Madelaine McMasters

I uploaded a transparent PNG file as my "Avatar" image.

Google found this: http://www.secondinventory.com

Phil Deakins wrote: I'm astonished that so many versions of that song have been recorded. No doubt there are more that haven't made it onto YouTube - including Nina and Fred's version, of course. I think the Weeds television show is responsible for many of the covers of Little Boxes, but some tunes just wheedle their way in our collective consciousness, because of their sound and/or their message. I've traced other tunes through YouTube. Some have been going strong for hundreds of years. I recently looked into the musical call and response "Shave and a Haircut / Two Bits" and was delighted to find a rich history for that little seven note riff. I do like applying Malvina Reynolds' idea behind the song to life here in SL. One of the eureka moments we all share here is the discovery that we can build things out of... ...Little Boxes!

Okay, this goes on my favorites list... Here's a hip-hop version that I hope is lampooning itself. If not, then my age and whiteness are showing. The "Individuals" sound to me like most ticky tacky hip-hop groups. If they are a real band, their name is an eye-roller... The Womenfolk... Bomb the Music Industry with Little Boxes (of angst!)... The Thermals... Dierks Bentley... Hunter Parrish... Aimee Mann... Okay, I think I'm done... ... I think.

In all my sleuthing, I've not found a cover of "Little Boxes" that sounds like what I'm remembering. I'm not old enough to have remembered Little Boxes when it hit the charts, but I do listen to radio shows that cover music of that time and two local radio shows that does "Cover Nights" during which the DJs dig through the history of a song. I've found that so interesting that I now use YouTube to do that myself. There is apparently a TV show called "Weeds" that opens with versions of Little Boxes. Here's a YouTube playlist with 27 episode introduction covers, including many of those I posted earlier... I like many of them, but my favorites are Regina Spektor's, Malvina Reynold's, and Pete Seeger's (in that order, Regina is superb here). I suppose it gets more difficult as the Weeds epidsode count grows, as you have to work harder not to sound like the song is about your cover of it. And here's another adorable cover not in that playlist... I think Weeds' use of Little Boxes is brilliant and could be applied to SL, which is a mix of the ticky tacky described in the song and the wonderful imagination revealed in the various covers.

Perrie Juran wrote: Perhaps it would be better if LL made people submit to an IQ test before they could join. I'd only get half way in.

16 wrote: if is a tiny timer issue then can maybe try like float TIME_BETWEEN_DO = .08;state_entry(){ llSetTimerEvent(TIME_BETWEEN_DO); //start}timer(){ llSetTimerEvent(.0); //stop // do big long stuff ... llSetTimerEvent(TIME_BETWEEN_DO); //continue} I usually do timer events this way, unless the event handler looks to be faster than stopping and starting the timer, as I then don't have to worry about crashing the script if my event handler takes too long. It's difficult to determine how long an event handler will take to execute, both because of its internal complexity and external server lag. The resulting variabiility in firing rate is (to me at least) less problematic than script failure.

Dillon Levenque wrote: 16 wrote: Dillon Levenque wrote: 16 wrote: the peering over the glasses thing is not actual in the librarian manual of standards and deceny. is coy and unbecoming in young ladies is that peering thing and same for old lady librarians to do. bc all the coy got rubbed out of them already ages ago. they old battle axes by then. and is nothing coy about them at all by then. except when they are. and is horrible to watch when they do that so no. is not in librarian manual that part at all jejejeje (: Having been peered at by a librarian on more than one occasion (and by more than one librarian, too, but that would take me too far afield) I don't care whether it's in the manual or not. I liked it. ;-) you are defo so doomed you know. they going to put your picture up in in the library if you not careful (: and in the Librarians Gazette as well. in the o.m.g!!! section. altho i heard rumors that they going to remove that section from the Gazette. bc seems some people been treating it as some kinda kinky dating service. dunno how true that is tho. is just what i heard jjejeejejejeje (: I don't think they print the Gazette anymore here in the States, but either way I'll take my chances. My reason for replying was to respond to something else you said (and I know it was said in jest) that i'd missed but that actually does matter a bit. I refer to this: "...and same for old lady librarians to do. bc all the coy got rubbed out of them already ages ago." I remember being a teenager and reading about/hearing about old (like over 30) people having romantic connections. I just figured okay, fine, they're all cuddly but it's nothing like the earthshaking soulsearing things I experience. Turned out that was not the case. It hits with the same force at alll ages. If a young person ever asks me about love I'll tell her/him that it never stops. It certainly does not.

