Free Game Points – The Anti-Spam Guide

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I have played a grand total of four games online that offer game points that you can buy (yes, with real money) and use to purchase in-game goodies. Three of these games also offer the option of earning free game points: PonyStars (R.I.P.), Horse Racing Fantasy, and Mabinogi from Nexon (which disallows linking directly to the Mabinogi game home page). Tightwad that I am, of course I only want free points. Getting these things is not always so free, however. Many of these offers are email address harvesters for spam. Having learned a thing or two doing a few of these, I thought I’d share. Or at least keep notes for myself, if not anyone else.

The following contains personal speculation on several subjects; it is not to be taken as Word of Law or Ultimate Truth.

 

1: Videos
     These are the best offers you can get from any offer source. Usually they are pathetically cheap, but you can watch them once per day as long as they are available, and there are usually several available at a time. Those little tiny increments do add up, over time.

That, and they are relatively painless to do. You start the video, you let it run. You can watch it, if you want. You can mute it, you can do things in other windows/tabs, etc etc. Yeah… for less than one-fifth of a cent worth of game points, that’s as much of my attention as you get.

 

2: Peanut Lab Surveys
     These are real surveys (usually; I did find one that wasn’t), and don’t require any signing up or email-address-giving. These are usually found at the top of the Peanut Labs list, without thumbnails. There will be a couple of pre-qualification questions. Many will be asking things that you don’t qualify for. (Having a kid is apparently a top priority :X ) Don’t worry if you bomb out on those, there will be more. Be patient.

 

3: Surveys vs “Surveys”
     The next best bet is to take a quick survey — not one you have to sign up for. If you look at a survey offer and it asks for your name, email address, etc etc — close it.

If you are taking a survey and it is pages and pages and pages of questions like–
Do you want us to send you diaper spam?
Do you want us to send you cigarette spam?
Do you want us to send you tobacco spam?
     then get out of there. That’s a spam email-address harvester. No matter how many pages of those things you say No No No to, you’ll never get to the end nor get any points. You will get a tonne of spam in your inbox, however.

Also beware of any “Survey” that says you ‘must complete this and 3 other offers’ at the end. Because all those ‘other offers’ wil also require you to complete 3 other offers, and those other offers 3 more, and so on and so on ad infinitum. You will never finish and you will never get points.

Also note: a “Quiz” is not a survey. The quizzes are like cute little personality quizzes, but the last page will usually ask you to fill out a form and yes, sacrifice your email address, to get the results of your “Quiz.” Skip those.

On the Nexon site, there’s a very tempting Mobile Phone Survey going under several different guises. They always want your cel phone number, though, so I suspect they’re harvesting those to send you text spam. Wouldn’t trust it.

 

So let’s say you find a survey that looks legit, and it doesn’t ask you to sign up for anything, or give your name/address/phone number/email. This still doesn’t mean you will get any points. There are usually a bunch of qualifying questions. I’m not demographically desireable, so I don’t qualify for a lot of surveys :X It is annoying, but the ones that work usually pay a decent sum of game points.

I have found there are some survey companies I like. And some I don’t. Surveyhead, for example (they have orange buttons)… when I see that name come up in the link, I usually click out. I almost never qualify for those. There’s another company or group that have blue buttons and start asking your birth date, and then ask your language only after you enter the first info. I was going to give up on them, too, but I finally DID qualify for a survey there. It did take half an hour, and then at the end they wanted me to sign up for some OTHER thing, a point-doubler deal. I was seriously miffed and quit out of that. However… checking back, I did get the points for completing the survey. Don’t get duped into joining anything at the end, there.

Also note: some of these survey places will tell you that you did not qualify for that survey, but you could qualify for another. And another… and another…. I’m not even sure doing that will get you points. I don’t usually bother.

 

There were also a plethora of surveys from Lab42, but these guys wanted you to sign in with a Twitter or Facebook thing. There were so many of those, I finally did (don’t tell my buddy Awen) sign up for a Twitter account. Just to take surveys with.

The Lab42 “app” wants to snoop your Twitter posts and who/what you follow. Why? I don’t know. I also don’t give a flying fajita, because I’m not going to be posting or following anything. Are they trying to spam Twits you follow? I don’t know.

I haven’t qualified for any of these Lab42 surveys, either. And half the time they tell me the page or survey I tried to click to doesn’t exist. It could be because I can’t correctly answer the “Who is the President of the United States” question. I suspect that’s a bot-screening tool. Well, I don’t know his first name; nobody ever uses it. Next time, I’ll Google it and put that in. If they’re looking for full name and proper capitalization, it’s no wonder I never qualify. Sheesh.

 

4: Miscellaneous Things
     You can try Netflix’s 30 day free trial if you like. I can’t, as I subscribe to Netflix. I do love it. Of course, if you don’t want to get hooked and have to start paying for it… :X

Horse Racing Fantasy has an option (worth a big chunk of points) to join Second Life. I did do that (make a new account on SL), and it took forever, but finally I did get the points. I do not know if that is repeatable…. I haven’t had the notion to try it. Well. Not seriously, anyway.

 

5: Things to Avoid Like the Plague
     I tried a bunch of those “points awarded upon download” things. They lie. I download, I delete the file, I get no points.

Some of them come out and say you must download AND install them. I’ve installed a couple, and I wish I hadn’t. First, even if you download GIMP, it insists on installing RealPlayer and this other Moss thing you can’t opt-out of. I don’t know why RealPlayer is so hot to get itself on my system. I might even use it, if it didn’t have this other ad-ware/malware/spyware stuff bundled into it. So skip those, unless you like cleaning your registry and possibly reinstalling your OS.

