Over at Hamlet’s blog he wrote about a website that offered face morphing/transformations. As you can see in the pic you can choose, age, race, sex and even artistic styles. The race and sex transforms turned out pretty nice. The age ones were sort of creepy and the artistic renderings were OK.

Hamlet’s post: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2013/03/cool-web-app-converts-faces-to-art.html

Not too bad really, but is it “me”? What do you think?

My current LAQ skin

I’m waiting, but you never appear, originally uploaded by ** GoSpeed Racer **.

Ever feel like this sometimes? Waiting on others can be a trying experience. How long do you wait? Are they worth the wait? When do you stop waiting and give up?

Sometimes it’s more sensible to walk away for a while. If it’s worth having it will arrive.

While you’re waiting dig up some dirt on someone’s medical background

Just don’t tell Santa though!

Oh, I took a trip recently. Poor Molly was scared though!

and Jolynda was a bit frazzled:

So I leave you with… A Wookie on drums, errr, keyboard, ummm, marimba… well you figure it out!

Hey, even Linden Lab gave me a rez day cake! It was a nice gesture . I doubt many people noticed as I haven’t spent much time in SL the past 6 months or so. I’ve been going through many changes in my real life and those matters occupy more and more of my time. Sometimes they slow down and I can pop back in world for a short time.

Time enough to pose for a picture with Tessa:

Or just for myself:

I notice that the PC client for Blue Mars is still working. There are still 36 “cities” up and running there with hardly anyone using them. Here’s a crazy idea. Linden Lab could buy all or part of Blue Mars and open it up to Premium users. There is a steadily growing base of creators in SL who work with mesh and many of their products could either be ported or recreated for Blue Mars. These cities have been up and running 24/7 the past few years so they can’t cost very much to maintain. One of SL’s weakest points is its horrible physics engine and its grid system.  Vehicle enthusiasts would certainly enjoy no sim crossings and maps up to 8000 meters per side.

Speaking of wide open spaces I am still cruising deep space with Space Engine. It’s still a few years away from having a game framework tacked on to it but in the meantime the exploration is still fun.

Francois Jacques, originally uploaded by ** GoSpeed Racer **. (17 NOvember 2007)

I am very saddened to hear about the passing of Francois Jacques in RL. I first met her in the fall of 2006 where she joined the Nantucket Yacht Club in those rambunctious first few months of The East End. Francois was a very unique individual and a kind person. While the sailing community of SL was full of strife, politics and interpersonal conflict she floated above it all. She was the perfect sailor and standards setter for everyone to follow.

She will be missed.

Fair Winds and Following Seas Francois, we love you.

http://metaversesailing.net/2012/08/15/francois-jacques-2005-2012/

The program uses a procedural method to generate solar systems to include the number of stars ( most solar systems have more than one star!), the type of stars, planets and their orbits, and asteroids.

The majority of stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs and their planets tend to cluster close to the star. This causes the planets to become tidally locked so that one face always faces the star. This is similar to our moon which has the same face pointing towards earth.

Some worlds are blazing hot on one side and freezing cold on the backside. Perhaps in the twilight areas life is possible?

Large, subsolar hurricanes could form,

In multi star systems each star could hve its own collection of planets.

Dual waterworlds.

An eclipse.

Gas giant moons could have an atmosphere and possibly harbor life.

Planets and alien skies can be beautiful.

http://salomesays.com/blog/2012/07/curious/

And you wonder why I’ve been spending less time in SL? As SL begins to contract the level of stupid and evil just increases as the good evaporates away. Still there are good people left and I do pray for them.

Philosoraptor store ban, originally uploaded by ** GoSpeed Racer **.

Banning bloggers from sims and stores because you disagree with them or are afraid of what they may say is censorship. It’s happened to me of course and it also happens to fashion bloggers and anybody with strong or differing opinions on anything.

It would be pretty pathetic move on his part. You could simply fall back to Windows XP, bootleg a copy of Windows 7 or even convert to a Macintosh. Ultimately his loss as you have plenty of choices and your story can turn off other buyers from doing business with him.

I’ve been banned from a few sims simply for being a blogger and for being friends with people who suddenly became unpopular. Recently I was estate banned from SLNE, Second Life New England for essentially petty reasons.

A bit of history:

Way back, 2006-2007 I called it home and made many friends there. I remember the estate growing from 8 sims to 18 sims and a vibrant engaging scene of sailors and live music made it the happening place to be. I also saw the merger of SLNE and Hollywood in what was to become a multi estate continent of connected sailing sims. But there was a certain amount of friction and drama to be sure. There was an ownership and managerial shakeup and I spent less time there. I still had many friends there and I would often attend concerts at the theater in Nantucket. KONA Stream was also carried in the common areas for a few years too and I was also hired to DJ various holiday and private parties. Around 2010 I stopped coming around as I had slowed my pace in SL .

This past winter I got back into sailing and flying and began to explore the Blake Sea regions to include some of the attached estates. One day I visited SLNE. I made the mistake of doing it in a ship that was apparently taboo,

Yes, that is a WW2 destroyer. After that I visited a few more times in a fishing boat and attended a concert. Then one day I was approaching the SLNE sims via Hollywood, when I was ejected from my Tako. The sailboat continued on as I sank to the bottom. A popup said I was banned from entering the region. Hmmm, not good. I contacted the estate owner and asked why. She replied that there was a weapons ban and that first time transgressors are banned. She also said that my blog post and Flickr shots was like an invitation to every weapons nut to come to the estate and cause mayhem.I was apologetic and offered to remove the photos from Flickr and edit the blog post to remove any reference to SLNE. She wasn’t satisfied with that and wanted me to post about how terrible it was for me to do that and also brought up that I had caused problems in the past. I had to scratch my head over that one as the drama days of SLNE happened 5 years ago (2007). If I had truly caused any grief why was I not banned way back then? Why was I paid estate money to DJ there many times? Of course there is no sane answer to that. I also rejected on principle to write a groveling blog post to please her. I don’t need to go there as there isn’t much they can offer. It’s no great loss. I had considered making a few digs at her, like “If SLNE is so great, why didn’t someone buy the Nantucket and Mystic commercial sims before Linden Labs reclaimed them for missing many months of tier payments?”  SLNE is a gutted,backwater place that now doesn’t have active events in it’s theater anymore. Like I said, not going to miss it.

What is really ironic about the situation is not only she petty about acting on a 5 year old grudge, but she actually believes an SL Blogger (especially of my stature) can harm her little sphere of interests. My humble little blog gets maybe 50-75 hits a day and very few comments. More notable bloggers get a few thousand hits a day. That may seem a lot but the readers of SL blogs are a very small minority of the total SL population. So while this post will have negligible impact on possible visitors it will mostly affect the overly sensitive and insecure people. Like certain estate managers. Yeah, you’re mad now, right?

And to close this here is a photoset of some of the pictures I’ve taken at SLNE over the years.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gospeed_racer/sets/72157629499451333/

Are you happy with yourself?, originally uploaded by ** GoSpeed Racer **.

If you’re not happy with the decisions you’ve made are you at least happy with how you handled your disappointment?