SatelliteGuys: SatelliteGuys is getting word from our sources that FSC+ will replace Setanta on @DISHNETWORK @DIRECTV and FIOS. http://bit.ly/baPlaN
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If you are not in to FTA Satellite yet, maybe you should start looking in to it. It’s really cool to be able to watch satellite TV for absolutely free once you have the equipment – no monthly fees!
Check out this neat little gadget:
Zoomsat SatZen Z300 Free to Air Satellite TV Receiver with Internet Dongle Included
SatelliteGuys: The US Senate Fails To Pass Satellite Viewers Act Extension. http://tinyurl.com/ye8ncqp http://bit.ly/aAcgQ8
The Franklin Gothic typeface is the primary influence for nearly all MoMA materials; it’s the basis of our logo (see the top of your screen) and our official font “MoMA Gothic,” which were both created by Matthew Carter. We were happy to see that MoMA used a version of Franklin Gothic as long ago […] http://bit.ly/aUWBit
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Want to get in to Typography? Check out some of these cool Typography books
muhealth: MU Health Care eye doctors head to Haiti (via @Columbiatribune http://tinyurl.com/yac8dan) (via @krcg http://tinyurl.com/yarvaeg) http://bit.ly/9y0kSD
atlashavenradio: RT @MusicVelocity Do you like upbeat music? Check out The Dimensions of Sound on #MP3… http://eCa.sh/ezqc http://bit.ly/bdGQep
Signs of Life, the animated pictographic exit sign by British designer Freddie Yauner, takes the most banal everyday object—something that we see daily but rarely notice—and brings it to life.
Signs of Life is a sensor-controlled, three-minute flash-animation sign featuring the familiar mid-motion stick figure following a directive arrow that points to the way out. When […] http://bit.ly/9YcM4K
I saw an email about this… figured I’d post it here since some of you people reading this qualify and might be eligible…
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Participants Needed for Alcohol Research: $12 per Hour
The Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab at MU is looking for participants for a research study on the effects of alcohol on cognition. If you are between the ages of 21 and 35, have no history of substance abuse problems or other major medical conditions and consider yourself to be a “social drinker” you may be eligible to participate. Participants must be available for an appointment that lasts approximately 4 to 9 hours. A telephone interview is required to determine eligibility for the study. Eligible individuals will be paid $12/hour for participating. If interested, please contact Alcohol Research at 882-4405 or email alcoholresearch@yahoo.com for more information.
Announcement sponsored by MU Social Cognitive Neuroscience Research Lab
SatelliteGuys: DIRECTV Partners with Common Sense Media to introduce easy to understand on screen ratings. http://tinyurl.com/ykbexuy http://bit.ly/b5VdDY
When MoMA Associate Director Kathy Halbreich invited me to observe the inner workings of the Museum and share my observations and critiques with both curators and administrators, I thought it was very important for MoMA to take a look at its interchange with artists—how the Museum is perceived by artists, and also its function and role within […] http://bit.ly/bzWOXW
muhealth: Thank you to everyone who supported National Pancake Day and Child. Hosp. @KOMUnews http://tinyurl.com/yhlwxeo @krcg http://umurl.us/31gy http://bit.ly/bGKPon
This weekend, if I find some time, I’m going to work on scanning more drawings from the ol’ sketchbooks and posting them in to the Artfolio Category here in the blog. There’s still lots of art that I don’t have online yet, lol! 🙂 😉
Eventually, if I get everything online, I’ll just keep making more and always scanning it in on the weekends or whatever free time I can find.
If nothing else, this at least helps get my name out there, and helps you folks see some stuff I’ve done in the past. All artwork any artists creates has something from his or her past involved in it in some way… It’s important to know where we’ve been so we know where we are, and where we are heading.
Hopefully this blog is helping you, as well as myself, discover, or rediscover where I’ve been… then you and I can put the pieces together to see where I stand now… and I can ultimately arrive at some really interesting and difficult questions about where I’m heading.
After the old volcano at Cyclops erupted Thursday a week ago, robots have seem to have taken a interest in the area. As the area is previously known to be hot spot for robot activities, initially this wasn’t a matter for concern. However, it appears that their presence is increasing at a rather alarming rate.
The […] http://bit.ly/9NWQd8
Repair Installation
The client loader can now automatically repair corrupt installations, allowing full restoration of your Entropia Universe client to working condition without having to install and patch it again from scratch. The repair utility can be accessed from the File menu in the client loader. The utility will scan your installation for missing or corrupt files and then prompt you for permission to automatically download those files again.