Free jokes/cartoons/coupons in your email box. They will no doubt be accompanied by spam.

Coupons and samples. This is probably another spam/junk mail address harvesting scheme. Though you can try it if you like. I live in such an undesirable area, I don’t even get junk mail. I might be immune. :X

Insurance Quotes. Yeah. If you want insurance agents to call you and try to sell you stuff. I’m tempted to let them, as I never answer my phone, but now that I only have a cel, they’ll probably leave a message and I’ll have to spend air time to delete them. :X

 

Final Word

Is it just easier and less mental-anguish-causing to spring for game points? Maybe. I have only been tempted to do so with Mabinogi, however. Getting points from that site is like pulling teeth sometimes. And the horse I want costs 9,900 points. That’s like ten bucks in real-world money. And hey… spending ten bucks on a game I like? Why not? It’s not like I don’t spend 20, 40, even 50 dollars and up to buy a game like Dragon Age or Assassin’s Creed.

But… I have to see how long I plan to play this game, first. It’s only been like 3 weeks. It’s all right so far, but not mind-blowingly awesome. And ten bucks for one game item is kinda steep. Especially since ALL the pets (and any other characters you want to make on the game, too) cost real money. You know how I love pets. :X I almost have enough free points (6200) to buy a falcon pet. Then I’ll be back to zero and wishing I’d just drop the cash. :X

 

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Thanks for all the Spam!

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I swear, if it weren’t for spam, I wouldn’t have any comments at all. :X Well, okay. THREE. I have like THREE comments. Oh well, my blinking WLAN light post still gets tons of search engine hits.

So I was wondering… Akismet filters spam comments, and I have this whole spam comment queue, and if your comment has even ONE url in it, it gets held for checking-over. Not that you can’t have links in your comments. Just it’s gonna get checked.

Naturally, I go to my spam queue and delete all the “new toys” and “used viagra” and ton of personal financial links in there. Ain’t nobody ever gonna SEE those comments, cuz they’re getting trashed. So why are they posting them?

Then I started thinking… are they spamming ME? I, the spam-queue-moderator, am the target of all these spam ads? Boy, these guys need a clue! I am the most advertising-proof person there is. Guys, I don’t even HAVE money to blow on whatever it is you’re trying to sell.

But I DO want to thank the kind, thoughtful spammers who crafted rather generic but praising comments in which to embed their spam links. That was very sweet of you. And, sad as it may be, I did enjoy those praises.

 

YOU SEE WHAT I AM REDUCED TO, YOU COMMENTLESS WORLD! ::shakes fist at virtual sky::

 

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MP RPG Report 4

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Still in search of the “perfect” (or “at least good enough”) multiplayer RPG. Yeah, sad isn’t it? My friend TW told me to look on Faceboot and Twits and some ForumSpring thing for RP. Oh. My. God. Has the world sunk so low?? I am not that desperate yet.

I am open to almost any other suggestion, though — from text-only IRC channels through Second Life’s “3D Chat” and even including MMOs, whether they be free or purchaseable. (However, NOT subscription-based.) If you have an idea, you got a favorite, let’s hear it! Gimme a url, gimme a slurl, gimme an amazon.com page. Gimme a server/channel. Come on, you know you want to. (PS: comments are at the bottom of the post. Not the top.)

Or, maybe you don’t. See, me and Jester, we have some particular tastes. Some of which are apparently not popular in this era.

1: We want a SMALL group of dedicated, old-school RPers. Not so small that we have to organize a time when everyone can play, because that ALWAYS goes badly. Enough population that there’s likely to be a few folks to interact with when we do make it into the game.

2: No munchkins. IF there’s a half-dragon, half-demon, half-fae, half-mermaid vampirc werewolf mage character… okay, fine. Uniquness is good. But he better bloody well be trying to HIDE all that and fit in so as not to get mobbed with torches and pitchforks. Capiche? And for Maker’s sake, nobody running around talking about homework in chat-speek, and lolzorzing at the RP.

3: Real-Time RP. I don’t want to get into the mud-slinging of para-rp vs real-time rp (or “one-liners” as they like to call us). Aright? Like I said in my essay, paragraph rp has its place. I just happen to think its place is on forums or in play-by-email. Not live games. Our RP is based on character interaction — that is, talking to one another; having a conversation. Also, we like to play it as a game, to try to figure out the other characters’ thoughts and feelings. Not have them all written out in between the actual spoken words. Even reading that is god-moding. So. A lively pace.

4: Character Driven Plot. Not the godawful run-on-rails things. Unless it’s a good story, WITH multiple choices and outcomes, that the entire group wants to play through (I’m envisioning a multiple-player Dragon Age, here). Something like NWN, which provides a venue for RP, and the freeformers on a server who provide the plots and storyline.

5: No Combat, or at least not twitch versions. I’m looking at YOU, Second Life! I am far too old (and have too much bloody RSI) to be jumping around like a monkey, shooting sword-sized ‘bullets’ at people, trying to hit them in high lag. If we CAN’T just imagine a fair fight and play it out in RP, just… something dice-based. Heck, flip a coin. Oh, and levels? Forget those, please! What IS the point of having some level 4 people, and some level 60 people? Are they even playing the same game? Why do new characters always have to be total idiot wusses who don’t even know how to HOLD a sword? You know? Sometimes I like to develop a character who is an old veteran campaigner. How the blazes do you logically explain his decades of experience and his ineptitude at level 1? Uh, you don’t. Right. You can’t even play your character the way you envision him/her until you reach a high level. So what is the point of having low levels? See my point?

