Sunday, 6th May, 2007

Amanda Levitsky — How to Make Sculpted Prims with Blender

link secondlife sculpties howto

How to use the open source 3D programme to create the texture for SL's new sculpties — (via Tao Takashi). I honestly think these are going to be massive, much more so than flexiprims

Other Cats, And Mice, And Rats

dreams

I have just had two weird (and slightly scary) dreams. Normally, I'd try and forget about them — letting the fading visages disappear on their own. But for some reason, I wanted to write them down. Not sure why...

The first one is just a tiny fragment of (I presume) a much longer dream. Perhaps some of the bits from the other one actually happened in the first, but whatever.

I remember being in the kitchen, with the cats running around. But there were three cats, a new black and white one. He looked like George from above, and was chasing Biscuit around the table. I grabbed him, and tried to lever him out the cat flap, but he legged it upstairs.

It was then that I noticed the mouse and the rat. The mouse was dead by the food bowls, with a cute little 'at peace' face. The rat was hideous.

Its mouth was open in what appeared to be a snarl, but was more likely a scream. Its claws were outstretched, as if its last seconds had been spent frantically fighting, but then frozen.

I covered it up with a plastic bag, and shimmied it into the bin carefully — all the time desperately trying not to look at it, concetrating on the cute furry mouse rather than the hellish rat which, by now, had started to dissolve and was leaking a green goo everywhere.

I woke up at about 4ish. Or maybe 4.30ish. My head — for the first time in weeks — was a bit throbby, so I buried it into the pillows and tried to get back to sleep, my mind wandering around work and stuff.

I'm sat at the dinner table in Belfast, with my mother, brother and sister. My mother is asking me if there's something I wanted to tell my sister — in a way that suggests we've already talked about it. Somehow I remember something, and apologise to my sister for being grumpy "last Saturday", and then give her a knowing wink.

Then I'm watching a Western on telly. Something with someone playing the role of John Wayne in it. There's a scene shot from just over someone's shoulder — suddenly a wire 'mace' with pointy bits on it comes crashing into his neck. I can't work out how they managed to film that without hurting him.

As I get up and walk away though, my neck and hand hurts — I've somehow managed to transfer the pain from the telly onto myself. I have a short conversation with my sister about this, coming to the conclusion that by just watching the show, I've got hurt.

Then there are schoolkids everywhere — or, more like American college kids. They're chasing three burgulars (in balaclavas) out of their college, shouting "dickheads!". Three Western robots (from the telly) come along though, and start shooting the burgulars. But they don't stop, and the kids starts to get mown down.

Suddenly we're aware of large crowds of people just standing there doing nothing, waiting for something. There's major panic as they start to move, and someone shouts that they've "been activated". Everywhere there's shooting, people running around. I'm running around with them, when suddenly two men in bowler hats grab me and drag me off to the right, telling me I need to talk to The Ministry of Finance.

They bundle me into a car. It's a small sports car — blue leather interior. It's brand new, and very plush. An old man gets in beside me, and closes the door, muffling out the screams from outside.

As we start to drive off, through the riotous panic still going on, he tells me that I'm very lucky as I'm the first person to ever sit in the car. "You've bought yourself two months away from all that", he says.

I'm scared, but I'm thinking that I can help somehow. I'm thinking that I can convince him to stop the robots/zombies, and...

I can't remember what, if anything, happened next. I didn't wake up with one of those "OMG" starts that you see in movies, I just gradually stirred from under the duvet. In fact, it was only really while I was making the first cup of coffee of the day (of which I need many more) that those images started flooding my head — only as I was pouring some Iams out for Biscuit that I started to question whether or not I'd had to clear up some prey recently, and remembering I'd just dreamt about it.

It's funny though, isn't it? Dreams can knock you for six sometimes. I remember thinking about them vaguely yesterday (although, actually, I might have dreamt it), about how they're completely self-constructed realities — fragments of experiences conjured up by your on head. Yet they seep into the memory-part of your brain, and to some extents, the minute they do, they become 'valid' memories.

I wonder whether the 'vividness' of the dream affects how the brain takes it up and 'saves' it? Is it that the more 'immersed' you are in the experience, the more likely it is to remain with you and get confused with your 'real' memories? And does it become even more confusing when ther are hooks into Actual Real Things™?

...

I took a moment just there, to nip down and make more coffee. The minute I started down the stairs I was swarmed by Biscuit and Tish, hoping for Yummy Treats™. While I was ushering Tish towards the bowl full of Iams, I noticed that I still hadn't cleaned up where Biscuit had an accident and missed the litter-tray.

"I thought I'd cleaned that", I muttered to myself. Then remembered that I had, but in the first dream of last night, as opposed to in a reality where it might have done some good.

Late Nighter

photo secondlife island architecture leeds

I've got to take a break from this build for a bit. I'm starting to lose my grip on the difference between the Real and the Virtual.

I can indeed ... http://hbuilding.org

(And thank yous for not mentioning the weird spam )