Even with these advances in face animation, which might bridge the uncanny valley, there's the problem of figuring out what expression the face should have. If doing it from text, the computers will have the same problems we do. They'll screw up the translation and we're right back at the bottom of the valley again. People have a hard enough time reading me, particularly when I'm in a satirical mood, imagine the fits I'll give an algorithm. When the expressions are professionally choreographed (which would not be the case in a real-time situation) it might work, but in SL it would be a disaster. We've got a long way to go. ETA: Texting overtook voice as the preferred communications method for phones back in the summer of 2010 (or maybe it was 2011, either way calling them "phones" is now wrong). Some of that was because we like the added control that texting gives us, the easier etiquette and the ability to (although we don't often take advantage of it) consider what we say for a few seconds before saying it. The immediacy of real-time facial animation seems counter to some of the very reasons we like Second Life.

Phil Deakins wrote: A female librarian should wear a skirt that's well below the knee and preferably tweed, and a blouse that's buttoned either to the top or to one button down from the top. She must never wear high heels. Flat, or nearly flat shoes are a must, of course, and preferably brown or black. I hope that helps, Trinity You forgot the glasses, they must be a bit pointy... and the librarian strap that dangles from them when worn and that they dangle from when not. It's all about the glasses, Phil. Oh, and the eyes! There is the "peer over" which is necessary for people who cough more than once, and the "glare at" for people who talk above a whisper. It's all about the glasses and the eyes. And maybe a pearl necklace if she's a hottie. Yeah, it's all about the glasses, and the eyes, and the pearl necklace. ... goes off to fan herself.

Congratulations on winning your blue forum bowling pin, Charli. You are now officially a forumite! ;-)

Here's Malvina's original, which is in my record collection... And Pete Seeger, also in my collection... I love Regina Spektor's version... The song is so good that Englebert Humperdinck can't ruin it... The Decemberists... Elvis Costello... Adrienne Stiefel... Rise Against (hang on to your desk)... Phil, I think I know the version by Nina and Frederik, but can't find it online. :-(

3-28-2013 A research team at the University of Texas at Austin claims to have taken one step closer to an "invisibility cloak". Colleages at the university are unable to corroborate the team's results... or find them. 3-28-2016 Weijers Domino Productions B.V. weathers a firestorm of criticism when their latest domino toppling chain reaction takes down Stonehenge. Domino's Pizza, where drunken Summer Solstice revelers hatched an ill-fated plot to topple the ancient structure four years earlier, condemns the act. 3-28-2017 The seeming preponderance of male deaths in automobile crashes is traced to faulty crash test data. During a retrospective analysis of test results, NHTSA scientist Fay Tality discovered that male crash test dummies under-reported physical injury in nearly 90% of tests, while their flesh and blood and mortal counterparts did not. No explanation was given for why dummies possess higher than average machismo.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: Charli Infinity wrote: and there are a lot of tacky magazines. Doesn't mean if they's on a magazine they're not tacky. Tacky magazines feature tacky people and magines that are not tacky freature those who are not tacky. That's image. Second life has pretty tacky image because of this. Did the song "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?" pop into anyone else's head after reading the above? :matte-motes-wink-tongue: It did not make that connection in mine, BUT for some reason oats got mentioned at a club I was visiting last night and it wasn't long before we had that whole lyric (which I had not heard nor sung in years) in play. Twice in less than 24 hours is quite a coincidence. I like your phonetic spelling, btw. :smileyhappy: Little Boxes - Malvina Reynolds Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All went to the university, Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same, And there's doctors and lawyers, And business executives, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And they all play on the golf course And drink their martinis dry, And they all have pretty children And the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp And then to the university, Where they are put in boxes And they come out all the same. And the boys go into business And marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they're all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And now I'm thinking of Linden Homes, not Zindra.