 

All righty, so on with a report. Jester has been researching RPGs. He says his results always boil down to LOTRO and DDO as being the epitome of multi-player RPG. (That’s Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online.) Now I’ll tell you why these suck. :X Yes, yes, ONLY from my own, biased viewpoint.

 

Lord of the Rings Online

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It’s based on one of the greatest fantasy epics of our time. (Well, actually, it’s kinda old. OMG, they’re like making kids read it in school, cuz it’s like classic literature! Cripes, in my day, we had to read that boring real-world stuff.) It’s a very rich world, high fantasy, yadda yadda yadda. Now we all know how the story goes. Of course, the story has to go like that in the game. So, don’t plan on having any (Middle)earth-shattering affect on things.

In fact, don’t plan on having any affect on anything. This game is so run-on-rails, and there is like one option in any conversation. For example, me and Jester were playing a pair of badass Polonian brothers I created. Some manor-owner git sent us into a trap. After we… wet our pants and ran away (that is just SO out of character!), did we go punch his face in? Uh, NO. No, because he’s somebody important. Here’s a hint, Polonians don’t care WHO you are, you mess with them, they kick your butt. Capiche?

Otherwise, it was a nice-looking game. Just… not a role-playing game. Playing a guy in a story like an actor, maybe, with all your lines pre-written.

 

Dungeons & Dragons Online

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Okay, now THIS is based on the CORE of role-playing. Oh, to be sure, it has classes and stats and all that, but this created the idea of a DM running the game, and the players affecting the outcome. By… yeah, playing their roles.

Now, I’m going to have to put things on hold, because we can’t remember why we quit DDO. So, I’m re-installing the client, and I will have a follow-up report on that. Shaddap, I’m old and senile.

Actually, as I recall, it was the same stupid everyone lumped together in one place doing their thing and NOT role-playing as everything else. And I seem to remember it being bad for my RSI. Was this one of the ones where you had to tuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrn your character around and FACE the thing you were trying to attack? Will double-check.

 

Mabinogi

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It’s against the TOS for me to link to the Mabinogi page; you have to navigate to it from Nexon’s home page. Sorry.

MMOhut had some interesting things to say about this game, about how much freedom there is in the world NOT to have to fight and kill things and grind and level. And about how much creativity there is in the crafting: sewing, tailoring, cooking; you can hold down a job. You could practically be a farmer in this game, not the typical fighter/archer/rogue/cleric/mage stuff. Grow some corn, raise some chickens. Build a campfire, play a lute for your friends as you all sit around…. TALKING! zomg, the talking!

Now, first up, this is world’s biggest pain in the butt to get running. For some reason, the shortcut takes you to the web page. If you log into the web page and hit the “Play” button there… it might actually launch the game. My friend who has Vista had trouble with the hacker-protection guard-dog software it comes with. The sucker will not run.

It’s world’s second biggest pain to learn the paradigm of quests and such. For example, when a quest is completed, you don’t get your reward. You have to go to the quest page and press the “Complete” button yourself. Why? I don’t know. When the game tells you that you can use the CTRL key to “auto target” enemies… it means you can ONLY use the LEFT CTRL key. The right CTRL key does exactly doodle-squat. That took another ten minutes to figure out. I also didn’t realize I had more quests to do, because you get the quest, and the first step of the quest is to talk to the quest-giver. Yeah, kinda backwards, that.

So it’s different from most games in that respect. I have to give it points, though, because the “you are a clueless newbie in our world, and I will now teach you how to walk and hold your weapon at the same time” stuff is not as stupidly annoying as most MMOs. Yes, you still have to go kill 5 harmless little armadillos as a first quest. And then go punch a wall. But, seriously, after you leave the basic training area, the little newbie quests are well-rounded.

For example, you can discover things. One quest I found was to sketch an armadillo, NOT to shoot it. Nice, huh? The only downer on that quest was, I already HAD an armadillo sketch I made in the starter area. Noooo, it wouldn’t take that one. I had to go draw a new one and turn that in.

Now I’m trying to learn spinning and weaving so I can graduate to tailor and make some clothes. Because those suckers are EXPENSIVE!

Let’s pause for a moment and talk about the look of Mabinogi. It’s very anime-cartoonish. In fact, the characters are all cel-shaded. With those chibi-style eyes and stuff. Oh, not super-deformed. But very “bright” shall we say. You can’t select your clothing colour when you create your character. Somehow, the type/colour of hair and eyes you pick changes your clothing. When I “graduated” from the newbie training, I got a desert robe. That was purple and green. OMG, I sold that sucker first chance I got. And then I couldn’t afford to buy a new robe! So I’m stuck with green tunic and blue shorts. Now I have huge purple gloves. Where’s a dye kit when you need one!?

Also, the maximum age you can start out is 17. Well, that does explain why your character has low stats! :X Your character will age and grow throughout the game. In fact, for some reason, I’m gaining weight, my legs are getting skinny, and my upper body strength is going to pieces. Growing pains!? OMG. It’s not like I’m not running around! And punching trees. (Well, elves don’t seem to have mastered tree-harvesting techniques like using a ladder to pick berries.)

Let’s not dwell entirely on the negative. What the heck is attracting me to this game, anyway? A few things.

