Le Ubuntu Nouveau est Arrivé

Ubuntu 9.10, aka "Karmic Koala", is officially released.

If you've not tried Linux before, it's a good time to consider it. Karmic Koala boots faster (and unlike Windows, doesn't log you in and then grind away unusably as it loads up a bunch of applications so that later, if you happen to use them, they look faster). It has a new, faster file system, ext4. (Tired of having to defragment your hard drive? You don't have to under Linux.) Also new is Ubuntu One, your own personal cloud.

massively multiprogrammed MMORPGs?

A company called Tilera has announced that it will have samples of a 36-core x86 family processor in the fourth quarter of 2010, and 64- and 100-core versions in the first half of 2011. Details at TG Daily.

It will be interesting to see how implementations of MMORPGs change with that kind of hardware.

Speaking of the SL blogs...

A couple of other things that I think would be good ideas:

• No "sig files" or their moral equivalents. If you want to advertise, do it elsewhere, and text attached to every single post from a given person is a waste of bandwidth.
  
• No alts. The "sockpuppet" phenomenon is well known.
  

I know better than to do that again...

I've turned off the "email me responses" for the SL blogs, and deleted the hundreds of emails that resulted from having it on. The responses aren't threaded, so it's a major pain to follow, and the usual suspect has driven the S/N ratio down to zero.

Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate is out

It's less than a week until the official release, but the Ubuntu 9.10 release candidate is available for download.

In related news:

• New South Wales Police: Don't use Windows for Internet banking
• Avoid Windows Malware: Bank on a Live CD

UPDATE: I upgraded, with little trouble. I will have to look into switching the hard disk over to an ext4 file system, but that shouldn't be difficult.

The Jiggle Controversy

Hamlet Au writes about the new Emerald SL client's ability to enable simulation of physics for the female avatar shape's breasts. This has evidently caused a sharp spike in downloads and some controversy; some residents object to this being done without their consent. The makers of Emerald are looking into how best to deal with realism versus the understandable wish to control one's own appearance.

This does make me wonder about something, though. If avatar rendering is done locally, then the shape parameters are sent to the client--so a client could, in theory, modify those as the user wishes along the way, giving the user broad control over how you look to him or her. There's the obvious stereotype: if the avatar shape is female, set leg length to 100, set waist to 0, set breast size to 100, etc... the "I don't want to see [commonly disapproved avatar shape setting]" modification, and so on.

But what if you could say "if it's Jane Doe, then..."? Remember the controversy raised by magazines Photoshopping news images, like the OJ Simpson mug shot? This would take it to the next level, and would be subject to various kinds of abuse with photos or machinima taken with one, some, or all avatar shapes modified from the client's point of view.

I'm not sure what I think about this, and I have to think that someone has thought of this before. For that matter, I don't know whether the premise is really true, so this may be a pointless Gedankenexperiment. I still wonder, though.

Just ten days left!

A lovely pre-Halloween gift: Ubuntu 9.10, aka Karmic Koala. I'm looking forward to installing it.

Silly me...

Switching templates in blogger means you have to replace all the little inserts for scripts for things like Google Analytics. I noticed that very quickly back when I did that... but forgot that I'd inserted a script for MyBlogLog as well as for Google Analytics. It's back now. [blush]

Failed experiment

Sigh. I should have thought about it more carefully.

Had I done it with SL Fashion Police, I'd say "I turned myself in." What I actually did was submit two self-portraits to the "What the Fug?" flickr group. The question: what would they do with photos of someone with prim breasts but dressed modestly, no oiled skin, no nudity or exposed areolae?

And I blew it. Clearly I couldn't submit photos of someone else, but for that kind of blog, printing self-submitted photos would set a bad precedent.

Sorry. I should have asked someone else to submit a photo of me.

Le sim engloutié

I had a bizarre experience.

I'd not completed a tour of Northstar Mall to find all the prim breast vendors there, and I'd just heard that Imprudence 1.2.0 Beta 2 was out, so I fired it up. All I could see of myself was the swirling plasma of the anti-Ruth, but surely that would change soon. Map, "Northstar", Teleport...

...into blackness. I stumbled around, hoping I wasn't bumping into anyone. Was it something to do with shadows? I turned off "renderdeferred" and things cleared up a little; I could sort of see, though I still wasn't rezzed. I walked from the Northstar telehub toward the mall, that eventually drifted into dim view.

The glowing swirl of my non-rezzed self and the glow of some signs inside were the only light sources. Oh, yes! I searched through inventory for an obnoxiously bright facelight I'd somehow accumulated. Right click, Wear... and a bit more of my surroundings came into view.

I looked around a bit, and with a sudden inspiration zoomed my camera's point of view back, back... and suddenly I found myself seeing moonlight playing on the waves.

Northstar was underwater!

I had a sudden urge to find someone, anyone nearby to ask: was it just me? Maybe it was the client. I let Maggie, with whom I was chatting via IM, know I'd be relogging, and exited. Out, and over to the Emerald viewer. Last location... and there I was, still underwater, and, as I'd been all through the last session, unrezzed.

