• Straylight Run
  ("Straylight Run")
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when the sun came up
we were sleeping in
sunk inside our blankets
sprawled across the bed
and we were dreaming

there are moments when
when I know it ends
the world revolves around us
and we're keeping it
keep it all going
this delicate balance
vulnerable, all knowing

sing like you think no one's listening
you would kill for this
just a little bit
sing like you think no one's listening
you would kill for this
just a little bit

sing me something soft
sad and delicate
or loud and out of key
sing me anything
we're glad for what we've got
done with what we've lost
our whole lives laid out right in front of us

21 July 2007 at 11:15 pm | 1 Comment »
soundtrack

Kent's birthday was Friday.

21 July 2007 at 10:05 pm | No Comments »
the daily things, kent

Another bit of SL fun:

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I made this Monday. It's a small avatar that rotates slowly. I was inspired mostly by the Monoliths from Warhammer 40,000 (having just finished Dark Crusade finally) but someone told me it looks like the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser. I haven't seen the movies but I didn't really see any resemblance between them beyond the fact that they're both movable cube-things.

Anyway, in the video above the avatar is scripted to morph, but this time it's on a touch-based cycle verses the ones earlier that "played" an animation. The box moves between fixed states and as you can see it really can become nearly anything if you just configure the pieces creatively.

I'm now working on a "necklace" that becomes a full helmet on click similar to the box. Can you tell I'm having fun?

18 July 2007 at 8:25 pm | No Comments »
video, virtual worlds, animation, dark crusade, hellraiser, lament configuration, morph, prims, Second Life, warhammer 40k

Over the weekend I found myself a new toy in Second Life. The process of scripting objects to move of their own accord is a painful and annoying experience for the average person. I'm also told it's no real picnic even for experienced scripters either. I made an avatar a while ago that is scripted to convert the front iris covering the "entrance" into a weapon when you click on it. It was a pretty cool effect but one that took me several days of coding to get to work correctly. Pretty sad when you realize that it's that much work just to flip between two states.

So I vaguely remembered hearing a while ago about this guy, Todd Borst, who had created something called "The Puppeteer." It basically massively simplifies the process of animating objects to move around on their own. What was several days of teeth-grinding work for me is now a few minutes of fucking around. In fact it's so easy that when I started playing with it I was really at a loss for what to do. So the first thing I did was just take some prims (the "building blocks" in SL) and move them around. I ended up scripting this rather cool platform that becomes a smaller altar of sorts.

Get the latest version of Flash if you see this for over 10 seconds.

Once I had a better idea of it I put my new toy to use on something a bit more functional; this was actually a "weapon" of sorts that I had been working on. But my specialty is full-blown avatars so I expanded it slightly, fooled around with it, and turned it into one. Using the Puppeteer I managed to make it convertible.

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I'm really, really excited for the new things I can make now. I have visions of an avatar with reconstructible armor that morphs into weapons or shielding on-click. Or a cloud of nanobots that appears when "summoned." I'm so excited!

16 July 2007 at 11:24 am | 1 Comment »
video, virtual worlds, animation, avatars, morph, prims, scripting, Second Life, slboutique

As I've mentioned previously, the (relatively) small company that I work for, which even at its level was still the largest company I've ever worked for, was recently acquired by a super-massive internetz organization with a global presence. I went from working at a well-off start up to being Borgerized into a big, big corporate environment.

The atmosphere in the office has been pretty normal these last months even as we've had this hovering around everywhere, and yesterday the deadline for the FTC to veto the deal passed without incident. Contracts were signed, it was Official.

Joshua is now corporate.

I had to sit through a four hour orientation this morning that felt, at times, like indoctrination into Amway or a cult. It's probably just my usual pessimism but, while I'm certain they at least all think they're sincere, the corporate environment is more than a little strange to me. I'm curious as to what will change from the things I'm used to in the coming months; everything's more or less the same at the moment, but I know how this stuff goes. The reservations don't crop up until after the honeymoon ends.

Ah well. Pour the champaign while it's still nice I guess.

12 July 2007 at 2:17 pm | 4 Comments »
the daily things