Monday, July 7, 2008

Dateline 2008-06-07: The Week in Review

Sneakiepeek:
Qee Nishi Rocks the House at Shengri La



















Greetings and Salutations Avies!

It's been a busy week, chock-full of fun and good times for all! so lets get the ball a-rollin' as we take a walk forward through time from this time last week...

Zaius Plaza Build
Zaius Plaza, currently under construction (of course, isnt everything?) is rapidly becoming freebie heaven for OSGrid. Contributions are coming in en-masse from Shenlei Winkler and Nebadon Izumi, both importing content via SecondInventory they have created over the years on the Linden Labs grid. Both have been content creators on the SL platform for three years or so. Shenlei's mall will contain her offerings, and Nebadon has set up the bottom three floors of OKC Tower as a freebie-zone and Art Gallery. Both creators are donating the body of their imported work to OSGrid users, if you seem 'em in world be sure to say thanks!

Additionally, OKC Tower is also a community freebie-zone, so if you have content you'd like to share, come on by Zaius Plaza and drop it off at OKC Tower.


Bade Plaza Build
Bade Plaza is a build I'm conducting pretty much solo, so it goes in fits and starts as I move around between evangelizing and supporting OpenSim and OSGrid, creating content, and otherwise taking care of business.

Having gotten a little tired of working on all these techie-looking projects in the midst of my more or less pastoral digs at Hoffman Sim, I decided to make use of a work plat I had established some time ago at 500m altitude; going to and from rapidly became a pain.


Bade Plaza Under Construction


So, on a whim, I decided to make a decent teleportation system (I know, this tale is supposed to be about Bade Plaza - bear with me a sec).

This actually came together quite nicely; I'd recently tested bulk upload with a ton of rich textures from Filter Forge, one of my favorite sources of free textures. Great software too from the look of it - but I dont do windows.

The scripting evolved quite naturally from a combination of a waterfall script, an alpha-adjusted tie-die texture, a posing stand script, and a couple of calls too llRezObject and llSetPos. Look for the system in a package (real soon now) over at OKC Tower in Zaius Plaza, or pop over to Bade Plaza and take a copy of one of the operating units.

Bade Plaza Teleportation Device

And with that feeble seguey I'll get back to Bade Plaza. Bade is an unusual build; it's a small city (tiny really) consisting of four approximately identical apartment buildings in each of the four corners; the region is layed out approximately symmetrically, and each of the buildings are joined to the others by walkways couched in gardens and aqueducts. The region is surrounded and bisected on north and south axis by waterways, with a central pool.

The apartment buildings provide ready dwelling spaces for region squatters/homesteaders. They also provide the-ground level support for a massive 200m+ skyscraper called Blade Tower that dominates the entire rest of the city. Tower space is available only by special arrangement (contact yours truly with your ideas if interested).

Oh, and you can see the teleporters in action there too.

AdamZaius comes to OSGrid and Brings His Regions With Him
Boy, Howdy!

Apparently, AdamZ doesn't believe in doing things small. So far, he's dropped a few tens of servers on the grid, practically doubling the number of regions attached. What's more, he isn't finished yet. By my reckoning, from the hints he's dropped on #osgrid at FreeNode IRC, he will own fully 4/5ths of OSGrid's regions by the time he's finished. What a freakin' load test for the UGMAI! Go AdamZ!

The InterOp Love Fest Continues
After week-before-last's Linden Lab powows, Which Linden's Office Hours were a little anticlimactic and highly technical. Only the AWG hardcores were in attendance; I think John Q. and Mrs. Public are growing weary of detail, as I note their attendance is beginning to slowly fall off. Probably such things go in bursts anyway.

Which's Office Hours were more a brainstorming session than not, though I think (s)he may have preferred it to be more of a presentation. I don't think (s)he got finished, and was perhaps a bit worn out from the difficulties of trying to communicate clearly and effectively one's ideas in cleartext. Of course, anyone who cares about the issue has their own ideas about how all this should work; not all of them are cluefull. 'Nuff Said. Here's a link to a transcript of Which's Office Hours.

And Finally....Party at Shenlei's Shengri La!
Ok, lets get a couple of things out of the way right off the bat, and then we'll get to the pix:
1. This was hands-down the best party I have ever attended in Second Life. No question about it. The Host (Rez Tone) and Hostess (Shenlei Winkler), were phenomenal, the people in attendance were notable and photogenic, as was the venue; and then there was ...
2. QEE NISHI. Qee spins the techno. Qee spins the rave. Qee spins the trance. Qee spins it all in a contiuous flowing stream of cosmic notification that she is rockin' the house. I just can't say enough about Qee. Her av is the picture of her sound. A total package - absolutely incredible.

And the last bit of party news before we get into the photojournalism:
Shenlei and Rez are planning to collaborate with Qee on OSGrid's first major event. Heavy iron is being donated to carry the load of 40+ highly decorated and animated avatars and scripts. It's gonna be a party to remember! Sometime in mid to late August. Keep your eyes glued to this blog for more details on this event as it unfolds.

So, here's the pics from Shenlei's Party this past weekend at Shengri La:

This is Shengri La on the night of the party:

















Here's our beloved host and hostess in proper form. Rez veiled in particles on the left, and Shenlei on the right in the articulated wings.


















Nebadon Izumi (one of my OSGrid Ops colleagues) and his good friend Coke Supply Get Down on the dancefloor:


















The inimitable Qee Nishi!

















Qee show's us what it is that's sexy about technology:



















Qee against a backdrop of Rez's molecular construct. By any chance would that be a caffiene molecule Rez?

















That's it for now, a fun and busy week!

Celebrate content! We sure did!

Cheers,
James
aka Laz/Hiro/daTwitch

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