Roland Francis @RolandFrancis

LOST DATA in Opensim.

Hello everyone, I recently decided to move my regions back into a mini-grid application (linked in my profile) due to issues I was experiencing with OSgrid. One of which was the problem with losing MESH assets. It was a well known fact that some 'textures' would go missing but eventually return again. My biggest issue was mesh assets being worn on NPCs while rezzed inworld. One NPC had his head missing, the maid had a missing foot. Console errors would warn me that my NPCs were not going to be fully drawn. I keep boxes of all assets for NPCs and the backups also had the same missing content problem. It does not end there, boxes with mesh items rezzed on land inworld (not in inventory folders) were also affected. It was my understanding (from online articles) that storing items on land was generally regarded as being safer than keeping items in your inventory.

What do you do?

When attempting to load an old oar to OSgrid, I discovered that it will ignore assets which are already in their database, even if the osgrid entry is damaged or missing. So the only way to get those items back is to load this oar on another grid. Maybe a Standalone, Dreamgrid or any other server which has it's own database. Here is how my recovery procedure worked:

1. I loaded an oar backup (from a hidden INVENTORY REGION) I made LAST NIGHT which had several thousand missing items. During the creation process, RED console errors gave warnings of items that would not be included in the archive.

2. I created a separate region to load oars (made last year and the year before) of that SAME sim. As the oars were loading I noticed it was skipping assets and only loading the missing content. I had one old oar load 15 assets and skip the 25k+ which were already in the database. In this experiment, I used several oars in the "recovery" region. I emptied the sim after each oar load. I figured It would not necessary to keep the content live.

3. When all was said and done, this produced an interesting side effect. Since missing assets are now in my new database, I could go into the region which once had asset loading errors and rez mesh content which was previously missing. This tells me that the damaged oar had mention of the missing assets written into it and all that was needed is to load the missing items into the database for retrieval. The way Oar archives work is nothing short of genius!

4. Once the procedure is complete a NEW OAR can be made (with noticeably less content errors) and the Wizardry & Steamworks database cleanup procedure (https://grimore.org/opensim/database/asset_cleaner) can be used to discard database bloat.

Anyway, I wanted to share my findings on this topic and I hope it will help someone who has lost assets. As a content creator, I can tell you it is devastating to lose things you spent a great deal of personal time making. An old saying comes to mind: "Never keep all of your eggs in one basket". Having a hypergrid enabled standalone region on the side will let you get those lost items back. If you wish to stay on OSgrid, you can have your alt bring recovered data to your OSgrid region with NEW asset IDs.

I cannot stress enough... BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP your DATA.

-Peace & Love
Spax

There are still a few days left to enjoy summer season in Novale before we close down to install autumn. We received the HG Safari crowd a few days ago. Take a look at the very nice and detailed blog entry by Thirza Ember https://hgsafari.blogspot.com/2022/09/creanovale-in-summer... to get a feeling for the region.

hg.creanovale.ca:8052:NOVALE

The Hawpanyu, or healer, in Na'vi culture is a highly respected role due to their deep connection with nature and their essential role in maintaining the well-being of the clan. The training focuses on ecotherapy, herbal medicine, and the unique skill of energy healing known as "The Flow of Healing." I have a RP kit for the Hawpanyu (Na'vi Healer)
it consists of various items to enhance your pandoran Roleplay. If you would like a kit it is at the landing here. It would also work with other Roleplays as the kit has items and info that you might find useful.
three.hills.grid.outworldz.net:8002:iknimaya

On April 9th, the Board of Directors convened and resolved to augment its membership by two individuals, thereby ensuring a quorum. Subsequently, it was unanimously decided to extend membership offers to Unadecal Masala and Roland Francis. I am pleased to confirm that both candidates graciously accepted, and on April 11th, our inaugural board meeting took place, yielding fruitful outcomes.

The newly appointed board members will undertake pivotal responsibilities, including reviewing and adjudicating art submissions, voting on prospective projects, and contributing to strategic decisions concerning the gallery's operations. Additionally, they will engage in various board-related duties.

To foster creativity, we are excited to announce the integration of a dedicated workspace within the gallery premises, facilitated by a small sim. This space will serve as a collaborative hub for artists, providing an opportunity for mutual encouragement, support, and artistic synergy within the Open Sim community.

We extend heartfelt congratulations to Una and Roland on their appointments. Your expertise and commitment will undoubtedly enrich our board, and we eagerly anticipate your contributions.

On recevait aujourd'hui les amis de la communauté francophone
Ici quelques uns d'entre eux font la traversée entre la Vallée Hantée
et Les profondeurs des ténèbres, lieu de la course au trésor.