Fixed Issues
Added another feed to twitter feed… it’s the feed with news about version updates to Entropia Universe… http://account.entropiauniverse.com/rss-vu-news.xml
nevereverdie: Spent the morning in the studio recording “NEVERDIE with me” with Kevin Rudolf producing, it’s a hot track!!!! http://bit.ly/9fJ6FZ
SatelliteGuys: Another SatelliteGuys Radio Show is HISTORY! A great show with special guest Gregg Loewen of THX, show replay at http://tinyurl.com/yjrqh3o http://bit.ly/axwAVZ
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/clothing/133256-colorer-list.html – coloring list
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/crafting/92282-texturizers-texture-information.html – texurizing list
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/mining/179893-eudoria-mining-resources-maps-charts.html#post2302849 – mining map
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/weapons/165740-new-sib-charts.html#post2092255 – Skill Increase Bonus (SIB) Chart
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/crafting/166385-new-sib-crafting-charts.html#post2102146 – Skill Increase Bonus (SIB) Crafting Charts
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/club-neverdie/181387-my-quick-reference-club-neverdie-guide.html#post2324970 CND quick reference guide
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/land-areas/176641-list-post-v10-outback-areas.html#post2254293 – Land Area Owners List after version update 10
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/tools/166416-new-sib-fap.html#post2102572 – FAP List
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/crafting/166385-new-sib-crafting-charts.html#post2102146 – SIB Charts
More will be added later…
SatelliteGuys: Just over 3 hours to tonight’s SatelliteGuys Radio Show broadcast! Get your HDTV Calibration Question ready for THX’s Gregg Loewen! http://bit.ly/btNWvx
This post is a lot longer than I thought it would be… what’s sad is a lot of details aren’t in here… a lot has happened in the last couple of years in Entropia Universe for my avatar… there’s enough plots and stuff in here and all that’s been going on with the NBK on the forums at Entropia Forum to make an entire mini-series or 19 of them, lol…
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Maria mastermesh Mesh is about to purchase a second apartment again. She previously had 2 of them… but sold off one a few days ago. Now she’s getting a second one since it’ll be on the same floor as the one that she already has.
There’s a lot of history… now here a little back story for those of you that are in to reading about that sort of stuff…
In the Pre-Maria Days, I had heard of Entropia Universe, via Slashdot.org. However, it sounded like a crazy idea… then… there was this one post about some guy named Deathifier that had spent a lot and earned it all back… and another guy named Neverdie that had spent even more, and earned it all back… so then Maria came in to being…
Yes, the hype was mostly hype, but it was an interest way to spend time and some small amounts of money as I was home on weekends as my wife worked then… and a few months prior to that time, a casino had opened a few blocks away from where we lived… At the casino I could blow through 30 dollars in less than 20 minutes. IN Entropia Universe, I could survive on 30 dollars hunting snablesnots for a month, so it seemed like an interesting thing…
Maria started out her life in Entropia Universe as a poor homeless citizen, like all avatars are when they first begin the game, with nothing more on her back than an orange jumpsuit.
Then, Maria sweated a lot and finally got a little income through that. She also shortly got an income from a deposit from an Earthling and took up hunting. She axed her way across two continents with a few 2×0 axes that got bloodied up pretty fast and needed repair. Maria found that the axes were not very economic weapons eventually (no Skill Increase Bonus – SIB)…
Then, Maria took up hunting with a rifle. Her trusty rifle accompanied her everywhere. Her favorite hunting spots were, and still are locations that are not real busy spots. Prior to the recolonization of Calypso (Version Update 10), she hunted a lot around Fort Argus, Fort Zeus, North of Fort Ithica and radom other spots on occassion.
She no longer hunts much to the east of Argus since it is now a Player vs Player (PvP) Zone. She does still travel north of Argus on occassion. She’s also found a new hunting location that did not exist prior to the recolonization – EOS. She loves hunting Foul in the hills between EOS and Athena Space Base.
Back in the early days, Maria loved trading, and joined the Entropia Forum Dollar Growth Fund (EFD Growth Fund) Smart Trade Terminal Solution (STTS), and thought about joining Entropia Investment Fund (EIF).
STTS only existed for a short time and now no longer exists. EFD Growth Fund still exists on the forums at Entropia Forum. If you are a regular over there, you might think about joining the fund since the only investment requirement is Entropia Forum Dollars, not real money – although it is possible to buy or invest real peds to get EFD in that fund…
Luckily, Maria never joined EIF since they sunk a lot of money in to investments such as Land Areas, a mall shop, and a hanger, all of which have zero Trade Terminal Value. If Maria had bought in to that fund, her money would now be gone with little to no way of getting the money back since the EIF still exists but has no plans on ever selling out for any time in the near future it appears, so all peds that went in to those investments are now gone… The investments are bringing EIF some money, but it’s arguable how much since it’s likely that the original investment money is gone unless they ever sell their invested money, which they have no plans on doing… so until they get that money back, they have lost a lot of cash… Unfortunately, sometimes, to get ahead on Calypso that it is required to make big investments like that. I still think the EIF is extremely risky since there is no such thing as multiple owners of an asset in EU, and everything is based on trust. If the Fund manager dies or something, the assets he holds can be considered gone like the wind, along with all the Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs) that various individuals put in that invested in that stuff through the EIF.
Maria also thought about joining MMA Bigshow in his quest to create Entropia Holdings at one point in time. However, MMA is no longer in game, so Maria is glad she did not do that. MMA’s cockiness got the entire community irritated at him in the forums at entropia forum, even though he really probably had some ok ideas… I guess if you are martial artists that fights all the time, you might get too aggressive sometimes… and that may reflect in other areas of your life…
Maria jumped around to several different societies in the beginning of her journeys. For a while she was in The American Soldier (TAS), where she met some nice friends, including big Dodge Ram, and Fillipe Castanhas, among others.
