atomic-raygun

 
             

   
 
 
----------->vivian-oblivion<--------

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31 March 2010

 
"Havok 7 testing is ready for a sneak peek :-o"

The Havok developer is named Falcon Linden.


 
I have a suggestion to improve New User Experience.

Place all the sign textures in the viewer download so that when new people land in a welcome area the instructional signs rez immediately.


 
Incompatible

Some people feel a recent T Linden blogpost somehow was insulting to long-time residents. The quote was, "Our primary goal is to make Second Life more welcoming for new Residents..." That didn't make me feel insulted at all. Here's the way I look at it:

  • LL wants SL to be very, very big
  • LL is doing what they feel is necessary to make SL become big
  • SL currently appeals to niche-users
  • If LL pleases us SL won't become big (or it would be big now)
  • LL wants to make SL very big
  • Current customers want improvements in the status quo
  • Those last two points are incompatible.
We may not like it, but I don't think it's because LL are somehow unaware of what they are doing. It's a business, now, not the attempted manifestation of a wild dream. I don't feel insulted by my telephone company or my ISP either.*

And there's something else, too.

* I'm trying to talk myself into letting go a little, or I will wind up letting go totally.


 
Changes to the TOS (see my update)

M Linden has made a blogpost (FULL of extra spaces that hurt my eyes - what's up with that?) referring to the changes in the TOS. I'm just heading to read the TOS itself, but his post talks about licenses now spelled out that flow LL<->customer, customer<->customer, customer<->LL.

*skims* So far the changes seem to clarify a clouded issue in a good way for both machinima and snaps. Yay!

"7.4 You also grant Linden Lab and other users of Second Life a license to use in snapshots and machinima your Content that is displayed In-World in publicly accessible areas of the Service.

You agree that by uploading, publishing, or submitting any Content to or through the Servers for display In-World in any publicly accessible area of the Service, you hereby grant each user of Second Life and Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to photograph, capture an image of, film, and record a video of the Content, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the resulting photograph, image, film, or video in any current or future media as provided in and subject to the restrictions and requirements of our Snapshot and Machinima Policy. The foregoing license is referred to as the "Snapshot and Machinima Content License."

"Publicly accessible" areas of the Service are those areas that are accessible to other users of Second Life. If you do not wish to grant users of Second Life a Snapshot and Machinima Content License, you agree that it is your obligation to avoid displaying or making available your Content to other users. For example, you may use Virtual Land tools to limit or restrict other users' access to your Virtual Land and thus the Content on your Virtual Land."


Update: The Mamachinima groups chatters told me I am FOS (as usual) and that it isn't AT ALL the way I thought, but has requirements as far as permissions are concerned that are laid out in the machinima guidelines. I don't see what's really so terribly different except that there is an official policy and before there was not really much of a policy as it is a newish legal area. A lot of people are saying they are throwing in the towel, but who knows what will happen.


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As I Thought

Viewer 2 is now out of beta and it what new people are being given.
I'm glad I've persisted with it as otherwise their experience would be a closed book to me.



30 March 2010

 


Revanche
This was very good.

The film never makes fast, lazy judgements about people, and it's very unusual in that respect. Each character is full, unpredictable, and will not fit into any box. Generously, it allows for the notion that people are capable of growth. Life is messy, it says - to pretend otherwise is to deny the need for, and value in, forgiveness.

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Recut TRON Trailer



The fan "DrewboiX"who made it says:
"Just a huge fan of this movie. Wanted to make a exciting trailer with a modern feel as oppose to its original marketing in the 80s. I hope people will give this movie a try before they see Tron Legacy. Sure its dated but there was practically nothing like it in the day, especially 1982. Hope you folks like this fan edit and do check out the film before the sequel comes out. Also rate comment subscribe if you like what you see. Thank you for watching!!"



29 March 2010

 
This is fabulously nutty and devastatingly improbable - no, wait, that should be IMPOSSIBLE
Be sure to look at the sample galleries for the film types on sale.

