help me in this case, or would I be on my own?

Those are really the only questions that arise from this situation in regards to intellectual property. The issues of economy and inventory and whatnot are moot if everyone stays separate.

Regardless of the drama, I’m excited for the day I can teleport somewhere and check out a build hosted on someone else’s computer… even if I have to be a puffy cloud.

I’ve been bad about blogging. I’m very sorry to anyone who wants to stay updated in my extremely exciting virtual life. I’ve been working hard on my HUD, that I’ve decided to call ThatSLife! GET IT!? It’s clever, eh? I’m going to create a separate page for it to keep updated. I was thinking at first that keeping my idea hush-hush would keep my ideas safe. After talking about it a little more on Plurk, I realize that actually documenting my ideas is the safer route. That way there’s a record of what I’ve come up with, so if someone with more coding experience tries to whip up a similar system, I can prove that I did it first!

Anyway, I’ve created the core of the system as well as poseballs that pretend to be various furnitures and things to eat. I shouldn’t have any problems creating actual poseballs with animations and transparent squares to fit over existing furniture, but I don’t think I’ll be able to create my own furniture to sell. Maybe if things pick up, I’ll create some kind of reseller package for builders to purchase and add to their wares. I’ll have to experiment with various kinds of furniture and see how easy it is to just stick a script in it and have it work with my HUD.

I’ve actually created a new look to my HUD with both a horizontal and vertical layout. Not to much else to say about that, I guess.

There are pictures after this cut that could be NSFW depending on your place of employment, so proceed with caution!
Read the rest of this entry »

My virtual life is putting along as normal, things are going well for me I think. I’ve made friends, I hang out with people and have serious conversations and whatnot. Good times are being had.

I haven’t had much time to blog because I’m elbows deep in a project. I’m working on a HUD system like The Sims. It’s going very well, I think, and it has lots of room for change and expansion. This is my first time scripting something more complex than llSetText and it’s going extremely well. I honestly don’t know if there’s going to be much of a market for such a thing, but either way, it’ll be fun to play with and it’s a great learning experience. I didn’t know I had a knack for scripting!

I’m extremely tired and my RL job is actually starting to suffer because of the long hours I’ve been putting into working on this HUD. It’s hard enough for me to get out of bed in the morning as it is and going to bed later and later because ‘I just want to finish this one part’ is making it worse.

I really don’t feel like blogging much more about it, even though I’d love to share all the details. I’m honestly afraid someone with stronger scripting skills will gank my idea and whip something together really fast. :/ I’ve searched all over the webernets in relation to The Sims and our particular virtual world and haven’t found that a system like this already exists.

Codie is having a big party on the 5th to celebrate the opening of her new sim, Rouge. I don’t know if it’s necessarily going to be open to the public or not, but if you’re a member of the Code Red group, you’ll be allowed in for sure. It’ll be an awesome, sexy time for sure! I’ve already busted out some cute, red lingerie and angel wings. :]

I hadn’t changed clothes in several days because I was spending all my time scripting. At least I liked what I was wearing. I have since changed into the outfit I’m wearing on Saturday because I’ll probably get caught up in typing away again. I put a towel on over it, though.

I’ve pretty much abandoned Twitter. Everyone I care to talk to has moved to Plurk and we’re having a gay old time. I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment and don’t have the site open like I normally do. I’m just too tired to keep up today.

That’s about all for the blog today. I wish I was home so I could take a nap and then get back to work on my project.

I’m boring lately.

Grab freebies, add to my giant folder of unsorted items, sort items for a few hours, go to sleep.

Day in, day out.

Not only am I a shut-in in my real life, I’m on in my virtual life too.

How boring…