Later, TAS was disbanded, and Fillippe talked Maria in to joining Entropia Asia Cadets (EAC), which was a cadet society for Entropia Asia. Maria was not Asian but joined anyways because some of her friends were there. Shortly thereafter EAC got blackmailed a little – one member of the society (I won’t name names here) bought a dot com for the Entropia Asia… and did so without consenting with anyone… in part because he ran an ISP… it was a nice site with it’s own forum and things… but wasn’t that great… Later, the higher ups in the society were asked to pay for that domain or something (not sure about all the details since I was a lowly cadet)… and the leaders of EAC broke off to start Zoku instead of staying as a cadet society for EA. At that time Cadets were given a choice – either stay in a dead cadet society, join Zoku, join EA, or go off on their own way. Maria decided to join Entropia Asia because Vortezy, Bryon, and some of the other folks over there were nice, and helpful.
Shortly after that, Maria went silent for 9 months because all deposits and activity from earth that powered her dissappeared (VU updates caused me not to be able to log in for 9 months til I got new hardware… could not even get past the login screen with the ol ATI-All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro and pentium III…).
When Maria awakend from her 9 month slumber, she was still EA, but it was a nearly dead society at least for her part of the world… There were still Asians in the society, but being located in the States, I could not see people in my society unless I stayed up til 3 am… which was a bad situation…
Maria decided to change directions if she was going to continue to survive on Calypso… so I started reading the forums… and I read them A LOT… Over time, I started thinking it’d be neat to cut some deals with shop owners, so I started studying the entropia forum and looking around at various shop owner’s avatars and visiting various terminals in game to see who owned what estates, etc. As a result, Maria met a lot of folks that owned shops in the Port Atlantis Mall and a few other places and befriended quite a few of them. She started trading things at Trade Terminal (TT) Value to some of those folks, including Nihilist, who happens to run EFD Growth Fund. Nihilist sort of became Maria’s mentor in the ways of running a shop successfully in game. He ran, and still runs a consignment shop called Dead Man’s Plunder… He buys things at TT value, trys to sell it in his shop, then pays back a percentage of profits…
Maria bought tons of things off of the auction for him, paying TT value for it. Some got accepted, others rejected. The rejected stuff, Maria did not know what to do with it… so she started trading it. Around this time, Vortexy, which is one of the leaders of EA started handing Maria lots of blueprints to sell too since he was crafting a lot… so she’d go sell his blueprints at Port Atlantis near the TP… and would also sell whatever else he handed her… she was a pretty good scounger in those days. She cut a few deals and met lots of traders… She actually started a non-society guild called United Buyers Exchange Resource (U.B.E.R.) and traded things to and from a lot of folks at TT values back then. It was fun and games, and no losses really since TT value was always growing, or getting traded off for something else to sell. STTS took that idea to a new level, but Josh Edwards (who ran STTS) only sold via auction, so he actually lost a lot of potential profit… and cost people that worked with him 100% of auction fees + 30% of the profits on top of that… pretty steep cost, but it was all junk people normally sold to the TT anyways, so it was not a bad deal… Maria eventually got in to that as an investor, and urged Josh to stop using the auction and get in to using a shop or something… He never listened, so she sold off her investment and moved on… There is still a massive void in EU that STTS filled that should be filled by someone, but is not currently being filled by anyone, so stuff gets sold in to the TT and avatars in the entire community get poorer and poorer because of that…
Around that time, NBK Entrepreneurs was formed by Hardwrath, someone who used to be leader of NBK, but had also been in a deep slumber, like Maria. Maria liked the enticing sound of being in NBK E, since she wanted to change her focus towards running a business and not being a ped loosing hunter the rest of her life… so she joined NBK Entrepreneurs… it got active about a year, had lots of great people in it – several shop owners (some of which Maria had brought in due to her U.B.E.R contacts, including Nihilist), an Land Area owner, and lots of traders… and some of the best crafters in all of the virtual universe…
Eventually though, a lot of the crafters wanted to do their own thing and focus on cutting deals with miners, so NBK Miners started, and NBK E was more or less abandoned by all but Maria and a few other dedicated folks. After that NBK E was forced by NBK leadership to become NBK Otium. Otium means “at ease.”
The idea from leadership is that Otium should be a place for the retired avatars to go that don’t fit in any other NBK society… a while before then, Nihilist quit because the promises that Hardwrath had made with a steady supply line being created when NBK E. first started out was never really brought in to being – it was, but only to benefit skilling crafters and miners, not shop owners… This and a lot of other things going on caused Otium to exist. I still am not sure I like otium since it sounds an awful like like Opium… but it’s started to grow on me a bit… sort of nice to not be under pressure to skill or cut business deals all the time even though I’m still doing some of each…
Anyways, at some point in time, prior to the recolonization, Maria purchased an apartment in Treasure Island. It was Apartment 10A in the Silver Building. The “Stack Exchange” was there, which was a service Maria ran to trade stacks of items among a lot of different individuals. Maria also had 2 shopkeepers that more money that magically appeared on her pedcard from a transfer from earth allowed her to buy. The real purpose behind the Stack Exchange was to get people in to the apartment to look at the shopkeepers and buy things. A few events were done with the NBK (Maria’s society)
Eventually, Maria bought a booth in the basement of the Delta Tower at Omegaton West Habitat… and bought Apartment 1A in the Delta Tower too… Those funds from earth helped her to make that happen…
and the Stack Exchange became the NBK TT shop… when Maria bought out the old NBK TT shop’s inventory and moved it in…
Then a few months later, the Treasure Island Silver apartment deed was traded for a deed to Apartment 4A in the Delta Tower… so Maria had 2 apartments and a booth all in the Delta Tower… 4A, 1A and Booth #3. She moved the NBK TT Shop and shopkeepers to the 1A apartment.. but that business never took off since the booth and shopkeepers were hidden away and not visible… then Maria moved everything out of the NBK TT shop apartment and converted it to a blueprint shop since NBK folks and others were continuing to TT Maria blueprints along with other things…
Then Maria did something radical and traded the two shopkeepers and booth in for the Shop 1 in Block A in Delta because the guy that owned that place, Rufwon, had been trying to sell it for a long time… Maria felt sorry for Rufwon and also found the idea of being visible from outside of the building to be nice…
So the Lost Library was established in Block A, Shop 1 of Delta Tower in Omegaton West Habitat. Maria owned Aparment 1A in the same building and 4A as well..