Remember how I mentioned my obsession with pets and mounts? They have these, in spades! And, pets that ARE mounts. Plus, horses can seat two people. The thing is… you have to buy a pet with real money. Well, with NX points. Actually, they also have four different providers of free NX offers, which I am working on. For not getting inundated with spam and calls from insurance agents… I can make about 100nx per day. It costs 9,900nx for a horse. (In real world US money, thats $9.90 About 12 bucks for a tiger, and 6 bucks and change for a falcon.) If I enjoy the game, I wouldn’t mind blowing a couple bucks on it. Five. Maybe ten. Depends. But for now, I’m getting free points, and it’ll only take me 99 days to earn a horse.

And, it has jousting! Now, hang on. Jousting is a mini-game, so you don’t actually have to OWN a horse (or any lance(s)) to play it.

I like the creative opportunities. From what I understand, you can design the clothing outfits somewhat like in the NWN servers that had the Mil Tailor. In something like UWO, you can make a feathered hat, you can make a pre-defined dress, you can dye things… but you can’t actually design the whole look and components of an outfit. Plus, they have music you can compose and play in-world. I’m not great at music, but Jester is always playing bards and he likes his lute.

Did I also mention how I’m a sucker for fishing? There’s fishing! Oh yeah, I’m all over that. There’s even a record of how many different types of fish you catch! Plus you can tame animals, and there’s over 100 of those you can get. (Not sure how or even if that relates to pets, but it’s something.)

So I’m shearing sheep and learning how to spin thread. Taking some jobs with the shy clothing shop guy to try to learn more skills and earn some money. (Uh, and sorta failing, there. How mortifying! I wanted him to like me! The NPCs have a bit of character memory, so they get to know you and remember you, and can develop a liking or disliking for you. Not talking DA romance options here, but it’s different from your pre-programmed NPCs in most games.)

It’s keeping me busy, like UWO keeps me busy. Trading and crafting. Travelling around. Fishing. I need bucks for that fishing pole…. But so far, I don’t really feel I’ve moved past the “newbie MMO training area.” Not yet. Could it be that flavor never goes away? Could be. Could there be actual living towns with artisans and craftsmen, plying their trades? Could be.

Could there be actual freeform role-playing going on between characters?? Eh, I won’t hold my breath. Would be nice, though.

 

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UWO: The Perils of Playing AFK

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UWO: the “ETC” stories….
This story made possible by
IGN: SebastianBlack
IGN: AwenLisle
IGN: Cappie

Though this is a true story, the names have been changed to protect the innocent from being overly ridiculed…. :X Therefore, the players shall be known as Captain C (aka CC), Admiral A (aka AA), and Sailor S (aka SS).

“The Perils of Playing AFK”

It happened one night, when Captain C gave a shout out over the company channel that he had sprung the infamouse chicken pet quest! Admiral A so dearly wanted a toucan pet… she thought she might begin with a chicken and some exotic feathers glued to it… And Sailor S can’t resist pets of any type… So they all made haste towards Lisbon!

Just as they got to Lisbon and acquired the chicken quest (and chickens were procured for all around), CC declared he had to go to the store, and would be back in an hour. As the quest demanded getting to Venice in less than 60 days, naturally SS and AA wanted him (he with the biggest, fastest ship), to drive the fleet there.

Nevertheless, an hour and a half later, there was no sign of CC’s return. SS had finished dinner, but AA had to go eat. So SS had the brilliant idea of stocking up on supplies, dumping out of CC’s fleet, and making a straight marathon run to Venice, towing the afk AA along. She foolishly agreed…..

(dramatic pause)

Things went well. Extra water was procured from rain. Traffic was light. AA scarfed some vigor food. Finally she was torn away from the computer by the dreaded RL.

Not 30 seconds after that, Old Hafus jumped us.

Not JUST Old Hafus, but Old Hafus and four of his brothers! Oh, he was out for blood that day! I was in a panic! Of course, SS could flee, but if Hafus hit AA, and she lost her follow… she’d be shark bait! Bravely, valiantly, and utterly stupidly, SS threw his ship between Hafus and AA. AA’s autopilot ship sailed on obliviously while two Hafus ships rammed SS and totally disabled his ship, stuck him up (fortunately, not touching his cargo of 100 honey, nor the 10 important chickens), killed or enslaved ALL his sailors, and ran off laughing.

Poor SS could only sit there, watching AA’s ship sail off into the wild blue yonder, heading for a disasterous meeting with the Italian peninsula. Poor AA. Well, no, poor SS, because she was going to KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL HIM when she got back!!! If she had a ship left to get back TO.

Unwilling to wreck and drop 100 jars of honey (and boy, was the honey market in the tank!), SS sat sunning himself on deck. Couldn’t even fish! When lo! On the company channel, CC reappeared! Hallelujah, and COME RESCUE ME were something like the words that came out of SS’s mouth. And so CC set out from Lisbon to find the stranded ship on the way to Venice.
 

Meanwhile… what to SS’s unbelieving eyes should appear, but AA’s ship coming BACK westward. What was this? His timely rescue? No no no… AA’s ship was still on autopilot and had apparently bounced off of Italy. Oddly enough, AA’s ship still appeared to be defending from Old Hafus, and Old Hafus’ fleet was still hanging around the disabled ship. After AA zoomed through, Old Hafus took off in hot pursuit!