Hi Rosan, By limiting participants to voice or in-person, I believe you're going to skew the results of your research. Most SL participants do not use voice for reasons, and with ramifications, that I think are of fundamental significance to our culture.

Sephina Frostbite wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: I mention this because today I look at my keyboard. It has a home key. That don't take me to any of those. This reminds me of the reason my Father tossed his first PC and never went back. It had a word processor that, upon exiting, displayed this confirmation request... "Press Enter to exit, Escape to return". Lol that is so like my mother. She still calls a monitor a Tv and the Keyboard a type writer. When I went to go visit her I found her trying to shove paper into her "type writer" (keyboard). She was upset it didnt work. Thanks for the memory. My mother sounds like yours. To further explain, my Dad was an engineer and had a PDP-11 minicomputer in his office, on which I first learned to program. He then got an IBM PC, which he hated for those stupid messages. He tossed that and bought a Mac, which I then stole from him. He got another and the two of us remained Mac users thereafter. We both got online in 1987, me at the age of 17, he at the age of 67. Though only a phone call or a five minute drive apart, we both kept in touch electronically. He was active online until Alzheimer's made that impossible around the age of 84. I don't know if I'll last that long.

I only skimmed a few responses, but agree that the choice of skin and shape are very personal. Hair is a bit less so. I'd also be careful about giving opinions and advice about a look. If this person is new to SL, they don't yet know how people judge on looks here. So help them to understand what is possible and how people use and perceive those possibilities. When I was new to SL, I eagerly sought the advice of the woman who'd taken an interest in me. But after an hour roaming around the shape/skin/hair store with her, we both I realized that what I wanted really and properly trumped everything else. Her gift to me was in taking the time to explain how everything worked and how she saw me, not how she thought I should look. So a store card and the promise of your time to help spend it sounds like a lovely gift to me.

Done. Enjoy spring break, Heather!

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: I mention this because today I look at my keyboard. It has a home key. That don't take me to any of those. This reminds me of the reason my Father tossed his first PC and never went back. It had a word processor that, upon exiting, displayed this confirmation request... "Press Enter to exit, Escape to return".

Jaser Newell wrote: I understand what you're saying, but I still consider it a bug. I admit that I didn't understand the nature of how floats worked in lsl in the beginning, and in fact did make the mistake of thinking the ASCII representation would be an accurate description, and I thank those of you that posted for pointing out my error. Yet as you pointed out, base 10 can be done by emulation. SL chose not to do that, which even if this choice was necessary can still problems. As you also pointed out, lsl uses the same representation for assignment and comparison. That's why converting it to a string and back to a float after the arithmetic operations allows it to work without any of the difficulties referenced thus far. This seems to be a perfectly suitable solution that gets around that pesky binary problem. Well, even emulating decimal doesn't rid you of problems, and it would add considerable burden to the SL servers. You can't represent 1/3 in a finite number of decimal digits, so the errors are still with you. Math systems like Maple get around such problems by representing 1/3 as a ratio, not as a single number. The need for such things in SL is virtually non-existant, so tried and true floating point, which is built into the Intel hardware, is the standard. Pesky problems abound, Jaser!

Jaser Newell wrote: As far as the issue not being a bug, I would disagree. If something as simple as 3.1 + 0.03 creates any other value than 3.13, then I consider that a bug no matter what the reasoning is behind it. The "bug" that's bugging you is an artifact of the binary nature of computers. To accurately perform the decimal calculation you give as an example, you'd really need a computer doing math in base 10 (either in hardware, or via emulation as in the case of Mathematica, Maple or other math environments). As Dora explained, a number like 0.1 cannot be expressed in a finite number of binary weighted fractions. In decimal it's easy, it's just zero units and one "tenth". In binary it would be... 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/256 + an endless series of smaller binary fractions Note the "endless". There is NO finite series of binary fractions which totals 0.1. It requires an infinite number of bits. That's not a bug, that's the way math is. Now, if you only assign constants to variables and then test those variables against constants, doing no math in between, there's a good chance it will work as the compiler uses the same floating point representation both for assignment and comparison (provided you typecast as necessary, as I explained earlier). But the moment you perform an arithmetic operation on the variable, all bets are off. The result of the computation will contain the unavoidable discrepances that arise from trying to represent decimal fractions on a binary computer.