about 2 weeks ago, she sold 4A…
and now one of the folks that is selling blueprints in the Lost Library, who sniped 1D from Maria in an Auction at time when Maria was a little poor, is wanting to sell 1D…
So going Forwards, Maria mastermesh Mesh will own Apartments 1A and 1D, as well as Block A – Shop 1 in the Delta at Omegaton West Habitat. There’s also potential to eventually buy the booth back or buy another booth too, leaving lots of room to expand the shop at some point in the future, both horizontally, and vertically at some point in the future… The costs of expanding looks way too pricey right now, but I’m going to hold the deeds because that price may not look so bad in the future… I never thought that 2 years ago I’d join the NBK, much less own an estate… or three estates!!!… You never know what will happen in the virtual universe… the future is bright now that I have 3 estates in the same building… lots of potential room to grow eventually, even if the costs aren’t justified for that growth yet… Hopefully I can find a way to make that justification change and get profitable at the same time! 🙂
Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical tale will be playing at Rhynsburger Theatre. http://bit.ly/9zjJs9
As we get ready to begin the installation of the MoMA exhibition next week, I wanted to take a step back and offer a visual reflection on a central figure in this exhibition. Our thanks to Architecture Research Office for poetically capturing the essence of Rising Currents. Click on the image to view the video clip.
http://bit.ly/dlmaM2
The alternative campus magazine for University of Missouri has RSS Feeds. I’m going to twitterfeed the Arts section in to here. Happy reading. The direct url to that rss feed is http://www.themaneater.com/feeds/sections/arts/
Also… YES… I do plan to post more of my own posts in here instead of just RSS Feeds from other places. The reason I put so many RSS feeds in here is that I don’t have time to check my own email most of the time, and actually look at my own blog as way of getting info because of all of these feeds. I also like doing this so I can post a comment here on the blog about the various feeds that do come in, and you usually will find at least one comment from me on most of them.
There have been reported cases over community forums where people are experiencing being disconnected every 6-10 minutes. This is something that is being looked into, but EUSO needs the aid of those who are experiencing the problem.
If you are experiencing the problem, please send a support case and include following information:
What Router you are using
What […] http://bit.ly/9hBkbr
These notes accompany King Vidor’sThe Big Parade, which screens on February 24, 25, and 26 in Theater 3.
In his autobiography A Tree Is a Tree, King Vidor recounts the origins of The Big Parade. Having made some good but ephemeral films for the fledgling M-G-M, Vidor told Irving Thalberg, “If I were to work on […] http://bit.ly/c9B0hU
muhealth: National Pancake Day is here. Visit your #CoMo IHOP on Conley Road for free pancakes and while you are there support MU Children’s Hosp. http://bit.ly/dtezh0
Back in January the UK-base of Escape Studios announced a range of short three day taster courses. These will focus on introductions to 3D using Maya , computer animation , visual effects , and games .
The courses cost £399, but the price will be…
muhealth: Debbie Kaplan, R.N., from Travel Connections will appear on Columbia’s Morning News with David Lile on #kfru at 8:25 a.m. on Tues., Feb. 23. http://bit.ly/bfqg8l
The second week of Documentary Fortnight begins this Wednesday, February 24, and runs through March 3. The selections now turn to look at communities around the world, including a special thematic focus on Iran and Afghanistan. First up is Gideon Koppel’s Sleep Furiously. The film depicts Treufurig, a hill farming community in Wales where, many years ago, […] http://bit.ly/aEb6hY
muhealth: Free pancakes tomorrow at #CoMo IHOP. All donations will benefit MU Children’s Hospital. http://tinyurl.com/yeybt3q http://bit.ly/cO4MbY
SatelliteGuys: Join us Tuesday Night at 8PM For the SatelliteGuys Radio Show, Gregg Loewen from @THX Video Tech and Lion AV joins us to take your calls! http://bit.ly/bMpp9P
muhealth: National Pancake Day is Tues. #CoMo IHOP is giving away free pancakes. Any donations benefit MU Children’s Hosp. http://tinyurl.com/yeybt3q http://bit.ly/adRWTj
I’m adding yet another twitter tweeter in to this blog…
MU Healthcare tweets in here are coming from
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/45928911.rss
Event and Server issues:
FPC are aware that there were difficulties this weekend with server stability and player run events. We’re now looking into these issues and will get back to you as soon as possible.