I would eagerly buy long-outdated Polaroid film from thrift shops the few times I saw it, as the magical quality of the images is unsurpassed.

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Here comes 1.38!

I like having script info available. If you are using 2.0 it's in the land pane - and Opensource Obscure's tweak makes that (and WindLight settings) easy to access.

Update: It came out and there was a big problem, so the grid was rolled back to 1.36. I was chased all over (well, three sims).


 
Postcard from Second Life.
From SL.



^^^^^^^^^^^Trying unsuccessfully to email a picture directly to Blogger from SL. It works *sort of* to go through Flickr (you get 2X the post, one for the picture and one for the wrapper), but alas to Blogger one gets only the extras that make up the part I don't want, and miss the picture entirely.



28 March 2010

 


I've been watching Tajemství Hradu, a Czech film recommended by Candide, and although I started out a bit dubious I quickly got into the spirit of it. The opera silliness makes me laugh, and I've never before seen a villain stabbed with a cello endpin. This film may not be widely known around here, but one person involved with it is: Jan Svankmajer.

Yesterday I watched a film I'd always wanted to see but never had, somehow - Prick Up Your Ears. The acting was fabulous, and the entire thing was as good as it could possibly be.



Update: I just noticed that both films are on yootoob, for whatever that's worth.


 
Ambat, My Ambat

Shaunti: Osprey, Ambat is sooo great! Thank you so much for making this place for us :o)
Osprey Therian: Thank you for the kind words ;-D
Shaunti: omg, you are so welcome. I've enjoyed so many hours of fun and made so many friends in Ambat. Thank you for making it. It's the BEST infohub in SL :o)
Osprey Therian: :-D

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Reunion

Ninja Boy: hi there!! ^^
Ninja Boy: still remember me
Ninja Boy: or maybe not.. -.-
Ninja Boy: its been years :P
Ninja Boy: i was like that noob 4 years ago and u helped me alot :P
Ninja Boy: and with Photoshop and stuff
Ninja Boy: and how to save Targa's
Ninja Boy: :"P
Ninja Boy: and transparent thingis
Osprey Therian: :-D
Osprey Therian: I don't off the top of my head, but maybe if I think ;-D
Ninja Boy: :(
Ninja Boy: *sad*
Osprey Therian: STOP CRYING DAMMIT ;-D
Ninja Boy: ^_^
Osprey Therian: ;-D
Ninja Boy: You're like my photoshop teacher and SL mentor so i remember you dearly :P
Osprey Therian: awww
Ninja Boy: youre like the first person to help me hahaha

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27 March 2010

 
Lucy over at Sits Up and Looks Around has this to say about our current state of affairs in TSMGO! (which is that I can't muster the energy to get the show going this year but have said we can develop acts to film, instead).

"for the past 3 years at this time of year i'd be preparing for the opening of a new season of TSMGO! practicing my unicyle riding, writing and re-writing a skit, making a set and figuring out costumes...but not this year. it feels like such a loss!
i remember the first show ever. we were sooo nervous, we could not believe it! we hid in the dressing room (a hole beside the makeshift stage), shaking with stagefright, reminding each other it wasn't real!. the first show took place on a raised platform in the parking lot of a car dealership. for months we had been rehearsing weekly, a raucous affair attended by everyone in the show, watching and helping with each other's acts, as well as antics like rezzing herds of buffalo with the starax wand or turning into blobs of jello and anything else we could come up with! those rehearsals were so much fun!
after the first show we played music and the audience and cast danced and were silly in the parking lot for an hour! i was dancing with my friend gigi who had borrowed her husband's avatar for the evening. someone asked me if 'he' was my boyfriend and we laughed and laughed!
well time to move on i suppose. now there are so many entertainment choices in second life, nothing like our variety show, but the energy and commitment is no longer there. last year everyone just worked on their act alone, showed up and did it, or so it seemed to me. the audience loved it, and we did too, but it is a lot of work!
i'm searching for a good picture from the first season. if i find one i'll post it here. we were more into doing than documenting way back then! send me one if you have one!"


