soothsaying is a tough business. you have to have a decent crystal ball and some pretty edgy clothes. and a scarf on your head – always with the scarf on the head. then you need a great name. Ener Hax just won’t cut it – hmm . . . maybe Zelda Hax? the tarot cards [...]

Ener Hax has mentioned that I use OpenSim on a USB drive for “real work” and asked me to write a post about this. I will dovetail into Ener’s post last night and frame this with a similar Blender 3D perspective. I have been using Blender 3D since it went open source in 2002. It’s [...]

Crista Lopes (@cristalopes) not only created the OpenSim package that runs on sim-on-a-stick, she also created the “Wifi” admin panel that comes with it the zipped version of sim-on-a-stick includes a fully functional Wifi that you simply launch after starting MOWES and OpenSim. just click the link (http://127.0.0.1:9000/wifi) and voila! even on one of my [...]

OpenSim makes for a good, and free, tool for 3D animation work. I have spoken at conferences and webinars on the use of Second Life for creating video for branched scenario-based eLearning because it is a relatively easy tool to use. My focus has shifted to our current endeavor for secondary education but I still [...]

being a day-to-day user of OpenSim i mainly do my own thing and somewhat build on a whim. i don’t have a schedule and often don’t even have set tasks, i just kind of do what i feel like doing i have wondered how much work the OpenSim developers do and how they work on [...]

Maria at Hypergrid Business publishes monthly stats on OpenSim-related growth and also writes about who grew how much and insightful information about the growth (this month’s post) OpenSim is still minuscule when compared to Second Life but unlike Second Life, the options available make it difficult to accurately gauge its full growth but December grew at a good [...]

i recently read a few different blog posts regarding what Linden Lab “should” do for success. posts by people that truly care about the future of Second Life, like Dusan Writer, Tateru Nino, Botgirl Questi, and Neil Canham my world view of virtual worlds was shaped from 4 years in Second Life and running an [...]

here’s a post for those of you that have yet to stick a toe into OpenSim it can be a pain to make a full move from Second Life, no doubt about that, but it is also pretty easy to explore the options. today, OpenSim-based worlds are noticeably better than a year ago, so if you tried them before this [...]

what a mess eh? i get very defensive of any smacking of subQuark. if he gets smacked, it better be by me! =p i checked out that LinkedIn thing (i had blogged about it a few weeks back) with the IBM patent and that IBM lady was a bit cocky with subbie. she said he [...]

it is very tempting to go bonkers with details in OpenSim with the higher prim limit but . . . i like being able to use more prims and i am still learning to balance quantity with what is “good enough”. after being in Second Life for four years and only reserving 1000-1500 prims per [...]

i am not much of a scripter but here is the basic particle script stripped down for a simple snow effect. i am sure there are more eloquent ways of doing this, but it works for small scale use. you can make anything for a snowflake; just import yours (or the one below) and drop [...]

new year is fast approaching and resolutions are forming in people’s minds many resolutions are personal like working out, saving more money, reading more books but some can have an impact far beyond just yourself. this year will likely see OpenSim advance, whether that is via Kokua or browser-based viewing or just in more growth [...]

subQuark talks about using OpenSim for doing video work for eLearning, especially using sim-on-a-stick. he also uses it to make static images for use in eLearning (makes sense since he puts OpenSim video into it and it is a lot cheaper than buying stock images) i like it for the graphic creative outlet as well. [...]

One of the things I covered in eLearning presentations about the use of Second Life, and now OpenSim, is that video captured from this type of virtual world is “real-time”. There is no rendering time as found in “real” 3D programs. Those of you reading this on the iliveisl blog take this fully for granted [...]

if you are on your on grid, whether hosted on your own box or by a hosting provider or even on your own machine or on a sim-on-a-stick, you need to back it up your IT department (if self-hosted through your work or school) or a third party provider will typically have some backup strategy [...]