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One thing I've always found annoying in SL is the number of times people fall out of vehicles. I've been on a few newbie tours with the SPSL, where we descend on a Welcome Area, grab a couple of newbies and whisk them off, and without fail at least one of them jumps out.

Should anyone wish to experience the automated vehicle touring thing that I have been talking about, there's a demonstration available at my home area (see sidebar). Sit on the vehicle, touch it, it will go.

One thing is that you should remove all hovering or other flight attachments that you might have, because they will also hover the vehicle itself and interfere with its movement. I don't think that there's any way around this.

(click to enlarge)

After all of my complaints here and the addition of several "lovely" new ad blocks in my local area, finally, someone has actually created one that looks nice - see right.

It's tasteful, it doesn't glow or spin or bob up and down, and it's actually useful as well - go inside and click on the computer screen and you get an up-to-date list of other property for sale in the local area.

So what have I been making and doing?

A clockwork blunderbuss: I decided that it was time to prove at least some retrotech credentials given that I claim them, and I have long had a gun that shoots any object loaded into it (for physics testing - a terrific euphemism for "blowing stuff up") so after a meeting with the Victorian Retrotech Society I made one out of good old-fashioned wood, polished brass and iron.

Yes, I know, it's a very nice hat. See the little key at the top of the magazine mechanism? No, look closer.

Two quick notes:

1. I finally got my balloon vehicle autopilot to work - say "target theretra/200/200" and it locks onto the global co-ordinates of point [200,200] in Theretra, "auto on" and it starts to fly. In the right direction. Correcting the course if, say, you bounce off an object and start spinning, which was the hard part because to get a vehicle to move in a particular direction you need to take account of its facing as well, which means calculating the angle between the forward rotation and the vector to the target and turning that into another vector.

Right. As promised, here are a few things I've discovered so far about bullets, which might at some point save somebody some time. The basic idea is that you rez a bullet using llRezObject to give it an appropriate velocity towards the target - but I think if you're looking for advice you probably know that much already, as it's already in the standard .

I had a frustrating time originally when I tried to build an automated gun turret that fired at intruders.

It was late and I wasn't asleep for some reason, so last night / this early a.m. I made myself a revolver, added a modified version of the Linden Revolver Script and an explosive upwards-push bullet, created some target dummies - simple wooden pyramids with balls on top, physics and temporary - and took them all to a sandbox, where I spent some time shooting them and then trying to shoot them again on the way down. (Total score: zero.)

What struck me was how normal this seemed.

Okay - has anyone seen more than nine IMPEACH BUSHes in one area? The neighbours must really have been vocal.

(Chaska [56,58])

The area in question has every land flag ticked for some reason - no fly, no script, no build, and damage allowed, for some reason, though I can't see anything that would actually cause you damage.

I should start a competition.

Despite it now being rather yawnsome for anyone involved in any of the SL communities, it may be the point at which I say something about the IMPEACH BUSH guy, Lazarus Divine. (Not, I understand, the one who represents Rugged Regiment, the Soul Mechanical Crew and the 6th ward.) If you're a SLer who has somehow remained unaware of IMPEACH BUSH...

I recently received notice from a person to whom I had given a copy of my Visual Radar Display (which, now that I think about it, is a stupid name - a radar display that wasn't visual would be worth noting, but not one that was) that it wasn't working. Odd.

I took a look and asked him to try a few things. The marker object - the glowing dot - was apparently disappearing from the radar's inventory after the first appearance of one, and the radar was complaining. Very odd.