I was chair hopping this morning for fun, and a nice girl, ZigZig Zadoq handed me a few dresses and pieces of clothing. This was pretty nice. She’s been in SL since 8/28/2004, obviously having been around a long time.

Anyway, what was interesting was the clothing… it was from Agent Case, who’s profile says she has left Second Life. So I did some digging and found this out:

When Agent Case left SL, her inventory was released with full perm into the game as freebies. For the last few weeks several shops, including my own, have been giving out these free gowns to everyone. However over the past few days several stores have been discovered selling these gowns for up to $999L a box and stocking their lucky chairs with the gowns. If anyone would like these gowns, please IM me and I will send you on the box which is copy and transferable so you can pass it on to anyone who can use a good gown. These gowns are gorgeous and well made. I haven’t counted but I am pretty sure there are over 50 gowns in the box if not closer to 100. Or come by the shop. The box is on the second floor with all the other freebies at Shape Your Destiny.

Update: The box is now available on the second floor of SYD.

Well, sounds like something to get and something to keep an eye out for and not to spend money on accidentally….

-Veyron

I tend to buy freebies or near freebies pretty often. It is a symptom of being a shopaholic. So over Christmas I was down at Eventide… um, looking around for a present for a friend (yeah that’s it). And Xcite! had these cute little naughty bears to buy for L$1 each. So I bought a few and stuff them into my ever expanding bag of infinite holding (inventory).

After Vint kicked out Bella, I felt her place needed some animal company again. Dalien and Gideon agreed completely with me. And besides, these bears had some cute, loving things to say. Mmmm…. I knew Vint would agree with me.

-Veyron

So,I tried some machinima on Second Life. It’s nothing fancy, just an experiment. I used Fraps for the capture and Virtualdub for the conversion of the capture to MPEG4. I’m sort of annoyed. I could not get a large size capture uploaded to Google Video. It keep enigmatically failing with the error condition… failed. I think my problem is I do not have any audio on the video.

So, Zoe suggested putting it on YouTube. So, I created a YouTube account, and uploaded the video. I was a bit disappointed in that it shrunk it down really small and it’s pretty fuzzy. The source compressed video is 17MB. I’m going to try working on it again this weekend, but I thought I’d put it up anyway….

Mmmm…. Sometimes you need to claim ownership to things that are yours, especially your mantourage…. What better way than to scribble your name on it. I can thank Vint for doing the branding tattoo for me. What a friend.

So…. who needs me to own their ass?

-Veyron

I hear now and then about people who have trouble with Second Life crashing their Windows PC from time to time. There are a few reasons why this might occur, but here’s one reason that you might not think of. Heat (or maybe power).

Okay, if you can run Second Life for about 5-15 minutes, and then it crashes, or your machine locks-up, heat or power is a likely candidate for the root of the problem. Now, the Second Life client has a lot of problems, but… here’s what is going on.

On a reasonably new computer while you are normally using it, it will idle down considerably. This draws less power. When you just have your normal windows display up, the 3D portion of your video card is probably turned off, and not drawing power. Your computer probably is drawing around 100 watts or less power while just surfing or playing around.

For example, an AMD X2 (Dual Processor) Athlon CPU draws about 30 watts of power when idling. When it ramps up to full speed it alone will draw up to 120 watts of power. This does not count the memory, support chips, the hard drives, etc.

A 7000 series Nvidia GPU can draw up to 150 watts of power when fully driven, sometimes more. Every watt of power consumed is turned into heat. Your power supply is also not 100% efficient, between 60 and 80% efficient. My PC at home when running Second Life probably draws close to 400 watts of power. This is a lot of heat for a home PC.

Most generic computers you buy off the shelf are not designed for 100% duty cycle for any extended period of time. Worse, as the high rises, electrical resistance rises, producing more heat.

This heat problem is going to manifest itself as being able to run for a while - the system is cool - and then crash after a while - it has over heated. Usually the video card over heats first. So, how do you fix this? Your number one problem is probably dust. Dust impairs the ability of the fans and heat sinks to remove heat. Open up your computer (after turning it off) and blow it out with air and clean it up good. Heat is also the number one killer of computers and hard disks. This is going to go a long way to solving problems. Get rid of the dust. If you smoke around the computer, that makes it worse.

Next, you can try to improve airflow into the computer. Do this intelligently. You want to blow cool air in and take hot air out. Usually, blow in from the front and out from the rear. You may also want to upgrade the CPU cooling unit on your computer. This can be somewhat difficult to do, depending on your computer design. You can find a lot of cooling fans and upgrades from companies like Newegg or Computergate. Buy ball bearing fans, avoid sleeve bearing fans.

Next problem might be an under powered power supply. It may be over taxed and the voltage might be sagging, causing a crash. If it looks cheap, it probably is. On most PCs, you can replace it with a bigger, unit. Newegg also sells power supplies. Look for high efficiency units. Do not buy a fan-less unit, as you are going to run it HOT. A good power supply is a good investment.

Lastly, you might look into upgrades. I’ll talk about that next post.

-Veyron

Zoe Connolly is now keeping a blog on the Second Life Blogosphere. Should be a good way to keep track of the growing number of Second Life Bloggers. Thanks Zoe!