Some time later, SS noticed AA’s ship location as somewhere in the Open Sea…. apparently having escaped Old Hafus and managing to MISS any geography between the Mediterranean and, oh, say the Americas. Oh yes… in the 80 days it would take AA to get back… SS was a DEAD MAN. Presuming she could get back. She’s not that handy with a map nor the compass…. ::cough::

Now CC was approaching Cagliari, and SS ran around his ship frantically looking for something akin to fireworks or a flare to set off, so CC could find him. Yelling landmarks, SS looked yearningly to the horizon to see CC’s ship. At last! Rescue was at hand! CC grabbed SS’s ship in tow, and found him two sailors. Almost immediately, there was a mutiny. Yes, well, SS’s captaining skills (not to mention sanity) were in question, here. And yet, though SS had 5 Cat o’ Nine Tailses, they were not effective against the mutiny of the two sailors.

Finally, beneath the boot of Italy, one sailor killed the other, and that settled that. Except then he wanted fancy food. And promptly afterward got homesick. Nevertheless, SS was still only 38 days into the 60 day quest. Could CC’s charging ship make it against the headwinds to get him to Venice in time?

(dramatic pause)

Meanwhile, the company locator now listed AA as being in the Ligurian Sea. Apparently, she’d managed to bounce around in the Mediterranean like a pinball, escaping who knows how many pirates and reefs and disasters. Yes, AA not only had dinner, but trustingly went to watch TV for a few hours afterward….

CC and SS made it to Venice! And in time! (Minus some time to pass out on the shore… and head to the tavern for a DOUBLE!) Chickens were delivered, and there was the extra little chick given to the Pet Trainer. (Even though the eggs laid were turned into provisions while stranded at sea. :X ) Huzzah! The Pet Trainer was located and… to CC’s and SS’s eternal dismay, it was discovered that their bachelor school dorms did not allow pets. ::SIGH::

 

But that’s not all! Our valiant SS set out once more to find the lost AA in the Ligurian sea. Barely pausing for provisions, and certainly not for potty breaks… SS rounded the Italian peninsula and… dang but the Ligurian sea was bigger than remembered. And so SS zigzagged around, shouting across the open ocean for anyone who might’ve spotted the stranded AA. For surely, her ship must be wrecked by now :X

Back and forth, and back and forth, (and, btw, the honey market was still in the tank!)… At last, SS scoured the coastline from Pisa on west, and headed to Montpellier — and LO! There was the stranded ship of AA! Huzzah! Of course, AA was still afk, so SS continued on and waited in Montpellier harbor for the shout to come across the winds of, “W T F HAPPENED TO MY SHIP!?!??!?!?!?!”

Whereupon, SS hurriedly rescued the damsel and explained EVERYTHING! Especially his heroic sacrifice of himself to Old Hafus and CC’s entire fault for starting the whole thing.

And is reportedly still living, to this very day! Huzzah!

(dramatic pause)

And the moral of that story is… do NOT go AFK while out to sea! No matter WHO is driving!

 

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How YouTube Ought To Be Run

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So YouTube is this huge mashup of completely unauthorized use of music and video clips. Even I am guilty of this, copyright cop that I am. But what is a little fan-boy supposed to do? Write to a big mega-corporation monolith of a record label and say, “Dear Mr. Sony, can I use your song on my video, please?” That’s for, like, important stuff. A movie producer wants to use a song. Or a TV Commercial producer. Not some dinky little nobody on YouTube. Besides, what if they say no?!

And then the big monolithic record labels go on a witch hunt all across YouTube, muting videos, banning accounts, etc etc. And, well, they have the right to do that.

As fans, we try to do right by the artists whose work we admire. I remember when YouTube’s recommendation when it recognizd a song/artist was to link to a playlist of more ‘unlawfully’ used music videos that had been posted. Now me, I always posted a link to the Amazon.com page where you could buy the song. Nowadays, of course, YouTube got wise and they have a link to their store or something.

But honestly… who doesn’t use YouTube as a sorta poor-man’s mp3 playlist? If I suddenly remember a song from years ago, where do I go to get a re-listen? YouTube! :X Do I go and buy the song from them? No…. Do I look at the advertisements they plaster on things? Can you say “AdBlock Plus”? :X

Yet… if it WERE simple for me to request usage rights to a song for a video, I would. Here’s how I visualize it….

 

I’m a “Music Video Fan” user. I surf this “Music Video Fan” (MVF) site, looking for cool tunes and music videos. I put together a playlist, and I listen to this playlist every morning while getting ready for work. Or I have a playlist of speed tunes to play while I’m racing horses. Etc, etc.

Let’s say I can listen to a particular song on these music fan videos ten times for free. If I want to listen to it more than that, I can buy the right to listen to it. Just like buying the MP3 for your iTunez or what have you. They cost like what? 99 cents per tune? So yes, I’ll buy the official Record Label MP3 Release of this song, and the website will register that I have permission to listen to it over and over and over.

Boom. Record Label gets money. I get to listen to the tunes.

Now I’m a MVF music-video maker. Say I want to use a tune on my fan video. I’ll go into the MVF library and let’s say, pay something like $2.99 to buy permission to make a fan video with it. Is that going to break anybody’s bank? Yeah, I’d be cool with paying two or three dollars to get this Holy Grail of Usage Permission. Then I upload my video or videos using this music to MVF, and it’s legal! And people can watch it — legally! (Of course, if they want to watch it more than ten times, or watch more than ten videos that use that song, they have to cough up the 99 cents.)