LandAreas:
Last VU we removed the trade- and revivalterminals that were placed out for the duration of the SGA period from the […] http://bit.ly/apnTxD
SatelliteGuys: Is @DISHNETWORK planning on moving some HD off of 61.5 to 72.7? Read more at http://tinyurl.com/yazf4ra http://bit.ly/9O3ACl
We initially suggested five design firms as candidates to design and build the Design and the Elastic Mind website. Paola Antonelli, the exhibition curator, had gone through around twenty links from three firms when we showed her Yugo Nakamura’s personal site, yugop.com. The simple white page that greeted us was immediately invaded by dark, two-dimensional […] http://bit.ly/cujBqW
There are two color spectrums that are important in the arts. One is real light and how it mixes in the real world. The other is reflected light and how it works in the real world. Real lighting is visible in Stage Lighting, Computer Screens, TVs, and just about anywhere that there is a real light source – light bulb, sun, window, etc. The primary colors of real light are red, green, and blue.
The primary colors of reflected light on the other hand are red, yellow, and blue. In the print world, black is also added to that to arrive at a spectrum that is abbreviated CYMK – Cyan (Red), Yellow, Magenta (Blue), and BlaCK – CK is used for Black so that it’s not confused with Blue.
Mixing primary colors in real light results in white where the colors overlap. This is easily demonstrated in stage lighting by simply aiming 3 lights at the same area, where each one has a filter on it that matches the 3 primary colors – red, green, and blue. Where the three colors overlaps on the stage or wall or whever the lights are aimed together, there’s white that shows up in the middle.
Painting and other forms of art where color is placed on an object utilize the reflected light spectrum since the paper, canvas, or whatever else is typically not a light source itself. What is really weird about reflected light is that the science behind it does something completely different from what you think it’s doing. The color we see on an object is really what’s reflecting back at us off of that object when the real light hits the object. In other words the “colors” we see in everything that is not a real light source is really an absence of that particular color in the object itself – all the other colors of the spectrum are “absorbed” by the object, so what we see is really the opposite of the color that the object really is. We see the color that bounced back at us and was not absorbed.
Because of that weird way that things work, mixing primary colors with paint usually results in a muddy brown mid-tone color with low intensity. That’s completely different than what happens when real light’s primary colors are mixed.
That means that most stuff that you see on screen will usually look a lot darker than it did in the computer when you print it, especially since printers add more than the primary colors, and throw black in too.
It also means that when you go to mix colors as a painter, you have to think completely differently than when you mix colors with real light, like when you are thinking about interior design issues in stage lighting, or just picking out lights to put in to your bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, or living room.
What gets very interesting is that some sculptures and other forms of art mix and match both light spectrums through backlighting, integrating tv screens in to the artform, adding lights to sculptures, etc. Sculpture is actually a whole different baseball game all together since it can incorporate time and space in to it through relationships of shadows in the real world, locations of the sun at various times of the day and year, etc. Video and painting can do that too on some levels depending on where the painting is placed, what the environment the painting is in, and of course one of the primary elements of video is time – the 4th dimension to 3 Dimensional works so to speak.
With painting, drawing, and other reflected light art forms, there is also a lot going on with how elements of the painting work with one another. Layering colors together is sort of one of the main things painters do. We create depth and dimension to a 2 dimensional plane by placing brush strokes, and other elements next to one another, on top of one another, underneath one another… There’s literally a ton of work that goes in to this sort of stuff sometimes to make a “realistic” artwork. What’s sad though is most viewers of these things that may have taken hundreds of hours to put together typically only view the work for 3-10 seconds at the most unless something in partcular catches their eye or interest in the work.
Big sculptures and video have a little bit of an advantage over painting in that regard – the viewer is forced in to watching looking at those types of things for longer periods of time, leaving more time for the work to create an impression and message. However, painting has a “presence” that exists longer sometimes, in some works. It is a visual thing that can haunt you over time as your brain echos seeing the patterns on the image over and over.
Creating works of art is a bit like wandering through a maze. You have tons of decisions to make, and each one creates subsequent decisions to make. The painting with the most “potnential energy” might well be the blank canvas… just as the work of music that might create the most interest and cause you to think about things is complete silence…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E
Art is life. Life is art. Neither are a reflection of one another because both just are. They exist not in parallel to one another, or as a mirror to one another, but coexist, sometimes peacefully, other times in chaos. Out of chaos comes creation many times, and creation usually does eventually lead to some form of chaos.
The entire universe was created with a major big bang explosion of chaos, and from that came the beauty that we call life.
SatelliteGuys: DIRECTV Announces its 4th quarter earnings, gains over 900,000 subs. For more more see http://tinyurl.com/ycg2oom http://bit.ly/bQ8BYN
Starting tonight and running through March 3, this year’s Documentary Fortnight continues in its mission to reveal a wide range of approaches in nonfiction filmmaking while highlighting the art of documentary storytelling. The series reflects on the creative act of documentary filmmaking and celebrates the ingenuity, dedication, and persistence of documentary filmmakers. It is our […] http://bit.ly/cVsQ5b
Converting Characters, Powers, etc. from one gaming fantasy world in to another is not usually too difficult because most stats in most games are fairly similar on some level. Usually there is a roll done to check if some action is successful or not. If it is successful, there sometimes is another roll to determine what actually happens, or how successful the success was. The different gaming systems have different ways of doing that – some use D20s, some use D10s, some use D6s, and some actions, especially those that are skill based instead of against a particular player character or non-player character, are based on on a percentage, usually determined by two D10s are rolled, and one counts as the 10s part of the % and the other counts as the ones part of the %. A roll of 9 and 9 would be 99%. A roll of 0 and one would be 1% unless the one was in the tens slot, in which case it would be a 10%. On skill checks like that, the Game Master, or some pre-planned skill check base is used to determine if the roll is over the amount needed to successfully do whatever it is that the character is trying to do.