Simon Stålenhag display at:

hg.osgrid.org:80:Mech Lab

Simon Stålenhag a Swedish artist, musician, and designer specialising in retro-futuristic digital images focused on nostalgic Swedish countryside alternate history environments.
The settings of his artwork have formed the basis for the upcoming film The Electric State.
To Explore Simons Artwork at Mech Lab teleporter to: 02 STORE district.
You will find the fan Gallery celebrating the work.

I'd like to announce that I'm going on vacation from OS for a time. But I've been on a vacation from OS already, for maybe two months now, and I'd have to interrupt my vacation to say that I'm not going on vacation because I'm already on vacation. So, no announcements. Mainly because, at this point, I'm confused about the whole vacation thing. However, while I'm pretty sure I'm on vacation from OS, I still log in to OSW on occasion to check on the What Are You Looking For group. The helpers there have been, and continue to be, incredible! Anyways, if you want to send me a message, I'm likely to see it, and I might just answer.

Many of you know I have a lot of statues in my store, but I didn't set out originally to offer them. A few years ago I wanted one for a build I was doing at the time and found one on the Kitely Market. Wanting to add materials, I replaced the base texture with a marble and realized that all that was left was an amorphous blob that barely resembled the original statue. So I decided to see if there was a better way. The resulting workflow is pictured. I start out with real world scans of famous statues (such as Hebe pictured) that are readily available, and load it into Blender. Since it had 2 million faces, I needed to reduce the complexity to 80,000 faces or less to be able to upload it inworld but still have detail for those who are unable to use higher graphics. You can see the two models side-by-side in Blender. At that point I bake the normals to replace a lot of the details that were lost without increasing the complexity, then upload the less complex model and the new normalmap into opensim. The final photo is the result.

You can see all my statues on my store regions:

Main Store: grid.wolfterritories.org:8002:Lunaria Emporium - Main Store

Kitely Store: grid.kitely.com:8002:Lunaria Emporium

And many of my items are available on the Kitely Market here: https://www.kitely.com/market?store=13957705

The Awesome Greeter. Why is this Greeter awesome? Well. It is full perm. But it also has a lot of features other greeters do not have. It gets a list of everyone in the region and if there are new people in the list then it greets them. But not like other greeters do. It greets each individual person by getting their Key and using the special function called llRegionSayTo(). This creates way less lag in the simulator, as the script only speaks to ONE person and doesn't llRegionSay for the entire sim to hear. Normally people use llRegionSay, instead of llRegionSayTo, which is a lot more laggy. Another reason it's so great, is it plays a nifty little alert, and it updates the list every 5 seconds. If someone leaves it removes their name from the people-that-are-here list within 5 seconds. Then it will greet them again when they come back with a nice pleasant tone. It's at cyberdatastorm.com:8002:Wizardry. Once you set it down and leave it alone, you can make it invisible or tiny or stick the script & the sound in some other statue or something.
Many greeters use laggy llSensorRepeat() function with a short range. But really don't you want someone to be greeted whether they tp into the middle of your grid, or on some far corner?

I say this every New Year, it is the first day of a 365-day Novel, let's write a good one! As I close the chapter on this one, thank you to all those friends who stopped by and inspired me to create, I love you!

Everything "new" is the well-forgotten old...
The problem with nudity and children is not that the children are naked or that they are doing anything!
The problem is in "Peeping Tom"!

From the hysterical reactions of the majority, I understand that you do not know who he is. Well read about the naked noblewoman and perverted voyeurs and pedophiles and .... know yourself in this legend (or truth?)....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Godiva

Skyrealm Observatory is a work in progress. @FerdFrederix is giving me a hand with building this project. I showed him my Observatory Model and he explained it could be greatly improved with Blender modifiers like the edge modifier. It will take some time to complete it is a huge build. Thank you, Ferd for teaching me about the blender modifiers and what can be achieved, just wow!

As the day comes to a close, I couldn't let it pass without wishing a very happy birthday to someone who prefers his privacy. Your dedication to making a positive impact on the lives of others is truly commendable, and your selfless work as a philanthropist speaks volumes. Though you may not seek the spotlight, your actions shine brightly in the lives you touch. Today, I celebrate you quietly, respecting your preference for understatement. May the year ahead bring you the fulfillment and happiness you deserve for all you do. Happy Birthday to a remarkable individual who makes the world a better place in the most humble and impactful ways. 🎉🎂 Thank you Ferd Frederix, I adore you. We were all blessed when you were born.

