VT Medieval dance

This week I've done a couple of builds that finish off a process that I started summer last year. Simply put: I've built the last two cells that will replace old-style Z&A cells in the shop (they go on sale next week). So, at the moment, I'm actually "between projects". I've got a couple of ideas of what to work on next, and doubtless there's a couple or so more new cell designs in me yet. There's also the small matter of a fair to work towards this June.

So, yesterday afternoon, while contemplating a couple of things in the workshop, I saw the announcement that VT's dance yesterday was Medieval-themed and, of course, Miss Eve was DJing. Have fun shopping for an outfit and make a point of going out and being social, or stick in the workshop and tinker with things? I even surprised myself by selecting the former!

And select it I did:

As normally happens, while there, I got a little snap-happy. There's an album of all the shots I took over on imgur.

Quick steps maker

While contemplating an upcoming build the other day the idea for this script popped into my head and, having thought of it, I had to knock it together quickly. Like a few other scripts I've put on here this stems from my use of Mesh Studio, where I'll make mesh objects in-world from lots of prims. This time around I wanted to make some simple stairs.

I've done this before and it's easy enough: rez and size a prim, copy it, move it to the next spot, copy, move to the next spot, and so on. But it'd be easier done with a script, right?

So the Z&A Quick Steps Maker was born. With this you simply rez out as many cubes as you want steps:

Link all the cubes and drop the script into the root prim. When you do so it'll texture the "top" face of the root so you know what direction the stairs will build in.

Next, size the root prim to the size of a step.

Once you're happy with it, touch the linkset and...

...the steps build themselves. If it doesn't quite look right all you need to do is resize the root prim to taste...

...and touch again to have the stairs rebuild:

Of course, a far more sophisticated system could be made where an object rezzes other objects out, building the stairs for you dynamically (could be something like that even exists -- I've not bothered to look), but that wasn't the point of this script. The point here was to knock up something that works quickly and easily for those times where you know what it is you're doing but you just want to save some fingerwork. It also means that there's no need to consider things like the grey-goo fence as it's you making all the prims up front.

Anyway, on the off chance that it's useful to anyone else, here's the script:

Rocking out at VT

Yesterday I took one of my rare trips out to a dance. Miss Eve was DJing a biker-themed dance at VT, the music being start to finish rock. Couldn't miss out on that could I?

I took a bunch of photos while there; you can find them all over on imgur.

RLV REPL

This script is being filed under "why the heck didn't I think of this before?" as well as "surely someone else has done this, I wonder why I've never seen it before?"

A little earlier today I found myself needing to quickly test a handful of different RLV commands. Now, as I have done over the past 5 years, I could have made a script, ran it, changed it, ran it again, changed it some more, run it again, etc... Really though, that gets rather tedious. And then it hit me! What I really need is a RLV REPL.

What I came up with isn't a REPL in the strictest sense but it more or less does the job. Rez a cube, throw the script inside and then touch it to turn it on (it'll be obvious when it's on and off). In the on state it listens to all local chat by the object owner and, if the text starts with an @, it repeats it via llOwnerSay. Instant quick and dirty RLV command line/REPL thing!

This should save me a bit of faffing about the next time I want to test something.

Day2K

On the one hand it's just another day on the grid. Nothing that special. Not an actual anniversary or anything like that. Not a rezday. On the other hand though there's something kind of special about those big round numbers.

Those 2,000 days have been eventful, that's for sure. While I often seem people in various groups (especially D/s groups) complain that they're "bored" in-world this is something I've never really had a problem with. In those 2,000 days I've gone from a nervous and curious observer of the SL D/s world to someone who's fully embraced it, learnt to have fun with and make things using RLV and has generally become someone comfortable with getting to know that side of myself.

There's been ups and downs, of course. When I hit 1,000 days I happened to be uncollard, something which happened again just in time for day2k. Overall though I've really enjoyed the time I spend as Antony.

And, hopefully, I will do for some time to come.

An ending

This will, for obvious reasons, be a rather short blog post.

For the second time during the lifetime of this blog I find myself no longer wearing Vila's collar. The reasons are, of course, personal and have no place being discussed here. Understandably you'll likely find that I write less here, at least for a while. Much of my blogging over the past year has been detailing things that have happened in my life in her service; without that there's not quite so much to write about.

Getting all SciFi

Now and again I have these "great" ideas that I end up regretting. I had one of those ideas today.

The 2015 SL SciFi Convention kicked off yesterday and, especially given that it includes a friendly mad scientist whose work we like, we resolved to try and get there today. I'm delighted to say that Mistress and I did get a bit of free time together to do this (although we didn't get to explore too much of it).

Meanwhile... my allowance payment list keeps getting longer and time and circumstance appear to be conspiring against me in terms of turning that around. So I had that great idea: it's a SciFi con; anything that looks spacey will work. Meanwhile, I've got a payment on my list of spending 5 days locked in the tkISO suit. It looks a bit like a spacesuit, right?

So before Mistress and I headed to the SciFi con I asked her if she was planning on collecting that one this week. Not only have I being dreading it (five days with a reduced screen size and a forced windlight is pretty hard going for me) and so wanted to just dive in and get it out of the way, there was also the issue that it was 5 days and if I went into it today I'd get out Friday. Any later in the week and I'd possibly end up bumping into the weekend and having to serve even longer (given that Mistress and I are unlikely to see each other over the course of next weekend).

She agreed that it would be a good look for our little date and that it made sense to kick it off today.

And the reason I ended up regretting it? It really did make seeing much of the con rather tricky. It didn't stop me, but it did make it difficult to really appreciate what was around me and how everything looked.

Much to Mistress' amusement.

Anyway, as best as I could, I took some photos during our wander. I have the full album up on imgur. Here's a few highlights:

Sadly though it was getting rather late for Mistress so we had to cut out trip short. I might try and get back there at some point this week end try and take more of it in. My main concern this week though is going to be getting used to the environment of the tkISO suit while trying to get on with working on Z&A things...

If past experience is anything to go by it'll take me a couple of days to really get used to it and, once I'm properly comfortable with it, it'll be time to be unlocked and that will be an even bigger shock.

This time should be an interesting experience in that it's the longest time yet. The longest I've done so far, I think, is 3 days. It should get even more interesting if (as I sort of hope she does otherwise it'll get even longer) Mistress layers other payments on top.