Since everything in all gaming systems is based on a check for success of failure, it’s usually just a matter of comparing the two systems you are trying to convert to or from against one another to see in what way you can play with the numbers to get to the average and go from there in all conversions.
For instance, World of Darkness games are usually based on dots that make up attributes or skills. 5 dots is usually considered about the highest humanly possible attribute. 10 dots is considered about as powerful as god in whatever skill that it is that those points are in. In that system, each dot represents a 10 sided dice that is rolled to check against some number, usually determined by the books or the game master – oops, I mean “story teller.”
In other books like Palladiumbooks Rifts, Hereoes Unlimited, etc. Most non-combat actions are based on skill checks that are % based, and most combat actions are based on the roll of a D20 to determine if a hit, punch, or power that is used successfully hits. That is sometimes contested by another characters roll of a D20 for defensive actions such as parrying, dodging, etc. If no defensive moves are used, the attackers D20 roll is usually contested against the other character’s armor, which has an armor rating… Rolls above the armor’s rating does damage to the character inside of the armor. Rolls below that do damage to the armor itself, unless the armor is a special armor such as a mutant’s metal power that gives them a high armor rating, in which case a roll below the armor rating usually does no damage. A roll of a “natural 20” or 90% or more is typically a super success, usually doing twice as much damage, or making the successful check against a skill super successful. For instance, you checked against your lockpick skill to open a bank vault – a roll of 95% when you just needed a 70% might mean you got in, no alarms went off, and there is actually the keys to a lamberghini parked outside that has no alarm system sitting on the floor of the vault. A roll of 1 or 2% is usually a miserable failure – so in the same situation, that would result in a full swat team showing up, the alarm going off, and you broke your lockpick and got your fingerprints all over the place.
I have played both of those game systems and loved them and successfully integrated them by simply thinking about how the dot system works vs the % system and the D20 system. Different people doing different conversions might come up with other conversions, but what I typically came up with was that 5 dots = 99% or so, so each dot = about 20% for skill checks… and on average, one dot = +3 in d20 rolls, giving 5 dots +15 advantage on all d20 rolls, which is really just about the best most powers and things can give you in the Palliadium world.
Now go put all those vampires, werewolves, mummies, wraiths, and things in to your Rifts or Heroes Unlimited Campaign to add a whole bunch of new layers of complexity to the world… or go the other way and put some of those nearly unkillable vampires from Heroes Unlimited up against the Camarilla of Chicago or the Sabbat of New York City, etc. Perhaps a new vampire hunter is an invulnerable mutant with supersonic speed. Maybe a demigod from Rifts World Books have found a rift in to the World of Darkness and have decided to take on the eternal mummies or maybe even Caine and Lilith one on one. There’s literally unlimited potential to bring your heroes unlimited opportunities for role playing.
In a future post I might put in some rules about converting to and from other game systems.
nevereverdie: Nastiest Hangover this Morning after celebrating the move to the New Studio, Surprise guest Dennis Rodman Kept us… http://po.st/QCo http://bit.ly/bQWiEf
In my last MoMA Offsite (which, as it happens, was also the first-ever MoMA Offsite), I set the agenda for this column, which is to reveal and discuss MoMA collection works on loan to other institutions. I chose to explore both works that are infrequently on view here at Fifty-third Street as well as those […] http://bit.ly/cZgxtQ
Ever since the introduction of the mob “Proteron”, it’s been a very popular mob, both for solo hunters and for team hunters. There have been two healthy, thick spawns on Eudoria; one with higher maturity and one with lower. We wanted to get the amazing winning creature from the “Create-a-Critter” competition out for players to […] http://bit.ly/d9VT7s
Visit http://ping.fm/vxvyG to see the new launch from 3D World and Autodesk.
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SatelliteGuys: The XStreamHD Chat with CEO George Gonzalez is now in the books! If you missed it you can hear the 90min show at http://tinyurl.com/yaudjws http://bit.ly/9UxdOq
I started a google document… it might be a little easier to maintain than text formating in some Entropia Universe Thread or here in the blog, or on entries in Entropedia or something. It’s open to editing by anyone so it should be easy to keep things updated.
url to the new spreadsheet is
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AppC9Gwr9zBIdGhNY0FBdHhjdm1MYUxWT2hjWHBMbWc&hl=en
url to the html web page format of it is
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=thMcAAtxcvmLaLVOhcXpLmg&output=html
Almost nothing’s in it yet… but soon I’ll start using what info is available on Entropia Forum, Entropedia, and in game in the estate terminals to start making what info is in there accurate. I invite you to do so too. This is a huge project and I cannot do it alone.
