Ants/Mills Lair

A friend of mine was showing me their new avatar in Second Life and happened to have a dance AO active so I decided on a whim to record a video of it:

Well when going through my USB flash drive that I use for tech college I have found some funny pictures on there that I have decided to share with you all so here they are:

I have decided to give Antlair some love and have brought an exclusive wordpress theme for here. I may offer it for download but I am unsure at this time.

I do have some more Wordpress theme designes but I don’t have time to code them and can’t afford to get them coded at the moment but when I do have them finished I will provide them for download here amoungst other places.

And on other news I have decided to stop being lazy and post atleast one post here per day although I am unsure how long that will last as I am notourious for getting side tracked unfortunatly.

Recently as a personal project I have started a blog hosting service called Lairspace which uses the Wordpress blogging platform. I mostly started Lairspace as I was looking for a new project to work on and for something to do. If it tanks it tanks and as they say nothing ventured, nothing gained but if it takes off enough to fund it’s self then I will be happy and either way I get the experience of running the service.

Lairspace has over 100 templates available for use, advertising revenue sharing in the form of a 50/50 split of page impressions and 100MB of disk space for uploaded files. Lairspace Blog Hosting

In other news I decided to check out the buzz and get a twitter account to see what it was about. My twitter account is: http://twitter.com/gavo2o which is my original online alias, the one that I rarely use these days but I had to use in this case as antlion was already taken by someone else on twitter.

Since the creator of 3DEM has decided to close down their site I asked if I could mirror 3DEM for them and I am alowed to so I am mirroring it on here. Please head onto the 3DEM Mirror Page to download it. I am doing my part to stop a wounderful and handy tool from dissapearing into the depts of time by mirroring it.

Disclamer: Since I did not write 3DEM I am unable to provide technical support and the original author of 3DEM is unable to provide technical support. All I am doing is providing a mirror of it to prevent it from dissapearing completly.

I am once again able to record videos in Second Life although I don’t know of anywhere good to record for a video.

I have recorded a video in the region of Munkie Island which is the region in Secondlife where I have my home.

I have also started working with Terragen 2 again and have released another image which is called White Cliffs which you can view on Deviant Art http://ant-lion.deviantart.com/art/White-Cliffs-123534943

Well I have built my self a new space station in Second Life a while ago and was bored recently so I decided to take some pictures of it to show you all ruining the riddle wrapped in an enigma that was my insane wolf lair in Second Life.

For the snapshots below I am using my classic Cylon Centurion Commander avatar

An exterior shot of the space station that is my home in Second Life

The main habitation area of the station, accessible by turbolift or ring transporter. Most of the cubes are unfinished pieces of scripting that I need to finish.

Inside shot of the hanger, Parking for a single puddle jumper and protected from the vacuum of space (Or high altitude) by a force shield.

Exterior shot of the front of the station, I need to do something with the front room. As you can see the hanger is protected by a force shield.

I have had my new computer for a little while now but I have forgotten to post here about it but that is easily fixed. My new computer has the following specifications:

• 4GB of800MHZ Kingston DDR2 ram (2×2GB modules) for around AU$100
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor for around AU$300
• ASUS P5QL-EM Motherboard (With integrated gigabit LAN, sound and Intel GMA X4500 with HDM)
• Old Micro ATX form factor case I had laying around the house

The system runs great although the biggest problem  so far is that the power supply that came with the case is only just big enough and it can’t be changed due to it being a non standard size. I do plan on getting a better case when I get the money together which maybe soon since I now have a job as an IT professional at a local small business. After I get the new case I intend on upgrading to a dedicated graphics card so that I can play some newer games on the system.

I have re-rendered a couple of Terragen 2 scenes and created a couple more from scratch and I am very impressed with the performence of the system. Renders that useto take upto 25 minutes now only take 1 to 5 minutes to complete and the large test and final renders are also now several hours shorter.

And the previously mentioned problem with my laptop was only a fan that somehow wriggled it’s way loose, I found it when I shook the laptop to see what the rattle from within was, it clicked then stopped rattling so I powered it up and the high pitch sound had disappeared, I should have posted about that earlier but I forgot about it sorry and I will try and post more here in the future and maybe even add some video tutorials and pod casts or something maybe some more SL videos or even a Terragen or Terragen 2 tutorial or something.

My next step is to set up a raid5 or raid10 array so that I get good IO performance when recording but that also needs a bigger case so that I can fit the required amount of drives in. Although in the meantime I could also record to another PC to reduce the IO strain on the one I am recording on but that requires me to build the raid array on another PC since I have a gigabit internal network bandwidth on the LAN is no issue although I will need to build the array on another machine but that also has it’s own issues.

I have had a few computer issues lately, my desktop PC’s graphics card fried in the heat wave and my laptop is making a funny high pitch whistling sound when it heats up.

I have decided that I will replace the desktop PC with a quad core machine when i get the cash to build the parts and try and salvage parts from the desktop to use in a file server machine. I have decided on an intel core 2 quad processor since Terragen 2 is multi threaded and can take advantage of the extra cores and I will most likely get 4GB of ram for the new machine so that I can do more at one time.

On the topic of my laptop (Which I have posted the specs of in a previous post) well it has started to make a high pitch whistling noise when it gets warm and the sound and pitch of the noise is something that just gets to me and I am unable to focus on anything until I turn it off, the sound seems to be coming from the side where the thermal exhaust vent is so maybe it is a dieing fan or something on the mother board or something. I fear that I will need to ship it off since I brought it in Sydney and I live in rural NSW which means that it will be a long time due to the extra shipping. I am wondering if anyone here has any advice on what could have caused the whistle. I suspect that the heat might have been responsible for it.

My packages have arrived yesterday and today, since I have not posted much here I decided to post about the packages.

I decided that I was going to upgrade my home network to gigabit and Wireless N so I had to search for new networking gear. Since most multi port modem/routers on the market don’t have gigabit I had a hard time finding a single port modem/router in order to eliminate the cost of the extra ports and wireless that many modem/routers have. I ended up settling for a Netcom NB6 adsl modem.

Then my search was for a wireless device, Since I have decided on Wireless N to future proof my setup I had to search for an access point since I already had already ordered a router and didn’t want to run one in bridge mode wasting the money spent on the routing components. I ended up finding a wireless N bridge/access point which was a D-Link DAP-1522 normally I am not too keen on D-Link due to past experiences but I decided to take the risk this time and bought it. At this stage I decided to get a gigabit switch later as I was a bit short on funds for one.

I also developed an interst in candle making while I was away and when I got home I ordered a candle making starter kit which had all the stuf needed to learn how to make candles. Expect me to blog about some of my creations here.

Yesterday my modem and candle making starter kit arrived although I was not home at the time and didn’t find out until later that day and today my wireless access point turned up. I had a good look through the packages then spent much of yesterday night reading the book on candle making that I got.

Today when I got my wireless access point I started setting it up and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wireless access point had a 4 port gigabit switch built into it which saves me the cost of having to buy a gigabit switch. I have not yet setup the new modem having decided to test and make sure that the new wireless access point works properly first.

On the candle making front I had a good read of the book that I bought with the starter kit and there are a few things from it that I want to try but I have not yet had a chance to get something to use as a double boiler nor have I had a chance to get access to the stove to melt the wax with.

On other news I found that my laptop’s remote is compatible with the xbox 360 media remote and viceaversa which although handy at times can be annoying especially if I end up turning my laptop on when trying to turn my xbox 360 on.