Dhughan here, having returned from a trip to a strange, sandy land to consult with an alien entity concerning a technical difficulty.

With this help I was able to work out how to use Mme. Kamilah Hauptmann’s open source cane control script so that I could use her charming and clever Gentleman Jim and GJ Cane AO’s with one of my humble walking sticks.

I spoke with a being who wore the sigil of a green lantern on her chest (their homeworld is most impressive), who traced the fault in my ivory-handled stick to either an incorrect rotation around its geometric center (… CRICKETS IN MY HEAD! DO BE QUIET!) or the need for the root prim to be spherical. The latter suggestion seemed simpler to test, and to avoid issues with script carryover, I built a new cane from scratch. Hey presto, with the script and its positions notecard in the mostly-spherical knob on top, IT WORKS.

Formerly it rotated about the midpoint of the shaft and was a menace to kneecaps and tinies.

This issue had stumped me, and my project to improve my products on my Second Life Marketplace store was hopelessly stalled. Meanwhile, every time a customer purchased one of the sticks, I felt a bit depressed because I knew they could and should have been better.

I spent about an hour testing, and have purchased another vendor’s no-transfer animations just to satisfy myself that my little sticks would work with either set. I may need to do more work with the cane-control script to see if it will work with the other vendor’s AO; if not, will need to contact them directly to see if some arrangement might be made to get their script.

I did find out recently that trying to sit down while wearing a cane results in whacking oneself repeatedly in the leg. It was quite comical but also rather annoying, as this will result in further testing. And whacking of oneself in the leg.

Am resisting the temptation to buy a very expensive builder’s AO with limited stands and walks for the moment.

Now that this hurdle has been cleared, I feel much more confident, and hope to clear out some of my pending projects. I have uploaded several new products in the last few days at my humble online shop, and yesterday I did a lot more updating and fussing and building and sit-targeting at my shop in Steelhead Shanghai.

I have been making good progress on my offering for the Hunt, a wooden walking stick with inlaid energy tubes. In the meantime, I have been updating the older ones and making new things that might appeal to Victorian or Steampunkish gentlemen who are looking for lower-prim items for their virtual homes.

These are a couple of single-prim lamps – dreadfully easy to make, but not everyone in Second Life wants to bother with building. I should make more of these soon with some beautiful Chinese textures I have recently acquired.

For as it happens, I am participating in the Fourth Great STEAM hunt! In a very modest and humble way – no fancy flying rigs for me as yet, but I shall be attempting to fill a gaping hole in the usual STEAM Hunt offering: there’s very little that is suitable for both gentlemen and ladies, and almost nothing to appeal only to Steampunk gentlemen (aside from the excellent XLNT clothes, Peterman’s outfitting, the BlakOpal suitings, and Mr. Pearse’s fine apparel).

This is a simple (and very low-prim) chair.  It’s the one that gave me the “being whacked on the leg” lessons when I was using my cane, so I will be trying another animation set in a future chair for use with walking sticks. I attended a class last evening that covered a simpler method, which will keep my brain-crickets at bay.

I also had photographed a number of locations in Second Life with an Asian theme (not just in Steelhead Shanghai) and hope to produce them as colorised post-cards, framed or unframed. This one happens to be of the Asagao shrine to victims of suicide, which Miss Lelani visited some time ago.

It’s a bit gaudy, that frame, but the postcard is detachable. However, the frame reminded me of the way shrines in Japan are sometimes decorated with gilded, polished, carven wood, and the subject is suitable for a meditation object. Which reminds me, I learnt last night how to make a meditation cushion, and testing it enabled me to become more at peace with my lack of skill with scripts and particle effects, which is such a drawback in the Steampunk genre inworld.

OMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm, and so forth.

Have just had a capital idea, I shall offer a comfortable area at my shop for harried STEAM hunters to meditate on gears.

After my meditation class, I finally had a chance to set out the STEAM hunt poster and gear, but still have a good deal of new stock to set out. My landlady at the Dragonlands Hotel has been informed that the hunters will be going through, and she has promised to not eat or singe anyone unless absolutely necessary. Mostly she appears in her human aspect, as last night when she dropped by the area below the round shops to dispose of yet another mouldering human head.

I had previously encountered this object, which was left as a warning by a monstrous individual who haunted the waters in front of the hotel a while back. Here it is in all its grisly glory:

I was out for an innocent bike ride on my pennyfarthing conveyance when a trifling error in navigation sent me flying out over the railing of the gangway below my shop, and into the dubious waters of the “working” end of Steelhead Shanghai harbor. This is where all the effluents make there way – the human and not-so-human ones in addition to the disagreeable by-products of its industrial and residential areas.

Bit of a speed bump there, as after going into the drink I ran straight into this most unhappy fellow, who came to an untimely end back during the former infestation of dreadfulness.

At first I thought he was a secret victim of the now-inevitable gangland war, but it turns out he was nearly left over from the last kerfuffle. Miss Gia, my landlady, disposed of the remains quickly and discreetly.

After that entertaining beginning, we attempted to join a tour of the Steamlands from Caledon University, as Miss Lelani had done (and has not yet entered in her half of our aetheric journal). Alas, a rift in the space-time continuum (and the pharmaceutical needs of a small but determined cat) caused the tour to be cancelled and me to be away from the aetheric keys for too long to regroup.

Still, it was a useful evening, and my little shop has a few more items in it, and yet more to be made or acquired. I received a shipment of Chinese porcelains and textiles, though some of the rugs were damaged in shipment and required a bit of patching.

I’m not feeling quite so clueless, although I still have the occasional newbie lapse.

I remain grateful, in the weeks since her assistance, that there are many people in Second Life who tirelessly and selflessly help newer or less experienced builders, whether in formal classes at locations like Builder’s Brewery or Caledon Oxbridge, or in less formal settings such as the “open help hour” such as the one offered by groups such as the Guardians OA.

Miss Rebecca Wendell of the Guardians OA help group, may your Green Lantern never dim! Thank you! You have helped more than you know!