Yet another wish list

It's been a while since I sat down and priced a computer for running Second Life. It's kind of fun, save for the part where I don't get to spend the money to actually put it together. :)

Case: I like not needing a huge heavy case, so it's Micro ATX for me. The Apevia Q-Pack 2 has been my choice for some time, but the package includes a power supply that isn't what one would really like: it's not modular, so you have to deal with all those extra cables, and these days graphics cards want more extra power connectors than it comes with. So, this time I pick a somewhat larger Micro ATX case that doesn't come with a power supply: the Compucase HEC 6T Series 6T18BB, $45 at newegg. (Yesterday it was a "shell shocker" and going for $25.) The Antec Neopower 650 is modular and not outrageously expensive, at $80.

Motherboard: the GIGABYTE GA-785GMT-USB3 is a step up from the motherboard I currently use, and supports USB 3. $95.

CPU: One of the Phenom six cores is awfully tempting at $200, but SL doesn't take very much advantage of multiple cores, at least not yet. The Phenom II X4 945 is just $140... or it may be better overall to get one of the dual or triple core CPUs, or a Propus quad core if you are willing to forsake the L3 cache, for about $100 and spend about $100 on an SSD to put the operating system and Second Life and its data on.

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4 GB (2 x 2GB) is of a speed the motherboard supports and is about $100 at newegg. Watching the RAM usage when I fire up Kirsten's client makes me wonder whether 4 GB is enough, but maybe that's a memory leak.

The nVidia 460 is getting rave reviews for price/performance. The GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 1 GB is going for $230.

We'll get a hard drive that's "just" 750 GB: Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS, $80.

DVD/CD burners are pretty much commodity items these days: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS SATA DVD/CD goes for $24.

Not counting shipping, if you pick the six-core it comes to $854. We didn't go for cheap this time around.

Faster! Faster and Louder!

OK, not louder, but... someone named Niran has written a guide to installation and settings for KirstenLee's SL client. I will sit down soon and take its advice (mentally mapping Windows flavored paths to the appropriate ones for Linux). If you use Kirsten's client, I'd suggest you check the guide out. If you don't use Kirsten's client, I suggest you try it out... which may well be best done with the guide at hand or screen. Many thanks to Niran for posting this guide, which is clearly the result of a lot of experimentation to determine how to use Kirsten's client to best advantage.

Bearded Lady with an Attitude

Since I had on a Victorian dress to visit the wonderful Posture is Everything store and check out animation overrides, I decided to put on the beard and explore a bit. I had to take a picture; I didn't quite have it adjusted right on the first one I took. Here's the result, taken in the lovely Caledon Moors sim:

Joy of Blogging

The best thing about writing this blog is meeting or getting an IM or email from someone who reads the blog and likes it. I'm doubly happy if the reader found out about prim breasts in SL from the blog and joined SL because of it.

I've had that pleasure a few times, and it keeps me going. Thank you, Gentle Readers.

P.S. That doesn't include comment spammers like the one whose comment I just wiped.

News from RL

...from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Preview

Last night Janey Vansant asked me if I'd like a preview of a new outfit... I said something to the effect of "Yes, I'd love to see it"... and suddenly SL asked me, would I like to accept an item into my inventory? Um, yes... I wasn't expecting that! I thanked Janey, and asked if I could put up a photo. Yes, came the reply, as long as I make clear that it's not yet for sale. I agreed... so, here is something to look forward to when it becomes generally available from Ms. Vansant:


The skirt will be a bit more modest for those of you who don't share my predilection for legs as long as SL permits.

P.S. Those are bird of paradise flowers, and the photo was taken in Whimsy. (If you've not been to Whimsy, why not? It's gorgeous, and the hummingbirds aren't that dangerous...)

The next thing to drool over

The nVidia 460 graphics card. $200 for the version with 768 MB RAM, $230 for the version with 1GB of RAM. It's not a 480, but for less than half the money pretty darned respectable, and by the time I can kinda sorta justify getting one, it will be even less expensive.

UPDATE: Reviews say that there's more difference than just the amount of RAM. and that one should spring the extra $30 for the 1 GB version.

We can hope...

FuturePundit cites a report that suggests that fish oil lowers the risk of breast cancer. A study that will give us a better idea about whether this really works has been recruiting subjects since January. (They want both men and women; the study is looking at various illnesses.)

I hope it's true. The occasional fishy belch from a fish oil capsule strikes me as a small price to pay.

After-market modification kits

I've mentioned, here or in Pectoral Virtual Fashion or both, that there are people who offer the service of creating textures that adapt existing outfits or tops to prim breasts. That approach needn't be custom; there are those who mass produce packages that let you apply a clothing texture to prim breasts to let them work with an outfit or top.

So... I finally got around to purchasing such a package. This one is one of several from EPIC Proportions that let one use certain sets of prim breasts in conjunction with various colors of the Bugshit Gloss bustier. (No, that's really the name of the store. Honest.)

I got the purple one. The applicator for eCorps prim breasts works well with Foxbean Liebknecht's Nadine 1.5 breasts; the photo shows the results exactly as applied, with no followup tweaking as I've had to do with some other outfits. I'm quite pleased with Tenyene's work, and with the bustier proper, save that I'm too modest to wear the extremely short skirt that comes with the bustier; the skirt in the photo is from another outfit. (I also wish that the bustier came with a skirt that covers all the way up to the edge of the bustier; as it is from the back it resembles the horrid practice of having underwear visible above one's skirt or pants.)

