Anna and the Bunches

If/once you “get it”, Second Life is pretty cool. It can be a lot of different things, and its potential has barely even been scratched. Sure, the tools are cumbersome, but they are getting better. And some of Linden Lab’s policies suck, but that will just drive people to OSGrid, eventually.Anyway, there are people in Second Life that I like being able to communicate with. However, when I’m at work, it’s a lot of trouble to create an SSH tunnel home, then forward a text-only client like ommviewer-light just so I can log in and see who is online.

I thought about titling this post “Eve and Vendetta in the THUNDERDOME”, but sanity prevailed. You win this round, sanity.I played through the trial run of Eve Online. It worked without much complaint in wine. Let’s look at the things I think are cool about Eve Online, and the problems and realizations that came from the trial.Okay, the star map. I could spend hours just playing with the gorram star map.

So, I’ve been playing Vendetta Online for a while now, and the shiny factor is starting to fade. My neophilia guarantees that I will like any sufficiently shiny thing for at least a couple weeks. However, the game underneath the shiny is lacking, and it may be lacking in too many ways for me to justify playing it.The biggest problem, by a long shot, is the player base. 60 players seems to be the absolute upper bound at any given time, at least while I’ve been playing.

I’ve recently discovered a game called Vendetta Online. This may be the MMORPG I have been waiting for: real-time skill-based combat, space flight, trading and mining, space flight, an interesting back story, space flight, and extensive moddability through custom skins, binds, and plugins. Oh, and it’s a space flight game.I love space shooters. Put me in a cockpit and give me 3 dimensions of unfettered movement, and I may as well be in Valhalla.

This tutorial will explain how to create RAW terrain files for OpenSim and Second Life using Blender and the Gimp.Before we beginYou will need the following software for this tutorial. All of this software is free and open source. Blender, a professional 3d modelling tool. Blender is powerful but complex, and basic blender knowledge is assumed for this tutorial. Blender will be used to actually create the heightmap. The Gimp, a powerful program for creating and editing raster (i.

A new major version of emacs is out, and it includes dbus support. This is great, because it means we can do things like this:(require ‘dbus)(defun send-desktop-notification (summary body timeout) “call notification-daemon method METHOD with ARGS over dbus” (dbus-call-method :session ; use the session (not system) bus “org.freedesktop.Notifications” ; service name “/org/freedesktop/Notifications” ; path name “org.freedesktop.Notifications” “Notify” ; Method “emacs” 0 “" summary body ‘(:array) ‘(:array :signature “{sv}”) ‘:int32 timeout))(defun pw/compile-notify (buffer message) (send-desktop-notification “emacs compile” message 0))(setq compilation-finish-function ‘pw/compile-notify)Add this to your .

I like Netflix. I think they’re a great service, reasonably priced, and they have completely replaced cable television for me. However, I have found one problem. According to Netflix:If you are renting a series or seasons, we will ship the DVDs in order. That means:…* If there is a wait for a particular DVD in a series, will we wait until we ship you that DVD until we ship the next DVD in that series.

Several years ago I mused on the decentralization of Second Life, Linden Labs’ virtual world. Shortly after that post, I dropped out of the metaverse entirely for more than a year.While I was off not paying attention, it seems that almost all of my predictions have come true. An open-source server for running a simulator and/or grid, OpenSim, has been created. OpenSim appears to have solved many of the problems, and implemented many of the predictions, of my post from 2006.

I’ve released a new version of d20tools. In addition to using a new, simpler file saving/loading scheme and better keyboard handling, the new feature is also a lot more stable. Other highlights include a more sensible entity/group management system, and the ability for any creature to be a henchman.Get it here.I’m lifting my moratorium on D&D 4e, as well. This means that d20tools will eventually support 4e creatures. However, this is a huge undertaking, and I have to decide how best to handle it.

I’ve been reading a lot of near-future science fiction and speculative nonfiction lately, and as a result I’ve been contemplating the idea of transhumanism and what it means for us as a species and a culture. Transhumanism is decently defined by wikipedia, and has been explored in fiction by Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, and others. It has been discussed extensively in the non-fiction sphere as well: Ray Kurtzweil is probably the most well-known thinker discussing the topic.