So the other day when I was working at our mall, a dear soul contacted me and said she didn't see a sales box in front of the ziggurat, well that was because they were not for sale only because they were a really sloppy build. I gave her one but felt bad because I don't like giving sloppy builds so, I drug it back into blender and cleaned it up, added ramps on the steps, brushed off the dirt and set it out for folks to get for sale for free!!! This Ancient Ziggurat will make any ancient build look amazing and realistic. Stop by the mall and get your copy and enjoy....and yes I've since given her a nice, neat, clean copy. Cheers, blessings and much love, Lavia

A tall ship battle , ships with crews ! It's great fun. This is last ship standing ( mine :) ) burning! No cargo to steal, all was burned ! With many thanks to the Catronian Archipelago group members to make this event exciting.

More Than Just A Band
A friend of the band that became the Talking Heads found a glossary of terms used by television cameramen. One of these was ‘talking head’, for a shot of the head and shoulders of a television commentator. These are the people on news shows that the anchor brings in to discuss a specific subject on which they are considered experts. It is said to be the most boring but also the most informative format in TV. (Kind of like this post. Boring but informative!) Well, I have a confession to make. I've always wanted to be a talking head on TV...and now I am! Happy Halloween!

Had a great visit with the HG Safari group yesterday at Luxor. Love hanging with those guys 🙂 You can see the blog post here: https://hgsafari.blogspot.com/2023/09/luna-see.html

Next event at Luxor will be the inaugural gala at the Lotus Club on Saturday October 14th at 2 pm grid time, featuring Austin Moores live. The Lotus Club occupies the top two levels of the central pyramid.

What to do if you missed out on vivox voice? Well. There is a free program for windows/linux/mac called mumble. It has 2 parts. a program that you run as a small server, and a program that you run as a client. Mumble currently supports over 30 games, including such games as call of duty with an overlay plugin. An overlay plugin is not yet developed for opensimulator, however... Here are the instructions to do that if you want a game overlay plugin for opensimulator. https://www.mumble.info/documentation/developer/positional...
BUT you don't have to do all that. You can just run the mumble server, then you and your friends can download the mumble client on their mac, linux box, or windows pc, and they can easily connect to your mumble server. Once everyone is on your mumble server they can type chat to each other, or talk voice to each other over their microphone. The game overlay part just adds additional features to the game, so that it appears your voice is coming from a specific location, rather than being ubiquitous. If you have any questions on how to set up your own private voice server, please msg me, and I will help you. :)

Hello, my name is Tara Paxlapis-Savior (Tara Aers inworld). I am blogger, stylist, VR photographer, RL artists, creator. My pleasure to be blogger for Virtual Melody grid in OS and highligt a special events inside grid.

Here is my new post about UNITY ART GALLERY at Djembe's Land in OpenSim grid, where PORTRAIT'S expo opening happened on March, 4, 2023. An great event, where Djembe Dragonfire sang with his brilliant voice. In a case you missed it, I have a fresh article to encourge you to visit this amazing beautiful place! In my article, I will use opening speech by Viktor Savior, where he explains an idea and his inspiration of this art expo. https://taraaersopensim.blogspot.com/2023/03/unity-art-gal...

My Sister Ms. Kitty shared this with me this morning. She finds the best stuff! Especially when she knows I have an interest in something. This is around 18 minutes and worth every minute of your time. It will open, blow, and astound your mind. At least it did me. A thousand kudos to the creator of this short film!
I hope it is OK to post a link here. I just want everyone to watch this. SO creative.
https://youtu.be/ZWsSkY8EvF4

Equitacion

This is not your normal mall shop.

This store is a stable and trails with beautiful horses waiting for you to ride them.

Come try the best horses in open sim....scripted by our friend, Roland Francis.

After riding, take a look in the stable and get your own copy of these amazing horses.

Equitacion

one of the specialty shops
at Friends Mall

In the enchanting realm of jewelry creation, the transformative journey from an initial drawing to a tangible masterpiece is a captivating process. As the designer, you breathe life into your vision through the meticulous use of curves, extruding techniques, and a diverse array of shapes. When designing your piece think of the different shapes and curves. Font Dingbats can be used in jewelry design too, use your imagination!

Join us for a fun time as we celebrate the big band era with live music from BG Singer. His 1-hour set will include vintage tunes from the 20s to the 60s. DJ Rosa will also grace us before and after. The event will be in our newly finished Coopersville Dance Pavilion. Dressing for the era is fun but not required. All are welcome.

TP: bit.ly/2N16bkK Kitely - Coopersville 1175, 341, 22
-or-
hop://grid.kitely.com:8002/Coopersville/1175/341/22