Making The Shot Part 1

Many people seem to have found their niche in Second Life be they merchants, artists, builders, socialites, griefers, or whatnot. I am not among them. Instead I try my hand at many things and quickly get bored when I feel even a modicum of mastery at the task. In this respect, my Second Life is very much like my First Life (FL).

But one activity inFL that I stuck with for quite some time was photography. Sitting in my basement is a large collection of cameras, lenses, tools, and such rapidly becoming obsolete and possibly unusable. Based on praise and even a few awards, my mastery of the art was fairly high. Then I stopped.

Skipping past a long story to the present, I've often thought of resuming the craft inSL despite the lack of having high-end post-process tools and lately I've been practicing. Below is a raw (though resized) image from today's work.

This is a relatively straight picture but because it was inSL it took a bit more work than pointing a camera and clicking. For he sky inFL, for example, you'd have to wait for the right conditions, snap madly while everything is right, pray for the best, and still spend some time in Photoshop (or the like) if you wanted odd colors. Thanks to Mescaline Tammas's efforts, I simply "dialed in" the SL sky I wanted, in this case the Verdigris preset (Web). Getting the clouds where I wanted was still up to chance. There is no way to freeze exactly what I wanted, but they can be fixed in post. Of course I used the Ultra settings in Edit > Preferences > Graphics for the best looking water and texture details.

Another advantage of working inSL is model control. For this shot I didn't use any special animation, pose, or expression. Aside from cobbling together some great kit from various vendors the model is pretty stock. The main control was telling myself to "hold," though doing so was as simple as right-clicking on an attached prim and choosing Edit when everything was right, then moving the camera. Here is how it looked to me on screen:

You can see that I used the attached shield as my edit point. Then I Ctrl-Alt-Moused around for the camera view. It seems there is a way to simulate telephoto compression (Web) inSL, but as it wasn't necessary for this shot I didn't bother trying to figure out how I accidentally do it sometimes.

Next? I don't have Photoshop, but I have the "lite" version and I have GIMP and Acorn so I might do some post, maybe softening the image a bit and doing something to separate the figure from the background. But this is a start and I might make a decent photographer inSL yet. Since the World has more photographers than you can shake a prim at so one more won't make a difference. Maybe.

My New Job with the Tribe

Shep Korvin, inventor of the Lucky Chair and head of the Lucky Tribe, paid me a very high compliment when he asked me to contribute to his Lucky Tribe blog (Web). Primarily I'll write about the great prizes that Tribe members can earn when and I'll be giving out "Kudos Points" for the first people to read these entries. Learn more about the Tribe in-world with this SLurl.

Insurance and Folder Perms and Backups

Recent events and a discussion of the SL asset permission system on Tatero Nino's blog Dwell On It (Web) has got me thinking once again (earlier post) that some sort of insurance system should be developed to protect against inventory loss. The event: A club I was building disappeared from my inventory. The in-world copy was deleted to conserve prims and now only one link set remains, some carefully adjusted curtains. Maybe the cause was some form of stupidity on my part. Some recent health issues have left me not entirely "here," so to speak. But if the cause was similar to my previous losses then I'll be well and truly upset.

At one time I owned nearly every dragon pet made by Winx Whiplash, beautiful L$400 creatures that captured my heart the first time I saw them. The collection took nearly two years to build and it disappeared over night. Along with an expensive and now unobtainable riding unicorn and dozens upon dozens of other critters, avatars, and other objects from a variety of folders. My Wryms dragons were copyable and I had the backups. Same with some other objects, but the dragons were gone. All the standard recovery methods failed and I was without my pets or the funds to replace them.

If this had been Real Life some homeowner's insurance would have covered the property loss and I'd have the cash to rebuild the herd. Sure, I'd have to prove the loss and there would be paperwork, but eventually my losses would be made whole. Why can't there be insurance inSL?

For one, it would require the cooperation of The Lab, and their acquisition of XStreet leads me to believe they'd rather have us spend money to replace assets than to use resources to recover or replace them. Actually, the arrangement could be a boon if there was a way to verify that an asset was no longer in the databases (think UUID) then a requested replacement could be sent via Xstreet in a manner much like the Midnight Mania prize redelivery system developed by Shep Korvin.

Secondly, planning for schemers and hackers would mean considerable investment in a secure system. I don't believe The Lab would be willing to work with someone to do this even if a turn-key solution was provided. Again, it would not be to the benefit of The Lab if they are not convinced it is a serious issue. And would you want to admit that your servers lose inventory?

Maybe The Lab could be convinced to let users set permissions on our folders and assets. The folders for Objects or Scripts, for example, can't be deleted. I would love to have the ability to set "can't delete" on folders I've created or even on individual items in a folder. It wouldn't be fool proof (there are too many talented fools) and it wouldn't prevent on-server losses, but it's an idea.

Or maybe The Lab could implement backups. Everything that I have with full C/M/T permissions is eventually copied to an Alt I created for storage. Same for things that I can transfer and but seldom use. This has helped on a few occasions, but won't solve the problem with losing No Trans assets. Here is a chance for The Lab to make some more money: Backups for Premium accounts. Just a thought. I have two premium accounts and my brother has a third. That is $216USD per year they get from our household. Some value-added consideration would be nice.

G'Bye, Prospero

Prospero Linden leaves Second Life® and the memorials at his office (SLurl) have begun. You will be missed, Prospero.

The freebies from his office are gone but I'm sure you can still get them at Sarah Nerd's place. Handy stuff.

See: Dwell On It

See: His (rapidly changing) Wiki entry.

See: His user page in the Wiki.

Lens Flare?

While most people seem to simply stand around in-word even when seating is available, I like to relax ... "take a load off" my avie's feet. So sometime this morning I was sitting at the Isle of Lesbos on a soap bubble, the ground, and various hamburgers. The larger burger I'm laying on in this picture is a favorite. It is very comfy to strap some Pikas to my feet and lay on a big, soft bun with the smells of grilled meat wafting from below.

If you look carefully at the picture, though, you'll see what looks like a lens flare* just below my left shoulder, mimicking the bands in my hair. I've seen this in several photos to date but I don't have any other examples. Despite that, my vague memory leads me to believe it has something to do with the Glow function of a prim (Web). The bands in my hair have a smidge of Glow added to them. When I get some time I'll have to investigate this, especially as of late I'm adding glow to more items that I build.

* "Lens flare is the light scattered in lens systems through generally unwanted image formation mechanisms, such as internal reflection and scattering from material inhomogeneities in the lens" (Wikipedia; Web).