Aug 13, 2014 | Images, Monday Memes, Sightseeing
I went wandering today, looking for quiet and peaceful landscapes. I love the abstract, wild, impossible in real life sims, but I always seem to have the most fondness for the pretty, realistic, naturally landscaped places. I often wish I could transport myself into one of the quiet spots in SL and sit on a swing and enjoy the quiet.
With Love in Her Heart is one of those pretty places that was a joy to visit. According to the Destination Guide: “With Love in Her Heart is a simple seaside farmstead that evokes memories of days gone by. It offers a relaxing peaceful surrounding with spaces to hang out and enjoy the company of friends. Visit and experience, just know that it was created with love in her heart.“
I also noticed this week that Strawberry Singh has a new blog meme up, asking about computer specs and performance. I was curious enough to turned my stats on while I was taking the pics above, and on average I stayed at about 15 FPS, with things about one notch below ultra. This, to me, was perfect for exploring. I’m content puttering through the world at 10 to 15 FPS, I know I can more than triple my frame rate if I turn off advanced lighting and drop my draw distance, but I’d much rather have a low frame rate and beautiful surroundings.
- Share any of your computer specs (video card, memory, etc..) – 2011, it’s a bit aged now: 2.00 GHz core i7, 6GB ram, Nvidia 460M.
- Which viewer do you use most often? – Firestorm.
- What is your FPS (Frames Per Second) when you have your graphics on ultra? – It depends entirely on the sim, anywhere from barely 1 FPS up to 35 or so in really empty spaces. Quite a few of the art installations or nature sims will turn SL into a 2 FPS slideshow (dense forests are particularly hard on me) so I often try to find an out of the way spot to park my pixels, then I explore via the Space Navigator. It’s still slow going, but never seems to crash me like extensive camming with the mouse can.
- How often does Second Life crash for you? Is it usually just a viewer crash or your whole system crashes? What are you usually doing at the moment of the crash? I’ve only had viewer crashes. About half the time when I take a snapshot I will crash when I try to save to disk, but only on the first try, and usually if I’ve been camming a lot before the shot. If I can successfully save the first shot then subsequent ones never seem to be a problem, so I sometimes take a throwaway pic after I log in.
- Do you know of any tips or tricks in the settings that would improve performance? I think when I insist on running with graphics cranked up there’s not going to be much I can do to improve my performance short of getting a brand new machine, so I am tipless.
Berry says she’ll not be doing regular weekly memes any more, but I’m hoping she might give us a challenge at least once a month, I’ve really missed doing these. 😀
visit With Love in Her Heart
Apr 24, 2014 | Images, Random Thoughts
My first thought when I visited Frisland was that it was exactly the sort of place I’d have been eager to share with my husband. I could imagine biking around the sim with him, and looking for the hidden little spots and the tiny details. It’s a really beautiful place and I’ve gone back a few times to take pictures and just enjoy the quiet, and rez a bike (available near the entry point) to ride around, and accidentally pedal straight into the sea, or crash into trees. In all my years you’d think I’d have gotten the hang of bicycling in SL, but nooo…
In one week it will be six months since my husband died, and sometimes I feel like I’m looking for a way to mention him in every blog post I make, no matter which blog I’m writing on. I still talk to him all the time about the day. I still share my exploration in world with him. Sometimes it’s nice to find those quiet, tranquil sims and take a moment to sit and imagine he’s joining me in the adventure.
Visit Frisland
Feb 5, 2014 | Images, Sightseeing
Dragon Curves is a new fractal art exhibit by Mac Kanashimi, now open at LEA26, I learned about this via Ziki Questi’s blog a couple of days ago and have been looking forward to visiting. 🙂
You’ll arrive at the top level, and can grab a notecard at your landing point that will give you a bit of information about the build itself, as well as links to read more about dragon curves and about the artist. This is a huge build and they recommend that you set your draw distance to at least 384 to see more, though I was feeling brave and turned mine up to maximum so I could cam out and get a good look at everything.
There are three levels, connected by a dragon curve stairway. It’s possible to walk from the top to the bottom, although I wasn’t coordinated enough to get far before I fell off one of the platforms. I didn’t mind hovering off to the side, this build is constantly in motion and I enjoyed watching the objects change height and color.
Dragon Curves will remain open through June 30.
Visit Dragon Curves at LEA26
Learn more about fractal dragon curves at Wikipedia.
Jan 15, 2014 | Chatter, Images, Sightseeing
Today was one of those days where everything felt extra stressful. Just dealing with life made me want to run away and hide under a bed for a few hours… or at least to run away and dive into a carton of ice cream, or a pile of Cheetos. Anything with a lot of calories would have been good.
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Nov 27, 2013 | Images, Sightseeing
I just absolutely love astronomy. As a kid I was sure I wanted to be an astronomer, at least until I realized that it required rather a lot of math. You know what they say about the best laid plans and all… Oh well. Even though I reluctantly abandoned the idea of a science career I never lost my love of reading about the planets and stars and I still find it fascinating. When I saw pics from the Oceania Planetary Park I was excited to visit and wander around.
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