Ball of Confusion

Getting to grips with moving blogs from sites that don’t support export. One good reason to be here. Have settled, at least for the time being, on the excellent Tufte theme. Also need to rejig this blog to move the Auvers content to its own blog. This will remain as a personal blog.

OK, so with cross-posting to Mastodon set-up, the default is to cross-post even when the option is hidden, ie you have to reveal and untick the option. Also, need to consider (i) whether I need to have a general blog in addition to the history ones, (ii) whether the general one becomes my Fediverse account and I drop Mastodon per se. I have no particular interest in federating beyond there but at what level do I have a choice if I don’t run my own instance (I currently have Threads blocked and would likely do the same with BlueSky). Questions, questions…

Masters of the Air on AppleTV+ is as visually impressive and vicariously experiential as any Spielberg/Hanks production of this genre. The twin leads, Buck & Bucky, are engaging and credible though occasionally it feels like the narrative is ticking boxes in a rather cursory fashion. The aerial combat sequences are in equal measures kinetic and horrific but cover so many bases that individual events sometimes lose their significance. The series has three more episodes after today’s and I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with it.📺

Enjoyed Criminal Record on AppleTV+. Leads Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo both excellent. Plot development a little slow at times but just enough by way of clever twists to keep one’s interest. 📺

Ah, so date finally announced for release of Napoleon on Apple TV+, namely 1st March. 📽📺

Today I learned that micro.blog uses emoji instead of hashtags and that Windows will popup a selector if you type Windows button+full-stop. You can select an emoji at the top of the Discover page.

I normally use Kayaker Magic’s product on the Kitely Market for terraforming in OpenSim but for some reason I couldn’t get it delivered on Wolf Territories Grid. I intend my presence there to be very light touch so decided I would improvise instead by making a large linkset of thin 1 m diameter cylinders. All that was then needed was a little piece of code placed in the root that iterated across the terraforming linkset (TL) and set terrain height at each cylinder’s location via the appropriate OSSL command. So by orienting the TL as desired I could with a single touch create flat surfaces on the horizontal or at an incline. In theory I could even edit the height of each prim and get more sophisticated effects.

However, one thing I wanted in particular was to be able to create paths that have shallow terraformed depressions to which textured prims could be added in the depression later. A simpler approach was to use colour to denote prims where terraforming was required. I used a short touch to toggle between white and green. The height increment or decrement from the prim height is a constant value defined as a float in the object’s description field. A long touch then terraforms according to the pattern. You can, of course, restore the colour en masse via the texture option in the build menu. The example below used a value of -0.25 in the description field.

To terraform on a larger scale I created a linkset of thin box prims, each the size of the TL with the TL in the root. Each prim was oriented as desired as part of the linkset and then a piece of code used to rez the TL and have it move between each prim and adopt the orientation before terraforming locally and moving onto the next position.

I’m fairly rubbish at terraforming so looking forward to seeing if this rather basic but functional approach helps.

Reposted with a better example and then code (no error handling, use at your own peril and back up terrain first)

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llListen(99, "", NULL_KEY, "");//used with rezzer
    }
    
    listen(integer c, string name, key id, string msg)//used with rezzer
    {
        if (c == 99)
        {
            list l = llParseString2List(msg, ["/"],[]);
            llSetRegionPos(llList2Vector(l, 0));
            llSetRot(llList2Rot(l, 1));
            integer i;
            for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
            {
                list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z);
            }
        }
    }
            
    
    touch_start(integer n)
    {
        llResetTime();
    }    
            

    touch_end(integer n)
    {
        if (llGetTime() <= 1.0)//short touch
        {        
            llOwnerSay("setting color");
            //get link number touched
            integer i = llDetectedLinkNumber(0);
            list color = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_COLOR, 0]);
            vector col = llList2Vector(color, 0);
            if (col == <0,1,0>)
            {
                llSetLinkColor(i, <1,1,1>, 0);
            }
            else
            {
                llSetLinkColor(i, <0,1,0>, 0);
            }
        }
        else //long touch
        {
            llOwnerSay("terraforming");//use height of prim or value in desc for green prims only
            if (llStringLength(llGetObjectDesc()) == 0)//use prim height
            {
                integer i;
                for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
                {
                    list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                    vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                    osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z);
                } 
            }
            else//use prim height modified by desc value in z, else ignore
            {
                integer i;
                float inc = (float)llGetObjectDesc(); 
                for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
                {
                    list color = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_COLOR, 0]);
                    vector col = llList2Vector(color, 0);
                    if (col == <0,1,0>)
                    {                    
                        list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                        vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                        osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z + inc);
                    }
                } 
            }  
            llOwnerSay("done");            
        }            
    }    
}

This foxed me for a while as I was expecting some kind of unique user-post id. The format of links to micro.blog posts is vrsimility.micro.blog/YYYY/MM/DD/first-three-words.html where first three words refers to the title. This is used for internal as well as external links, i.e. there are no equivalents of wiki-style links. Presumably there is no equivalent for tweet-style posts lacking titles.

I’m increasingly using low poly assets from Luma Genie to populate my builds. They’re not a patch on custom-made mesh (as per Encantada plants, for example) but they’re available quickly unless you want a hi-res version and generally you can get something that approximates your need. The downside is that objects created separately like tables and chairs are unlikely to match.

I did try looking for freebies on Wolf Territories Grid but the link that automatically appears in Firestorm takes you to a spot that doesn’t have much (if anything) of that ilk. Likely it’s gone elsewhere and I should check the Welcome area for links (see below for update). I’m fairly sure there’s commercial mesh available inworld but it means yet another digital currency which I’d rather avoid. So Genie it (mostly) is.

The grid owner appears to endorse such methods as they have made a video demonstrating an alternative source, Meshly. This appears to have a more conventional experience compared to the minimalistic but highly effective Genie, somewhat akin to NightCafe which I have used for images.

As far as textures are concerned, I’m currently mostly using the OpenSim Library although there are plenty of websites I could use, plus textures licensed for export from Kitely. Leonardo.ai is another possibility as is the forthcoming withpoly.com.

Of course, I’m operating at the freebie tier where possible and may have to think again when monetisation inevitably intrudes.

Update: Inworld assets, including freebies, via the website

We were given a DVD for Christmas called Loving Vincent. This chronicles an investigation into the two months artist Vincent Van Gogh spent in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise prior to his untimely death. It follows one of several less conventional theories as to how the artist met his end but is most notable for its beautiful rotoscope-style integration of the story with the many paintings dating to that summer of 1890.

My interest piqued, I found that there had recently been an exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay on this subject and I bought the handsome volume that accompanied it. This locates some of the paintings onto a period map of Auvers so it became possible to consider doing an OpenSim build on the topic. This is not a novel idea; there is already an excellent build of part of Arles in much the same vein on the Littlefield grid and for all I know someone may have recreated Auvers as well. Doing my own build, however, is an interesting challenge and an excellent opportunity to explore the environment that attracted so many painters, not just Vincent.

Accordingly, I have acquired an inexpensive 1km x 1km sim on the Wolf Territories Grid (WTG), half of which will be devoted to virtual Auvers. I have been resident on a number of grids over the years and they all tend to have their own idiosyncracies and that is often part of their charm. So I look forward to exploring WTG and what it has to offer in terms of developing this new build while tentatively blogging my progress here on micro.blog, another platform new to me.