Video content — movie clips, etc — is another ballgame. Could it work for video content? Well, maybe. But people requesting permission to use clips for a music video would likely just use clips… for a music video! And not, say, post the entire smegging movie in 15 parts on YouTube. :X

 

Of course, there is no way this idea would float now. Why would anybody pay even 99 cents to access music videos, when they could get them for free on YouTube? It makes no sense. The only way it could work would be for YouTube to go on a massive global witch hunt and burn… what, like 80% of its database of files? Decimate its content. Alienate all those screaming users. Hey, if it DOES happen, do NOT blame me! All I can hope for is that the record labels give some of that money to the actual artists. :X

 

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On Hiatus from Second Life

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I am now officially on hiatus from Second Life. What’s that mean? I dunno, but when TV Guide said my most favorite TV show of all time was ‘going on hiatus’ I knew I’d never see it again. :(

WARNING: totally depressed whiner ranting post ahead. it may get messy.

 

I’m going into another pretty heavy depression, and I can not hack this any more. MESH. I got into the mesh pre-beta, the ground floor, working with mesh since like March of last year. A great head start. And I am STILL at square ZERO! Why? Because my life is JUST that effing hard, and nobody wants to help me.

Okay, okay… a couple of people… sporadically might sorta want to help me. To be honest. It ain’t helping, though. Let’s take the wonderful rigged mesh avatars! It’s very easy to do, so I am told. You use the right version of Blender (which I do); you click this, this, and this; you hit export, and it works. Except… IT DOESN’T!!!

Maybe it works for, say, THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, but it just does NOT work for Bloodsong. No. There is some kind of Cosmic Law that says Bloodsong’s life has to be HARD. Bloodsong cannot just press three buttons and have a working result. Oh, no. Bloodsong has to spend THREE FREEKIN WEEKS experimenting with these few little steps; getting bugs, errors, or no results; filing reports; only to find out, NOBODY can reproduce these results. Sure. The universe is purring along fine for everybody else. No problems, there.

So I can’t effin’ rig an effin’ mesh avatar. Fine. I have another big project I have been wanting to do for years. I want to make rideable horses. These are still attachments, so the prim count is not (yet) limited. And with mesh, I can get beautiful details! No more sculpty peanut-heads!

Except I stopped to think about one thing…. You understand that each mesh model has a ‘cost’ or ‘weight’ in prims. And you know high prim count is bad. If you take a sculpty (one prim) and convert it into a mesh, it actually costs 4 prims. So, to get a junky, detail-less peanut-head, it’s 4 prims, and to get even three or four times the detail of a sculpty, you’re talking 12-16 prims.

Legs were coming out to about that much, let’s say 15 prims. There’s 4 legs, so that’s 60 prims just for your horse to stand there. Then, of course, each leg has several frames of ‘animation.’ Let’s say five frames of animation while the horse walks or runs. That is 4×5=20 separate legs at 15 prims each is… 300 prims.

Think about that number for a second. First of all, back when we didn’t have sculpties, prim horses made of spheres and cylinders and toruses did not have that many prims for the legs! In fact… since the maximum size of a linkset is 255 pieces, 300 prims is more than the entire prim count of a full-prim horse! And this is just for the mesh horse’s legs. We haven’t EVEN started adding the bloody flexi-prim mane and tail!

Here’s another Second Life Fact you may not know (because I don’t think Wynd published this finding anywhere)…. Switching a prim’s alpha (transparency) state is one of the highest script-lag and render-lag inducing things you can do. Flipping alphas, rapid-fire, on the one (4) prim sculpty legs caused a noticeable performance hit. Still, it was better than trying to simultaneously flip the 5 or 6 prims that made up a prim horse leg. Now you’re going to ‘blink’ what essentially amounts to 15 prims at a time? Wouldn’t this cause a severe performance hit?

So I asked it at the Mesh Pre-Release Office Hours. The answer? Um, yeah. Yeah, it would.

So I shelved that project. But you know what? Does anybody even pay attention to that? I don’t think so. I think that people are probably developing these lovely full-mesh rideables, and don’t give a hoot about the script lag or performance. No, seriously. And if I were just so ‘ignernt’ and didn’t care to make my rideables actuallly WORK in real situations… I could, too. And things would be a lot easier! I wouldn’t need to worry about causing sim lag, or viewer lag, or script lag. I wouldn’t need to worry about making my stuff compatible with, say, jousting lances. I wouldn’t need to worry about how to allow people the choice to have a speed-boosted horse without them being banned from races for fear of cheating.

Hell, all I’d need to worry about is making a pretty horse that looks good in the product shot and gets people to plunk down the moolah for it! Does it lag? Blame Linden Labs! Does it slow down your client? Get a faster computer! Why do I have to have this Vision of something Perfect, that would be Really Cool, and people would enjoy? I mean, REALLY have fun with? And would Look Killer! And be like riding a real horse — or even better!

Because the World is Not Perfect. My freekin PEFECT mesh creation app can’t even bloody UV map. Well, it can, but it creates non-human-editable uvmaps. (That means, Lady Jess can’t paint a pinto horse flank on a square map and have it work.) It won’t even respect the uvmaps I import the object with! Then my app that can unzip perfect square maps can’t work with the bloody triangles the other pefect app creates. EVERY DAMNED THING IS A FREEKIN PROBLEM!

 

So….. yeah. I need to chuck it all in the trash and take a break from it. It’s just grinding me down. I have to give up.

 

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Christmas Candle

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It’s been a few years since I’ve done any candle-making. I had this design idea years ago, but never tried it. It’s a white candle shell with wax holly leaves and berries. The latex mold has been in storage in the box a while, it’s a little… less round than it used to be. It also had some wax flake on it, that was troublesome, but it worked out just fine.