Beautifully done, Tenyene; thank you.

UPDATE: Epic Proportions now has formal outfits. Pictures ASAP!

Rings on the Runway

As of last night, this is what remains of Mammatus.

UPDATE: These elegant glowing rings are the work of Elysia Snook. Thank you, Elysia!

Cutting loose

I decided to take a break from my usual mode of dress, starting with the hair. Off with Goldie Locks' elegant Aphrodite, on with a wonderfully outrageous mohawk from Digit Darkes, and so on. I couldn't resist half the Nanami outfit. (OTOH, my resistance for tops cropped way too short is very high indeed, so I went with a turtleneck and lace.)

I feel guilty about this photo on a couple of counts: first, it seems less than nice to take a picture in a store one hasn't bought anything from--but it was a great backdrop, and if you search for "city" or "urban", you'd be amazed at how full the results are of "dark urban roleplay", which I want to avoid, thanks... Second, I'd have sworn that I'd asked for high resolution. Are we back to those settings not being remembered? I hope not.

A Suitably Large Tribute

I visited the Mammatus sim again this morning. (That is in itself sad; I've been there far more frequently now that it is going away than I have for some time prior.) Very little remains, but now there is a far more appropriate tribute than the humble rose I left behind (since returned to my inventory).

Microsoft .NET vs Java - trailer [HD]

Born Museum of Fine Arts

I took a break from the dense and overwhelming SL7B sims and relaxed on the Born sim at the Born Museum of Fine Arts. On the first floor it's an airy, open space with lovely landscapes and still lifes, but if you want to relax, be sure to go up a floor to see the mandalas of Sheba Blitz.

Philip returns

M Linden has stepped down, and Philip will be interim CEO.

As someone once wrote, "Therefore moun we singen Deo Gracias."

Link to Emerald

If you've gone looking for the Emerald SL client lately, you've probably found it somewhat frustrating. They've moved, but the old links still show up at the top of Google searches.

So, to save those who read here the trouble, and, I hope, to move the current link further up the heap, here's where to go for Emerald, or at least, so it seems. I'm a bit puzzled, as the Linux download there is 1.23.5.1635, but OTOH, in the directory where I keep the various SL clients I've fetched, I see a 1.4.0.2164 that I fetched last Saturday, and I don't recall where I retrieved it from.

UPDATE: Thanks to Nalates; by all means take the advice from the comment, and head for http://blog.modularsystems.sl/.

MaggieBluxome.com

Maggie's got a new web site, and it's very much worth your perusal. It's filled with her excellent fashion photography, selectable by various categories. Also, it has many SLURLs of interest, especially to the prim breast user.

Don't miss it.

They're Tearing Down Mammatus Sim

...and I know it's partly my fault. RL gets busy, it gets to be far too easy to put off going there--but I will be forever grateful for the many friends I made there and at Big'Uns's previous locations.

I hope the rose I placed there is not too much of a bother.

(If you don't recognize the Night Gallery reference, track it down and watch. It'll rip your heart out and stomp that sucker flat.)

A peek behind the mesh curtain

SLOG has a post about a brief raising of the NDA veil over meshes for SL, and just what was revealed during that interval. Get the details there; I don't want to spread bad data based on a misinterpretation I might make. That said, it sounds very exciting.

UPDATE: Be sure to watch at least the first video there, of the creature playing Paganini. It looks like it's an example of something the blog post mentions, "rigging", which allows actual wearable clothing rather than body paint.

UPDATE: I'm kicking myself, remembering the first mesh demo video which showed a mesh figure of the Hulk. It just begs for a filk... "I was there at Linden Lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight... (it was a mesh!) It was a Monster Mesh..."

Not me and my shadow

So I had spare time today... I can wander about the grid to my heart's content, right? Well, sort of.

Early on things worked and I got some nice photos. But then I thought, "Gee, why not try SL on the computer connected to the nifty big LCD TV?" So I did... and I saw something that I've noticed here lately. Try a new client and the first time or two you get Caspered. I signed on again, or rather, the client crashed and I signed on again... and there I was, a swirling white cloud.

Back to my main computer, and still the cloud. Then I noticed something really strange: I was Caspered, but the client (Kirsten's 2.0 flavored client, build 24 I think) was able to correctly render my avatar's shadow--not the attachments, just the avatar. Then I visited with friends, a long overdue and joyous meeting, and I found that everyone else could see me. I was only Casper to myself, and here's the proof:


If it's across multiple clients, it's either code common to the clients or on the server side. I saw one claim that it's a known 2.1 code problem, and that the fix is to load one of the default avatars (do they mean the shapes?) and then switch back. I tried that, with no luck.

I hope this is fixed soon.

UPDATE: It's consistent across Kirsten's client, Emerald, and LL's 2.1 alpha and 2.0 clients, and continues despite cache clears and even "mv ~/.secondlife ~/.secondlife.bak".

UPDATE: If I were an English major, I would probably have worked in a line about how "I wandered lonely as a cloud". Ah, well...

UPDATE: Just after posting that, poof! Back I came. I hope that I'll stay.