Last post was about my favorite shield, the proTEC from AubreTec. The obvious flip side to that is an offensive weapon. I don’t always have it on, but the psiTEC II from AubreTec is a great device to have. The weapon (it’s not really a gun) is designed to attach into your head… yes, in your head. It then can (and usually does) hide inside your head. This way you do not look armed and there is no overt weaponry being displayed. It is also very difficult to see with show transparent, especially if you have a head full of prim hair on.

It has a whole range of attack options, but do not use it for forms of evil (i.e. griefing):

1. KILL - Slicing through shields like butter, this weapon has caused almost instant death through every shield we’ve tested, including the most high-end shielding systems in SL.

2. ORBIT - Launch your opponent straight up to the tune of 35-80 MILLION meters*. This amount of force will distort your opponent’s av (no, really - see the pics).

3. PULSE - Even stronger than ORBIT, this attack offers the strongest push available in SL, typically launching your enemies so high that SL can no longer calculate altitude.

4. DISRUPT - Launch bots, vehicles - nearly any active physical object - off-world. See the look on your opponent’s face (rhetorical) when his $700L attack bot ends up back in his lost and found.

5. BLITZ - This attack uses unstable physics to disrupt your target. Because of the nature of this attack, we cannot guarantee results, unfortunately, as they depend on a number of variables, but effects can include death, bizarre relocations, or incredible push, even on push-restricted parcels.

6. TRAP - Can’t sit on it to get out. Can’t sit on anything outside of it to get out, either. Our smart trap is one of the most irritating traps in SL.

7. BURN - This tracking flame does a constant stream of adjustable damage to your enemy. A popular aubreTEC favorite, Burn has been souped up with a new blazing-fast movement engine.

8. SMOKE - This cloud of smoke follows your target, obscuring their vision and making their position constantly apparent.

9. IMITATE - Once a popular plug-in, IMITATE now comes included in every psiTEC. This gag allows you to imitate your target by creating an object that allows you to speak using their name.

10. TELEPATHY - Want to listen to your far-away friends? Zoom in on a conversation with your camera and hear from afar. Try not to use this to invade privacy, okay?

11. TRACE - These creates a tracking stream of particles above your target’s avatar, enabling you to follow their movements without giving away your own position.

12. HUNT - Keep yourself out of range while still attacking your enemy with this sim-scouring hunter. This attack will search the entire sim (up to 768m) for your target and BLITZ ‘em long-distance.

13. SHOCKWAVE - Need some breathing room in combat? Push & damage everybody in a 20m radius.

14. BERSERK - Instantly attack everybody (except your friends) within a 96m radius.

The best part is it interfaces with the proTEC and can tell you who is attacking you and optionally attack back. It’s easy to use and not too complicated. It has some other nice features, such as being able to rez objects out of your inventory. One built in item is a work light that hovers over you, you can rez and de-rez it on command.

It’s a handy weapon to have for certain situations.

Okay, I admit it. I’m armed. Well, sometimes. I think Zoe has better weapons than I do….

No, I’m not a griefer, but a couple of times I was harassed by griefers and given a pretty hard time. So, this girl got armed quite some time ago. Before we talk about weapons, I thought I’d mention shielding.

My favorite, and only, shield in Second Life is the Aubretec proTEC HUD Shield. The shield is about as good as they come, with quite a few options and features:

Inner Shield - a tight-fitting shield that deflects bullets and other attacks.

Outer Shield - a 10m radius shield that only activates when penetrated.

Interceptors - Rezzes plates between you and bullets to deflect objects that pose a threat to you.

Neutralizer - let your shield scan for oncoming objects, such as bullets, and shove them away from you.

Movelock - the standard anti-push measure for light to moderate push scripts.

Cloaking - render your avatar partially invisible, to make yourself a more difficult visual target.

Non-Phys - an invisible personal “vehicle” that uses smooth, non-physical movement - preventing you from being pushed by anything, ever. This also allows you to travel through solid objects and offers protection against non-physical bullets. While in the Non-Phys shield, you will look as though your av is flying (complete with hover up and hover down anims), so people never need know you’re using it.

OS (”Oh, Shit!”) Shield - in trouble? Click the OS button and you’ll be instantly lifted 300m, and a huge, solid, THICK prim shield will rez around you for the most solid prim protection SL can offer. Arm the shield, and it will automatically push anything that touches it - except you and your stuff, that is - hard.

It is a low lag device and I have never had any problems with it. You just wear it as a HUD and then it will make itself mostly invisible.

An interesting thing about it is when the Interceptors rez to intercept an incoming bullet, a semi-circle shield rezes in front of the bullet and will glow with a color you define.

While Vint was taking this picture of Vincent and myself someone was driving around and shooting people. I could see the shield rezzing in front of me (and Vincent).

-Veyron

So, after all these years I finally acquired an iPod a few months ago. I found to to be a far better device that I was expecting and I found that iTunes works pretty good. Okay, so I’m behind the times in this area….

Anyway I started playing with podcasts for my drive to and from work. I found one that is pretty good. Nice and short. It’s geared more towards n00bs, but it still has some interesting information. The Traveling Avatar has all sorts of tips and has some humor as well. The also have a transcript of the podcast on the website if you don’t want to listen to it. This post on the “Drama” is pretty amusing… especially after the credits have played (which is not in the transcript).