I used more than ten scoops of the white wax cyrstals for the mold. I didn’t bother topping off the mold after it cooled. There’s a depression in the cooling wax, but what the heck, it wasn’t wobbly or too thin or anything, so I left it. I have terrible trouble getting seams and stuff doing multiple pours. I still don’t know why.

Then I poured the green wax onto aluminum foil in my small toaster oven tray. I had practiced with the leftover white wax — cutting the holly leaf shapes. And making berries. They’re kinda ugly and homemade-looking. Although it doesn’t look too bad from a distance.

I warmed up the holly leaves in the toaster oven, then used a firelighter on them to melt the one side enough to stick to the outside of the candle shell. I tried it with the berries, but no dice, so I just hot-glued the suckers :X

My wax crystals aren’t very powdery any more, so I’m not sure what I will use inside this candle shell. But it’s supposed to have the white wax crystals looking like snow, with a wire wick inserted. Maybe I will knock enough loose to do that.

 

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2011 Tomatoes

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I had two patio tomato plants for summer of 2011. And a grand total of 46 tomatoes from them. I had to take off four before they started to ripen at the end of the season. One was blushing and ripened up that week. The last three gamely sat in the windowsill and eventually, they ripened as well.

I started nipping off flowers mid-October or so. They wouldn’t have had time to develop before first frost. That my have helped.

Also, I emptied out my soil. I think I will get new potting soil next year. There were a lot of grubs in there. I found some grubs in the mulch I got for this year. I don’t know, are those supposed to be in there? Worms I don’t mind, but grubs? I chucked out all the ones I found when I put the mulch in. Obviously, I missed some and they multiplied.

 

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Waking Dreams and Dreaming Machines

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The other day, I was baking cookies and I was very tired and a little headachey from kicking off a cold. It was a bit late to start a nap, but I decided to just lie down for a couple of hours. I didn’t really fall asleep. I just lay down and closed my eyes and didn’t try to think of anything. You know, relaxing. My brain, however, went absolutely nuts in a sort of unguided, free-form adventure for a bunch of characters in my head to go on. It wasn’t exactly hypnogogic, but it rambled on a mile a minute and I can’t remember a thing about it.

I did drift off for a little while. About an hour later, I was certain I was awake. My eyes were open, I was looking up at the ceiling of my room. The light was shining in from the window. And I saw this strange bug… at first I thought it was a daddy longlegs spider, but it also looked a bit like a scorpion. It was thin, translucent, and reddish. It was pretty scary, so I sat up to get a closer look at it (and prepared to get up and the the flyswatter!). And it vanished.

Now, if I was dreaming, I was doing it while I was awake, with my eyes open, and sitting up. It was very freaky.

 

That night, I had a dream flash of something attacking me — this is not unusual. (And I have to check on my cat the mornings after…!) Usually I attack it back and fall back asleep. But this time I woke up, saw this spiked mechanical hose thing by my bed, leapt OUT of bed, and started running through my apartment in a total panic. It’s not like I dreamed it, then woke up and ran around. It was as if I woke up first, then saw it. It took me ten minutes or so to remember that reality doesn’t actually have robotic hose spikes that stab you in the throat.

 

Last night, though, I slept very soundly. In fact, I had to wake up and wonder whose cat I was cuddling, because I didn’t wake up to let Mousie under the covers and into the crook of my arm. Which is odd, because she’s usually very good at making noise somewhere far, far away to make sure I am definitely awake before she tries to jump into bed with me. (See previous paragraphs about me attacking things in my sleep. :X She ain’t no dummy!)

I did have this crazy dream… it was in the distant future, and computers were used for space combat. Which only makes sense. Despite what you see on Star Trek, you just can’t aim at something and lob energy bolts at it while it’s moving at or near lightspeed. Or know that they shot at you before the energy beams hit you. Anyway, so the computer interfaced with the human brain in a virtual reality combat simulation. So yeah, the humans were pretty good against the aliens in this thing. We just drew them into a big Doom Deathmatch, and they didn’t stand a chance.

Then my brain did a documentary about how the virtual reality combat mechanism worked against terrorists. Hey, it could… all you have to do is get the terrorists to agree to plug into the system. ??? Anyway… so you do that, and the terrorist guy is all happy. An artificial intelligence comes up and gives him a gun and ammunition. And he starts wandering around and can find explosives and bombs and stuff. Happy as a clam, trapped in the machine.

So our guineapig terrorist goes into a ghetto bar/convenience store where a buncha guys have bigger guns than he does. They are not impressed by him. Then the documentary is explaining how the artificial intelligence of the system can “make up crap” on the fly. For example, there’s a magazine rack in the bar/store/whatever. Instead of having to pre-load content for all those magazines, it can free-associate random stuff, just like a dream. Our very lost ‘tourist’ can grab any magazine off the rack and flip through it to find… Hindu tracts, celebrity gossip, or can just be floored by the Playboy magainzes.

 

Okay, well it seemed interesting at the time.

 

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Uncharted Waters Online: Maps and Quests

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Uncharted Waters Online is a unique MMO. It’s unique because the players are friendly and helpful (for the most part), the only way to level up is to actually play the game (instead of boring ‘grinding’ shortcuts in most MMOs), and… well, heck, it’s fun! It’s completely NOT about running around to different areas and slaying a buncha monsters there, and then moving on to slay more monsters. It’s… about sailing your ship around, fighting pirates (or, yes, being a pirate), and making money in trade. And adventure.

This is a little tutorial about the adventure part. It deals mainly with Adventure quests and maps. There aren’t any pictures for this tutorial, so you should be fairly familiar with the game interface to understand it.

