Sunday, December 20, 2009

A poor workman blames his tools

I'm surprised at the number of folks I know who are wonderful creators in Second Life but who have, or had, far from impressive computing facilities. You'll remember Cheyenne writing about how for some time Sweetie saw much of the virtual world in gray. Minka Pearl, a prolific creator of clothing for the well-endowed, says her computer is three years old and barely runs SL, and I have a very dear friend and creator of things in SL who I wish I could afford to send a sweet quad-core system to...

Maybe I should try to run SL on my netbook--nah, that's a logical fallacy. Darn it.

3 comments:

MinkaMade said...

Hi ty for leaving kind word of text for me. I share comuputer with roommate in dormroom. It is used 24/7 think I burned up two moniters already. I use low of lows to run secondlife and I turn off water fog particles trees grass and one time alpha \o.O/ I able run smooth. Is why I see photos on website I go omg they looks so much better than I thought. It inspires me to do more. Some nights I cannot sleep because between real school work and sleep I want to explore new ideas to make things for store. I look around and see I need learn much level yet think. I can not use lab computers to render for SL which is to bad because they are high high power gamer machines to render grahpics for projects. The difference of them and mine is like ford and ferarri. (mine is ford) Mesh is horrible to use on avatar in SL I like my lab software better. Work I do for school is better 1000% more than secondlife work which is simple photoshop and always rushed. I learn sculpt maybe buy I read mesh import is coming so I already work mesh for game design. So I not sure invest in sculpt is good thing. I started SL with $25.00. Things work good but i spend much time here for no pay. I do for fun and learning. (And to work english more.)

My goal is to graduate and work for big gaming company here and make enough to buy island and software and hire students to work for me design too, not just busty but all fashions. I have friend who is making furniture and I help her out some too.
My roommate doesnt like SL to much. I dressed her up. Her name is lolo serarri after lolo ferarri of italy. (spain?)

I talk to much I sorry.
Again thank you nice words.

Susyn Stenvaag said...

Hi Melissa! ((HUG))

So what about the poor workman with great tools? I'm not going to claim that either as the newest PC in my home is 4 years old. Still, I think it's not all about the computer. Most of my SL time is spent on a Dell laptop, 1.7Ghz processor, 128MB ATI video card, Windows XP with a wireless connection. Maybe high by some standards, pitifully slow by what can be purchased today. The machine will be 6 years old in January. I have ALL the Windows add-ons/add-ins turned off, tray icons disabled, pretty much all of those annoying background tasks that are supposed to make your computing experience more enjoyable are turned off, disabled, or never installed. Antivirus protection is the only one that runs 24x7. And I'm getting 10-15 fps over the wireless connection with medium graphics enabled. Not sure why but I think something has changed in SL.

The desktop (5 years old) could never stay stable with Basic Shaders enabled. With the latest client release suddenly I see lovely sunsets and on checking the graphics preferences I find everything has increased a notch and the darn thing is running smoothly.

I'm not enough of a computer expert to tweak a machine like back in the old days so I know it's not me. I do update drivers regularly. Some things fix themselves.

About the only thing that has changed recently is installing Linux on the laptop. You're responsible for that (thanks). Performance has improved and I can still wander the virtual world at 15 fps.

Point is, I still think a good workman (workperson?) can do wonders with poor tools. Not suggesting granite carving with a butter knife but there's some middle ground.

Happy holidays!

Tenyene said...

I wanted to at least stop in and wave "hello", but before they would let me do that they made me create my own blog. I'll find some way to get you back for this...

Anyway, as far as tools go, I do a lot of yelling at mine from time to time, but I would never blame them for anything. I reserve all my harshest criticism for my cats who have developed a tendency to flop on my mousehand when they are looking for attention or rolling on the keypad (I'm not making this up) causing me many trips to the bacskspace key or the Undo function.