-Veyron

In addition to seeing Gideon last night, there were a few other interesting people there. TheDiva was there spinning tunes and getting me up to speed on Gideon’s modus operandi. TheDiva has a pretty interesting blog, the Fashion Police, and keeps a pretty interesting blog on The Diva’s Diary.

Another pair of celebrities at the party were Daphne Abernathy and Tamara Kirshner of the blog and podcast Going Broke with Daphne and Tamara. I’ve been listening to the two of them for their first couple of podcasts, and they’re pretty good. They’re giving out some good fashion advice and some interesting interviews with the designers in Second Life.

I might have missed a few other people there, as I came late. Oh, and the contest for the L$500,000 is also pretty interesting. You just have to submit an idea. They have some concepts on the Coke pavilion to get you started.

-Veyron

Ahhh…. what a man. I was so caught up with being with him, I forgot to take a snapshot. TheDiva played a slow song for us and we danced for a bit. Very nice. We’ll see if we will have any adventures together. Oh, he did say that Gideon Television will be up for a second season of adventures.

-Veyron

Coming in at #95 is a Second Life girl on their Hot 100. Interestingly the Second Life girl avoided Hottest Cartoon Babes. Who said it was cartoon love?

The model is Callie Cline. They omitted her name from the posting, probably to keep her from being blitzed with proposals, both decent and indecent….

I was listening to Second Cast this morning on the drive into work. About in the middle of Episode #60, I about drove off the road. It turns out that Steve Coulson is the man of my dreams or at least his Avatar is. He is also the man behind the YesButNoButYes insanity.

::sigh:: Gideon has not returned my email, but I see that I might be able to stalk him Wednesday night at the Coca-Cola event. Oh, and Coke has a contest in which they are giving away L$500,000….

-Veyron

Tiessa mentioned the word, mantourage the other night, and it struck me as an interesting concept. The Mean Girls Guide to SL has an entry about building your own mantourage. I’m looking forward to the next related post on the guy’s perspective.

Hmmm… (queue evil music.)

I spoke about Second Life friend who ended his account yesterday. As Vint said commented about a similar experience, I believe he did come back on a day or so later. I received an IM from another woman relaying some message about his “cousin or such” is online in Second Life. I was reasonably sure it was him back online.

I think that IM disturbed me even more. I felt like I had been unceremoniously and brutally rejected. Then a weak attempt to pretend as if nothing happened. I did not respond to the IM and never spoke with him again (if it was him). It was too much to deal with again - drama like this I do not need.

It is probably better that the old Avatar is simply laid to rest rather then resurrected in some poor replica.

No, but I found something is just too much for a Second Life. The Tantra Total Woman HUD. Here’s what it is advertised to do:

You have lived with it all of your life. It is what makes you a woman. The Tantra Total Woman Hud now allows you to experience being a total woman in SL.

The hud features:

- Realistic Cycles
- Realistic Odds
- Multiple Birth Control Options
- Multiple Modes (Desire Pregnancy / Desire Risk)
- Automatic Pregnancy Determination
- Works with Xcite! Brand Products

99% accurate? What goes wrong? How does it go wrong?

Obviously, the next logical necessary thing to add would be a paternity test kit….

Hmmm…. This seems to be a bit of an overkill, but I suppose if you’re into this sort of thing, it might be just the thing you’re looking for.

I didn’t see a sign for the condom HUD and I am sort of curious as to how it works inside Second Life. Do you give out the HUD to your partner? In fact, I’m getting more curious by the moment as to how the whole things works now…. Multiple modes? What happens if you do get pregnant? Are you required to go buy a prim baby? Adopt a baby avatar? Does this mean you can collect child support from the male avatar? What if they come out smudged?

-Veyron

When I last spoke about avatars and where they go when they die, something was on my mind about avatar death. I meet a really nice avatar about a month ago. He was fairly new to Second Life, but already had a cute body, skin, and nice clothes. He was also very charming, but was having a hard time with the “reality” of Second Life.

I spent about 5 days talking with him on and off. There was a mutual attraction to each other and I was beginning to get attached to him. On a Thursday night, I had some other business in Second Life to take care of and I was not able to spend much, if any time with him.

Friday morning, I received an IM in my email basket that he could not take the reality of Second Life and longer and deleted his account. By the time I got online he was already offline and gone. It was a surprisingly traumatic event for me. His avatar is gone from the database. I’m left with no way anymore to contact him. The only thing I have left is his friendship card, which has his picture and his old avatar profile. But his profile is gone from the database. He doesn’t even appear on my friends list anymore.

I wonder if I have the only copy now. The only piece of the avatar left is a card I carry in my inventory. No tombstone, no grave, no monument - nothing else - simply de-rezzed. Afterwards, I was upset and angry, and I almost deleted his card - out of spite for leaving me like that - but I didn’t. For which I’m grateful I kept the card. We had a good time for a few days and the card helps to remind me of that.

Tiana Meriman post about playing with the avatar shape sliders reminded me of this pretty funny image I got from someone - I can’t recall who gave me a this picture right now….

This is what happens when you move the sliders all the way to 100 percent.

What a pair… cracks me up every time I see it.

-Veyron