There is a place on there to put the name of the TP, name of the continent, name of the planet, name of the service, a link to the service’s website or entropiaforum thread, and a link the the shop owner or estate holder’s avatar in entropiaforum… as I said, huge project…
I wanted to do this project about a year ago, but lots of things got in to my way due to lack of real world time, etc. I’m hoping that others will join me on this crusade to map out our virtual world, and make it easier to access the estate owners of various places, and make it easier to see exactly which shops are active and which are now.
We CAN make this the best darn resource on how to contact shop owners over time! 🙂 😉
When you have a few peds on your avatar’s ped card in Entropia Universe, it is a good idea to price around and window shop a bit before doing any buying. The global auction system, accessed from the auctioneer npc is one of the main markets in game, and it is what is used to determine market value of item. However, in game shops in the malls and outlying areas are where you can sometimes find some spectacular deals. Actually, some “resellers” that sell things on the auction get their stuff from shops around the countryside where they can find items cheaper than they can in the auction. Sure, there are some greedy shop owners that want to price things way above where they should be, but there are also lots of shop owners that price things well below the auction values on a regular basis.
At my shop in Omegaton West Habitat, Delta Tower, I try to personally keep things below market value when possible. I can’t do it on everything since the minimum markup on items is +1 ped, so minimum total price is 1.03, which is the +1 Ped + 2 pecs for taxes that is automatically added to the pricing. Tax is approximately 2% in most shops in games currently.
The reason I, and several other shop owners, can keep our prices so low is that we deal directly with crafters, hunters, and others that get us the goods in direct deals, or bulk buying deals. That keeps things cheap, and keeps those that we buy from having a steady income instead of a sporadic income they would otherwise have if they only used the auction system to sell everything. Additionally, the auction costs them more in the long run since the auctioneer will take a fee from the seller of items regardless of whether the item sells or not.
Shop owners like myself, who set up consignment deals, usually pay Trade Terminal value to those we buy from, then we try to sell the items in question, and if we get sales, we share profits back to the original item’s owner later. If the item does not sell, we contact the original owner after a specified time period and offer the item back to them at trade terminal value. That keeps them having some peds on hand, us having something to sell, and keeps the general public happy since they have interesting items to look at in the shops that are always changing. We can afford to change the inventory out and swap things around that don’t sell since we are not paying markup for the items until a sell is made in consignment shops.
Other shops pay markup on everything, and then they get stuck with items they might not be able to sell. That’s sometimes the right way to do things, especially if markup climbs later after an item is acquired, but many times, it’s silly to pay full markup for items that you might not be able to sell, especially if you are just buying it for the purpose of reselling it.
When you double click on an item in a shop, you will see the item screen that explains more about the item. There are several tabs in the item screen, including a little popup window you can access that shows the market history of the item, which lists the price that the item was sold at in the auction for the day, week, month, year, and decade. That history screen is very important when you are checking prices on things since you’d otherwise have no reliable way of knowing exactly how much an item is worth. Before that window came along, buying things from shops was hard to do since it was difficult to know how much the stuff you were looking at was really worth. The same thing happened on the auction sometimes before the history window existed. Be glad it’s there and use it. It could save you a lot of peds over time.
Not all items in shops and booths are for sell. You can tell what’s for sell or not by seeing how much the markup is on the item in the main item screen (left most tab). Items that don’t have a markup are not for sell, and cannot be purchased. Usually items that are not for sell are there just for decorative purposes to give the shop a theme or specific look that the shop owner wants the place to have.
If you do window shop, be sure to look around at all of the malls and shops. There’s a bunch of them. Many don’t have their rent paid, so you cannot access them, but the active shop owners do keep their rent paid, and keep prices marked up, usually at descent levels because they want you to buy. Pricing around at various shops, just like window shopping in the real world, can sometimes get you some spectacular deals you would have otherwise missed.
In a future post, I will go in to details about what it is like to be a shop owner in this virtual universe.
In another post in the future, I might try to list all of the shops in game that I know about. There’s a LOT of them. Remember there’s 3 mall shops in game (Port Atlantis, Twin Peaks, and Emerald Lakes) so far, lots of various shops in the countryside and in apartment basements (Omegaton West Habitat, Genesis HQ, Sakura City, Treasure Island, Minopolis, North of Fort Argus, and a several other places too), a really big shopping area on Club Neverdie, a few booths on Crystal Palace, and several other places people can sell things since shopkeepers enable ANY estate in game to become a shop… including but not limited to any apartment, any hanger, and any Land Area. Additionally, shopkeepers can be used to add more item slots to already established shops, making them even bigger than they once were.
There’s an entire virtual universe to window shop in!
When new planets come in to play there will likely be even more shops elsewhere.
Have fun.
These notes accompany the Nordic Gods and Directors program, which screens on February 17, 18, and 19 in Theater 3.
In a sense, there are two Fritz Langs, with his life, career, and sensibility split almost literally in half by the rise of the Nazis. The German Lang is monumental, existing in a realm of the […] http://bit.ly/aSYxtI
https://entropiascams.wordpress.com/ lists a few more scams in Entropia than below does…
There are many scams that exist in the Entropia Universe, just as there are many scams that exist in the real world. It would be impossible to list every scam since scammers in EU, just like in the real world are constantly trying new things to try to overcome their victim’s defenses. Here are just a few of the scams that are in EU that you might want keep on the watch for.