 

MAPS

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Acquiring Maps

First, you will need to acquire maps. These fall out of books at the Archives. Before you can raid the books, though, you will need at least one skill that sounds useless, because it is about “analyzing discovery of X” where X is some branch of study, like archeology or biology.

You can get any number of these six areas of study: Archaeology, Geography, Biology, Theology, Art, and Appraisal (jewelry/treasure appraisal). Once you have them, that unlocks the books at the Archives for you to read. Tip: Archeology and Appraisal often yield some pricey loot. Along with Appraisal, you’ll need Unlock, because a lot are buried treasure.

It costs 500 ducats a pop to read a book, so after a good merchant run has padded your pockets, stop off at the Archives. Reading a book will randomly net you 1, 2, or 3 points added to that particular skill, or sometimes zilch, or sometimes a map!

 
Analyzing the Map

Once you get a map (or several), go to your Inventory and press the Store button. Maps can be stored in your portfolio (along with all your cookbooks and guild cards) to free up space in your main inventory.

Click or mouse over the map, and you will see a brief name and description. Something like “West bank of Cairo, southeast corner” or “outside Alexandria, north by the rocks.” You will have to go to that location to use the map and get the discovery and/or goodies there.

Tip: If you see something about a ‘bank’ but it is not located on a river… it’s talking about a CONTINENT across from that city. For example, “southeast bank of Madeira” is actually Africa (near Casablanca). “Northeast bank of Athens” is past the islands east of Athens and on that coast past them. (Which is Turkey, I think. The only geography I’m good at is the ones labelled in the game. :X )

Sometimes, the outdoors area is through a gate in a city. Sometimes you have to sail to an unidentified landing point outside any city. You will know a landing point because it looks like a patch of ground and trees (or just sand, in desert areas), and you can click on it like a city to dock there.

 
Using the Map

Once you get outside the gates, or land in a wilderness area, go to your Use Item chest and Use the map. If you’re in the correct area, it will tell you which way you need to head. When you get within line of sight of the location, a glowing beam will appear in the world when you use the map, to point out where to go. Note that it doesn’t matter how far away you are, the glow will still appear. So, if you’re at a fork in a canyon and one side goes west off into the distance, and one side curves north… and you use the map and it says go West and you don’t see the glow anywhere ahead, that means you should take the fork that goes around the long way.

When you arrive at the glowing spot, you are ready to discover the map’s target. How you discover it depends on the map. For archeology, treasure, and other inanimate discoveries, you will use Search to dig it up. For biology maps you will use Ecological Research for plants and animals, but Search for fossils.

 

Note: Geography maps are usually for small islands, capes, promonitories and such that you can see out at sea. So you don’t need to land anywhere. Or even stop sailing, for that matter. You can still use the maps out at sea. When you are in the right sea, use the map and it will guide you to where you need to go. Then use the Recognition skill (telescope icon) to get the discovery.

 
When you make a new discovery, you will get a discovery card. You can then turn in those discoveries to various people, and get money for doing so. Check the Unofficial Wiki for a chart of whom to turn discoveries in to, for maximum payout.

 

QUESTS

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Quests are slightly different from maps, in that you don’t have a handy tool telling and showing you exactly where to go. In fact, some Quests (::coughaurochcough::) can be downright UNinformative. But all Quests, I have found, follow the same format.

First you will have to run around and talk to various people to get information. Hopefully, the Quest will have a big clue (or come out and SAY) what city you need to be in to start. If you can’t find the person you need to talk to next, try drinking at the bar. The Barkeep should tell you. If he doesn’t, you’re in the wrong city!

After however many steps, you will then have to go discover whatever it is the quest is about. Usually, it is an animal for a biology quest. Let’s take Aurochs for example, because that was the most godawful quest….

The Aurochs quest tells you what city to go to. You’re supposed to interview townspeople. A Young Man, and a Young Woman. It will not tell you this, but the Barkeep will. Then the Young Man says they’re out in the forest. The Young Woman tells you to ask Durer (I think it’s him). You find his mansion and he tells you that Aurochs have been hunted to near extinction, and if you find their hunting grounds, you might see one.

What’s that mean? Doodle-squat. But you’re supposed to figure out to go outside the city gates and look around. Look around WHERE!? Most quest will at least say “let’s search around an oasis” or “near the round rocks.” There’s a whole flipping huge outdoors area, and NO CLUE where these aurochs hang around, or where the hunters’ hunting ground is.

Well, I’ll tell you… each of these quests is keyed to a landmark of some kind. The Oases, the Piled Rocks, the Giant Trees, the White Flowers, etc. You see them around the outdoor areas, and they are clickable. You click them, you don’t find anything of interest.

But when on a quest, ONE of those landmarks will tell you something like: “This is the landmark you were looking for. The location is X meters North and Y meters West.” That means you have to move out some ways from the landmark in the indicated direction, and then do your searching/digging/researching. When it is something reasonable like 10m North and 13m West, you just run a little ways northwest and dig there.

When it gets a little ridiculous like 64m West and 129m South…!! You can actually pace it out. (Unless there’s, say, a big canyon wall in your way.) If you reckon your character is about 2m tall… (1m for those little lolli types), and you click about one person-height away from yourself, that’s two meters you went, in that direction. Well, you can guestimate if that works for you! If not, I found this method helpful.

At least you don’t have to search the whole outdoors area for a ‘forest’ or somesuch. Just find the scattered landmark objects.

 

And for both Maps and Quests, remember to stock plenty of Landmark Ribbons!!!

Enjoy!

 

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