Since this next party is beginning to sound like a Neko pile, some of you have asked about where to shop for Neko I thought I’d put up some information. The best all around place to shop seems to be Jungle Voodoo in the Temenos Sim. Hybrid Street in the Gnoma Sim is another good place top shop. I bought my ears, eyes and tail from OTCR.

PWND Magazine has almost a complete issue devoted to Neko clothing, equipment and culture.

Since we have had some discussion over what to do at the next blogger party, I thought we might for fun have a little vote on it. The consensus seems to be a Neko theme again, but some avatars might not have a Neko outfit.

I own some land in a group of private sims known as Otherland. It’s a pretty interesting group of private sims with interesting terrain and some pretty neat private houses. It is almost all residential with restrictions on what you can build and how. So, it does not look anything like the mainland, and it is not boring looking like some other private sims.

One of the most interesting builds in all of Second Life is Kasteel Verloren in the Verloren sim. The castle occupies over half of the sim and has quite a few floors you can explore. Just seeing it is worth the trip.

I blogged about our adventures there, and Wrath has a more detailed (maybe selective) account of what happened, and some good pictures.

I like to wander around Otherland just seeing some of the interesting builds and people. You can buy land in Otherland, but it can actually be hard to find an open lot.

See if you can find the Stargate they have built in one of the sims (hint: it’s underwater - but visible from the air).

-Veyron

There’s an interesting new service out there for owners of land that have griefing problems - Banlink. It is sort of a group ban list that can be shared between other groups. It’s probably a good idea, but there are the usual concerns about who is banning who and if you get banned from one place, you might find yourself banned from a lot of places.

It is interesting that you can lookup your avatars’ “rap sheet” on the site. Some places on the grid are already using Banlink. Even the griefers do not seem to be happy about it, which is probably a good thing. My only concern is how you might appeal any sort of banning that might happen. The grid is pretty large now and it gives griefers lots of targets to work on before they get banned from SL (if ever). The positive part of it is that griefers may not be able to escape generating a rap sheet that other land owners can use.

Rumor has it that since ratings have been removed that Banlink or some sort of API for it to use will be intergrated into the Second Life client in the near future.

I had a good time over at Zoe’s place for a blogger get together. Vint Falken, October Hush, Tianna Meriman, Katrina Mishow, Chloe Streeter,

I missed DesertWolf Longstaff as I came a bit late, and I also missed the ever amusing Wrath Paine and I didn’t see Tiessa at the party, but I heard she did show up later.

We’ll have to do it again. Since it was mostly girls, maybe we should hire some entertainers next time…. Hmmm….

-Veyron

I found an interesting and useful website today… Avatar Toolbox. It is a useful site of basic and not so basic things most Avatars will want to do. I was looking for a way to make an invisible prim in Second Life. Every prim I tried to make invisible had this outline to it. Avatar Toolbox has a script that will make the prim invisible - very invisible - you can’t find with with show transparent.

The items talked about in the web pages are mostly freebies from the author. It also has some articles and links on prim hair, prim clothes and prim shoes.

Useful site.

-Veyron

Last Sunday, I made a comment about having a flags of the world on Bikini ’s while we were having a good time and I had put on a USA bikini. Vint has taken that idea and is really running with it - she has started the Second Life Bikini Project. In case you don’t have a Bikini for your country, she has a Photoshop template for making your own.

After much internal debate, I’ve also decided to try to Photoshop up - improve upon - the pictures I have been taking in world. I have never worked with a purely computer generated image. I’m used to working with Real Life photographs I take, so this should be an interesting experience.

I’ll be seeing if I can produce a few good shots myself.

-Veyron

Every now and then I tinker a bit with Linden Scripting Language aka LSL. Nothing spectacular - just a bits here and there to see what can be done. A great reference source for scripting information is the LSL Wiki.

LSL is a simple and reasonably powerful event driven language. It has some limitations on what you can do, some of which are pretty significant. But since a LSL script can communicate with the outside world, via HTTP (web) and email requests, you could offload a lot of functionality to another non-second life server.

An example of that would be the TrustNet system I blogged about a few days ago. The HUD runs the LSL scripts that communicate back to TrustNet servers where the database is and I’m sure some processing is done.

-Veyron

Lounging by the beach, this bikini is from one of my favorite stores, Chic Boutique. Maybe I should try some surfing next. I have a surf board I received as a gift from a nice guy….

-Veyron

Yes, this is mostly unrelated to Second Life, but it seemed to useful not to blog. I always have a hard time remembering where I posted a comment on a blog or seeing when someone followed up on it. This apparently new service, co.mments.com looks to solve that problem. You sign up for a quick account, and then you can add pages where you comment to (they have a button you can add to Firefox or I.E.). Then you can subscribe to another feed that will show updates to those threads you have commented on. Neat.

-Veyron

Vint, Zoe, Wrath and I were out the other night and had a pretty good time. Vint and Wrath have some good shots of the adventure on their blogs, including some that I took of Queen Vint on the throne on Snapzilla.

All and all a pretty good time, even more fun when Wrath went into the sauna in the castle while we were in the hot tub. There’s even another bikini to be seen….

-Veyron

Found an interesting book for Veyron to read on the beach, the Kama Sutra. Then suddenly this killer whale started jumping out of the water near me. Must have been a boy whale or something….

I don’t know… Maybe he was try to read the book too? He seemed awfully excited.

-Veyron