Quartz Mole

That's my fault The yellow thingies are parcel markers we lay out when we set up and build the region. They're both a visual guide for the builders and decorators and (because of the scripts they contain) an essential tool in building the systems whereby the websites, the land store, the house controllers, the trailers, the main rezzer and the remote servers that deliver content packs and notecards all talk to each other. Most of the time they're almost invisible. However, when I'm making sure the individual parcels and house controllers are all responding and have correctly registered themselves, the parcel markers briefly become highly visible for up to 30 seconds or a minute, before hiding themselves again after successfully updating the details of the parcels whose boundaries they mark, so that if any don't successfully complete the process I can see at a glance which parcels are affected. So if you see parcel markers behaving like that, it means I'm testing communications systems, or doing something that makes communications systems run self-diagnostic routines to check nothing's broken after something that's happened (a script update or something).

I'm a scripter, remember, not a builder, so my busy times aren't the same as those of most of the other Moles. That's why I have time to post here a lot when others are busy decorating regions. Didn't take me long to do the makeover, in point of fact, perhaps because the market for male mesh bodies and heads doesn't seem anything like so large as that for female ones. I took advice on the best places to look, and checked out the two that came particularly recommended. We're all of us in LDPW experienced content creators, remember, so one of the many benefits of being a Mole is that I'm never short of expert help with SL shopping when I need it, and, of course, there are some very helpful blogs to look at too. I found the sort of thing I was looking for very quickly -- the whole process took no more than three or four hours, if that, spread over a couple of days, as and when I had time. I'd been thinking of getting this account a mesh body for a while but hadn't bothered until now because it's only recently that we in LDPW have become so publically recognisable -- due, in no small part, to the lovely portraits you've been posting here. I'm glad you like the new look.

Seeing is believing...

We've all of us in LDPW been using the EEP viewer for months now, partly as beta testers but primarily to try to ensure that Bellissaria looks good in both the legacy viewer and EEP.

For certain values of soon™.

As I recall, several of us from LDPW were standing on the opposite bank of the channel, on the Squishy Pickle, looking at the solid row of green dots on map on the Bellissaria side, and Patch commented it was like standing outside Winterfell waiting for the White Walkers to arrive. So of course we ended up with one of the Lindens flying up and down the region on a fire-breathing dragon yelling "Dracarys !" as hard as she could. I love this job.

That would be @Dyna Mole, who is our resident creator of ever more inventive and amusing ways to kill off residents in the games we make.

!QUIT

And I'd heard it was your milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard. Multitasking, of course.

Not at all. In certain contexts, as I'm sure you -- and, indeed, most women -- would agree, somewhat moist is far better than dry. So would most men, come to that. (Of course I am thinking of cake and other similar culinary contexts. What else could I be thinking of?)

(I chose this recording because Dr John is one of my all-time favourite singers and I love this funky, bluesy version of the Duke Ellington classic).

Thank you. Not sure what happened to my hair, though. It seems to have vanished in that picture.

Click the code button, <>, in the bar above the box where you type, and then copy-paste your code into the window that appears: It's maybe worth noting that the function llSetRegionPos, which this script uses, will move the object to a position on the same region as which you start (or 10 metres over the border, I think). So you can use it to "teleport" the object round your region but you can't move to a coastal region from a landlocked one. (You know this, obviously, Nika, but other readers might not).

It's quite a common cartoon image of a mole, though. I think it's a cartoon character that features in public announcements from one of the German or Austrian utility companies -- I can't remember who, but it must be gas or water or power -- someone who has to dig the road up quite frequently -- so maybe someone took it from one of their signs.

I've sometimes heard it's wise to be careful what you wish for.

It's very unlikely we would change the landscaping or decoration on a region that's passed QA (which, by definition, includes any region that's been released) other than to fix something that was broken. I can't easily think of any circumstances in which we would have removed a bench from a public area, though I'm not involved in region decoration.

So not like this, then?

Are you telling me to run away, or everyone else?

Not that I've heard, though LDPW aren't directly involved with the the website. My involvement is limited to ensuring the website receives the data it needs from the regions we're about to release.

Yes.

As I recall -- and I may be mistaken here, but I doubt it -- the problem was that the houseboat's wall and the fake wall were in exactly the same plane, so the cpu and gpu on the individual user's computer didn't know which one should take priority. The results were weird, not least because the way Sylvia's screen was presenting the walls wasn't necessarily what I was seeing. Long story short -- moving the fake wall by a tiny fraction - 0.001m, if you can manage it -- fixes it, though you may have to relog or TP out of the region and back again to force your viewer to refresh its texture cache so you can see the difference. A more satisfactory long-term fix might involve tweaking the mesh of the fake walls slightly, so that they cover the houseboat's walls as do wallpaper or paint and undercoat cover plain plaster in a first life build. Otherwise tweaking the settings in the faux-rezzer might work, and would probably be worth trying first. It's not the ideal solution but I would imagine it's considerably simpler the reuploading the mesh (or maybe that's only when you're as hopeless with mesh as am I). Those suggestions are not intended as a criticism of anyone's work, of course. It's what I would be advising friends and business partners if I were logged in on my resident account and we were making that sort of content.