There was someone nearby... away--darn it. I headed back out to the area around the Northstar telehub, where you can find residents chatting darn near 24/7 in my experience. "Excuse me, but are we underwater?"

The kind person I'd asked sent down a rope of sanity to grab where a mere thread had been before. Oh, yes--it's for Halloween.

Whew!

I didn't think I'd get much done, so I headed homeward. Over half an hour, and I was still a swirling plasma. Out and back again, this time with the new Snowglobe, and finally I came into view. The half-hour of madness had taken its toll, though, and I said my goodbyes via IM and headed to bed.

Northstar Mall, dimly visible in the depths.

An Experiment

If you frequent SL Fashion Police or What the Fug?, then you know that a frequent subject of their cheerful vitriol are those who use prim breasts. What I'm wondering is this: do they consider them inherently bad?

I've done something as an experiment; we'll see what happens.

Now what?

Susyn Stenvaag just asked me a very good question indeed: I've joined the group; now what?

I don't have an answer right now. I was hoping, and still hope, for sheer force of numbers to show that there's a market for prim breast versions of mainstream SL fashion.

So, what to do? Maybe a T-shirt, or a piece of jewelry to wear to show you support the cause? (Not a ribbon--are there any colors that aren't taken?) A petition? Asking you to help spread the word?

I have a free weekend for once (yay!) and so I will put together that notecard--I will have the time to make it short, a la Pascal.

I'd greatly appreciate suggestions.

Birth of a Blog

All right. I've been doing a so-so job of it off and on, but it's time to start what will be so a fashion blog...

"Keeping Abreast of Fashion" turned up way too many Google hits; too obvious, and I didn't want to have to worry about whether it's kosher to insert "SL" to try to make it unique. So I decided on "Pectoral Virtual Fashion." Who knows? Perhaps other virtual worlds will cater to those of us who, in SL, are driven to prim breasts.

My intent is to have a place to which you can go to find out about every maker of prim breasts and/or outfits that go with them, with sim and coordinates, SLURLs when it makes sense to provide them, and links to XStreet SL when they're available.

If you make prim breasts or outfits to go with prim breasts, please email me with information at mel_yeuxdoux@yahoo.com. I need your help to keep up to date.

UPDATE: It's up now: Pectoral Virtual Fashion

Karmic Karmic Karmic Karmic Karmic Koala...

I'm typing this while running the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala beta Live CD (so I can check it out without touching the hard drive--OK, Live CDs will look for swap partitions and use them, so I should technically say "without touching any files on the hard drive".) It's definitely beta; a stray GNOME application or two died for some reason, though it didn't affect my ability to use the system.

It's pretty; the default theme is more orange than brown, and it booted quickly, even though it was having to load from a CD rather than a hard drive.

You'll notice that the countdown has started again; soon it will be officially released. Give it a try.

Song with No Words (Tree with No Leaves)

Looking for places to go?

Check out the gorgeous blog Caminante de Sueños (Walker of Dreams, though that's a bit stilted for English; "Dreamwalker" would be more idiomatic). Dorka Barzane features a sim in each entry--no words, just beautiful, eloquent photos and a SLURL. Even if you somehow never go to any of the places featured, you should see the blog just for the photos.

P.S. The title is that of a track from David Crosby's underrated album If I Could Only Remember My Name. I've added it and a couple of other tracks from the album to my playlist; give them a listen.

Taking the AO plunge

I have various animations and several copies of the Zhao AO, but I've yet to seriously set up an animation overrider.

I just need to set aside time to pick the animations I want--natural looking (I've seen some that cycle through poses that I can't imagine anyone assuming!), modest, and of course nothing that gets in the way of prim breasts.

Time to search and see what others have found.

UPDATE: Do read the comments; Danball Tureaud mentions a typing animation that stays safely above prim breasts.

Fizzle from the Past

Remember when we thought that this was a beautiful sunset in SL?

I went back, and while the site itself is not as pretty; it's cluttered with signs and boxes sitting around on the ground, here's a photo (OK, a screen capture--shadows still break snapshots):


OK, it's far from the best one can do with Windlight, but it beats the first image in that respect (and others; check out the trees). I explored the area a bit, and with the "Maroon" Windlight setting, got this:

Nice, eh?

Speaking of Maggie...

...she kindly let me see her abode. It is a wonder, as is the urban landscape in which it is set. I hope that she'll write about it with appropriate photos.

Maggie Bluxome on the dilemma of the well-endowed in SL

The lovely and talented Maggie Bluxome comments on the dilemma of the well-endowed woman in SL (in some ways like the RL version) in "Prim Breasts: Trials and Tribulations" in her blog.

I fear she gives me too much credit and herself not enough, but please do read it.

Elegance at Small Expense

I went to look at a dress at the Fabulously Free in SL HQ, and after checking it out I went out the back to look around. It was a lovely evening, with a full moon (as if there were another kind in SL...) rising over the water, and it suddenly struck me how different SL is from RL in that respect.

Imagine you're at a store for inexpensive things in RL; that's likely to be a "consignment store" or a Goodwill. How likely is it to be adjoined by elegant architecture and overlook a lovely seascape? Not very. Here in SL, though...