TT Scam
Don’t buy Trade Terminal (TT) or Technician items from others unless they ask for the Trade Terminal Value. The one exception to this, which is fairly new, is that some avatars believe they can sell Trade Terminal items to others if the tier on the item in question is higher than tier zero. Use caution in these sort of situations since most TT items are fairly low level, and not worth as much as the sellers might tell you they are worth. Check with the nearest TT and Technician to see what items they sell. The items available in both the TT and Technician occassionally change from Version Update (VU) to VU.
Borrow Scam
Don’t let others borrow items from you unless you are prepared to lose the item forever, and also are collecting collateral on the item in question that is at least the value in Markup that you would normally sell the item for – preferably more actually since higher collateral usually acts as a deterrent from the borrower from stealing the item outright as they want their peds or other form of collateral back from you. Mindark (MA) considers all trades to be final, so technically there is nothing in the game that allows borrowing or renting of items. Therefore, anyone involved in renting or borrowing anything is possibly participating in a scam at any point in time.
However, many trustworthy avatars do exist, and borrow things from one another, rent things from one another, and many shop owners “borrow” items from others in “consignment” deals to sell the items in question in their shops, and the shop owners do pay back the original owners of the items in question many times. Like all things, trustworthiness is the most imporatant factor here. If you don’t trust those you are trading with, don’t trade with them. That’s why the trade window has you press two confirm buttons before a person to person trade is finalized. That extra button gives you a chance to check to make sure the other avatar put in everything they said they would, and that you are 100% sure you do want this deal to go through.
The Lost Library Consignment Shop that my avatar, Maria Mastermesh Mesh, runs and the Dead Man’s Plunder Shop, which is run by one of my old friends, Nihilist, are two consignment shops that are fairly reputable, and very trustworthy. I try to never scam anyone ever, nor does Nihilist. Other consignment shops exist in game too, and each one is run by other avatars of various levels of trustworthiness. Just be careful in your trading so you don’t get scammed.
Upgrade Armor scam (*EDIT* Now, certain armor types can be colored…)
Armor cannot be upgraded, nor painted. However, newly introduced tier system does allow for armor, just like many other items, to be tiered, which is similar to an upgrade. If someone asks you to let them upgrade or paint your armor, watch out, it might be a scam. The painting of armor is a definite scam. However, clothes can be painted and textured, so some avatars asking you to let them upgrade your clothes by painting it might not be scamming you, but you should ask for collateral if you do get in to a deal like that to make sure you get your stuff back. Otherwise, you might literally lose the shirt on your back.
Skill Scam and other trade scams
Empty skill chips are needed to put skills in when trading them. Sometimes scammers claim that they need you to provide them an empty skill implant chip so that they can fill it up and give you the skills. Be very careful in this situation to ask for collateral since ESIs have a very high market value.
L Scam.
Limited (L) items cannot be repaired. They “break” at around the time that their TT value drops to about 3% of their total TT max. These items are then unusable, and pretty much useless since they can’t be used and can’t be repaired. They become fancy junk to look at or to sell to the TT. Sometimes scammers put L items like this on the auction or in a shop after they are almost broken so that others will pay top value for them since the prices will be low as TT value is low, and they expect full Market Value for them… Don’t be tricked in to paying top dollar for something that’s broken that you can’t repair, unless maybe you have some special use for it.. for instance to hang on the walls of your apartment if you have an (L) item museum or something. All other uses for this stuff is non-existent.
Investment Scam
Sometimes avatars come up with big plans that require lots of peds. When that happens, they sometimes ask for other avatars to “invest” in their plan to help them get the capital needed to start up whatever their big idea is. Be very careful with this, especially if there is an initial cost that has no return on investment.
I’ve outlined some of the Investment Scams I’ve seen in game over at http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/general-economy-discussion/180198-investment-funds-inside-entropia-universe-2.html#post2308520
As mentioned there, some of these investment plans are legit, and others are not. Even then, they all are run differently. Just remember that MA considers all trades to be final, so if someone does get you involved in something like this, and they take all your peds and give you nothing back ever, the “trade” that was used to get your money might probably be considered a legit trade so there might not be anything you can do to get your money back. Be careful. Peds don’t grow on trees!
You might also want to read the Scamming Methods Exposed thread on Entropia Forum for more tips on how to avoid being scammed. http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/entropia-universe-tutorials/77924-scamming-methods-exposed.html#post928260
Also, I’ve started a new blog to deal solely with the issue of conspiracies and scams in Entropia Universe. It can be found at http://entropiatrash.wordpress.com
In more recent days, I’ve outlined some of the many problems with Entropia as far as both scams and exploits go over at http://entropiarelated.wordpress.com/ and it’s sister blog (which I no longer post to as much) http://entropiatrash.wordpress.com
SatelliteGuys: Got your questions ready for the CEO of XStreamHD? Join us tonight at 7PM ET for the SatelliteGuys Radio Show! Details at SatelliteGuys.US! http://bit.ly/9UqRFO
Creatures:
There’s been some mobs reported missed by the community. Last time I reported the floating mobs had been fixed and respawned, and it’s been pointed out that I did not mention the Oculus. The Oculus has also been fixed, and it will be in for the upcoming Version Update.
The Tantardions are also in again, together […] http://bit.ly/cSRjKI
Jeff Thomann's Blog 