Jaser Newell wrote: After further investigation I think I figured out what the issue was. My original script made use of "+=", creating the number as the script ran, as follows: Task = 3; Task += 0.1; Task += 0.03; This seems to sometimes create a slightly different value for "Task" than would be expected that is undetectable when it is converted into a string. While "(string)Task" will produce "3.130000", "Task" does not equal exactly 3.13. Since I have a user defined function that is always ran right after "Task" is changed, I just threw "Task = (float)((string)Task);" into it. Since the slight difference is undetectable when converted to a string, when the resulting string is converted back into a float it produces the value originally expected and allows the script to work. Right, you can not always count on the result of a floating point math operation to produce an exact result, as the decimal fractions you express as constants may have no exact equivalent in floating point. It's also common for math operations to result in rounding/truncation errors. For this reason, scientific calculations are often performed at floating point sizes well beyond the required precision for the result so that the accumulation of errors over the course of the algorithm does not corrupt the result. The FPU in your computer does internal calculations at 80 bits, even though a double float is stored in only 64 bits. I was sure I'd seen the error you describe in my own test with your code, but as I saw it only once, it 's just as likely I was in error. A simple assignment of a float constant value to a variable, followed by a test for equivalency, should work so long as the precision of the constant is declared to be the same as that of the variable. As I said earlier, LSL has only one size of float, so your original example should work. ETA: If you were attempting to code multiple sets of states a single variable, say assigning one set of states to the units digit, another to the tenths, another to the hundredths, etc, you could achieve the same result using integers and chunking your sets into little spans of bits. You could encode eight states in three bits, 32 in five, etc. But I think breaking the groups out into separate variables would be both easier to understand and easier to debug.

Hi Jaser, and welcome to the forums: I've seen this behavior before in other compilers, but after experimenting with your code in-world, I'm inclined to think there is some kind of bug in the system. I hand typed your code into a test object and it worked for me. I then pasted your code into the same script and it did NOT work. I thought there might be a hidden unicode character messing things up, so I reformatted your code and it began working. I was hopeful I'd figured out the bug, but wanted to confirm I could break it again by repasting from your post. That subsequent paste worked! I've been unable to reproduce the error since, even in new objects and even under my alt account. For future reference, you must be aware of how the compiler treats constants which do not have a declared type. In a system which has both floats (32 bit) and doubles (64 bit) a constant containing a decimal point would usually be treated as a double. Assigning that constant to a float variable will, depending on the compiler, either truncate or round the constant to the lower precision. Subsequent comparisons between the constant and variables may fail as a result. In such a system you'd avoid this problem by typecasting the constant: if (Task == (float)3.13){ llOwnerSay("Works"); } LSL has only one kind of float, and that's "float", so this should not be an issue here. As I am no longer able to make your code fail, I can't investigate further. Good luck!

LadySue's dress looks short enough to be safe, but if the bride's dress has a train you better be careful, Hippie. I've seen you walk and I fear the worst! ;-)

PudgyPaddy wrote: Candor Philipp wrote: the best option is to be between the extremes of what your target audience consider acceptable, and to try to preserve what is more important to them. What? This is not communist Russia! The "best" opinions are founded in reasoning and logic. I don't write opinion(s) to placate readers with flowery words so as to not offend misplaced sensibilities or to not cause emotional instability. I don't write opinions to win friends or win a popularity contest either. Going forward, whenever I read *your* opinion I will know that you didn't mean what you wrote--you just want to look good to the rest of us or the one. This is perhaps the worst statement that could have been written on an open and public forum. PS The OP didn't offer an opinion. The opening post asked a direct and specific question. As Canoro was discussing a "target audience" it's pretty clear to me he was not talking about opinions. He was talking about sales. Sellers do indeed placate buyers with stories that are likely to induce them to purchase their goods and/or services. There is a term for this sort of placation, it's called "marketing". Going forward, whenever I read your opinion, shall I make greater allowance for the possibility that you didn't understand the subject and that you just want to look good to "the one"?