I scheduled that first "preview show" in May 2006 to shock the cast into understanding that we were rehearsing for real. We didn't really have audio - no introductions by audio or music behind text acts. As Lucy says, we were terrified :-D I didn't sleep at all the night before :-D


 
SL Register of Historic Places



26 March 2010

 
The Big Picture focuses on robots.

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Insanity.

"Play golf in your browser - for FREE"

Even if I were a golfing person, which I'm not, there is absolutely 0 golfiness to playing golf in a browser. Unlike, say, killing monsters, it exists in the real world in variable forms, accessible to almost everyone, and with little risk (I do know someone who was hit in the head by a golf ball so I won't say no risk at all). Even putting with a cheap golfclub on a carpet is more fun than playing golf in a browser.




25 March 2010

 
Yesterday At Jin Sin

Franks: Wow, it's April next week. What are you going to do for April Fool's Day?
Me: Wear green
*pause*
Frank: BWAHAHAHA!



24 March 2010

 
Os of the Day



23 March 2010

 
IMVU
Candide made me download IMVU. It has a great tutorial, but is very limited in just about everything.
Someone stole my name :((((((((( Bastiges.
My army of skeletal dogs.



 
Os of the Day*
Enjah T-shirt!

*(until I get bored with posting pics of me, the nail falls out, my camera falls and breaks, or it rains)


 



22 March 2010

 


 

Interesting footage of the earthquake in Iceland


 
me 5 min ago
I just arrived home and felt moved to find a nail to hang my caremera on to take this pic.
Notice me clinging to the railing.


 

Ducks on the Nova Arch! 2
Originally uploaded by Holocluck Henly

Holocluck took this great shot on Saturday!




21 March 2010

 
Inability to Change Permissions in 2.0

I experience the same thing, and it sends me back to another viewer so I can change permissions.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17029 has a comment:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lares Carter added a comment - 26/Feb/10 03:42 PM

Okay i just found the cause for this - its an HD desktop resolution in combination with running Viewer 2.0 Beta in none fullscreen mode and having the window maximized.

The checkboxes i mean are [X] Copy [X] Modify and [X] Transfer in the side bar when selecting properties for an item in the inventory or one in the contents of a prim.

Desktop resolution 1920x1080
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen and maximized checkboxes DONT work
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen, not maximized, but resized to maximum checkboxes work
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen, not maximized, taking part of the screenspace checkboxes work
Desktop resolution 1280x1024
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen and maximized checkboxes work
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen, not maximized, but resized to maximum checkboxes work
Viewer 2.0 Beta, not fullscreen, not maximized, taking part of the screenspace checkboxes work


 

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Seems unnecessary...

"Your object 'Duck on a Bike Avatar from Osprey Therian' has been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by you from parcel 'FairChang Park' at Grignano 157, 164."

...but who am I to complain?

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Oh, fun!

'The FILE Electronic Language International Festival is happy to invite you to exhibit your works "Virtual Reality in the Future" and "Alazi Sautereau" at FILE Machinima 2010s edition that will take place at the SESI Art Gallery, on Paulista Avenue in downtown São Paulo from July 27th'

Always nice to be invited out of the blue to do something.

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20 March 2010

 

Botgirl and the Living Dead Doll from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.



Nicely done!


 

ducks2_007
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

Dedication of Garth FairChang Avenue!



 

ducks2_003
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

Parading



 

ducks2_016
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

Quack!




19 March 2010

 

Suppressing the UI
The reason I immediately made Sizer presets for the extra window size needed for filming in 2.0 to allow precise cropping due to the unmoving top bar is that somehow it felt like there's a reason that a totally suppressed UI isn't possible. The whole things feels very different in terms of hierarchy and relationship of parts.

If we actually get a suppressing UI I'll be overjoyed; if not, I won't be surprised. It's a waste to have to film extra - has anyone else found another solution?

Update: I forgot to say that when I first used 2.0 - the first minute I used it - I IMMEDIATELY looked to see if the particle issue had been fixed, which it seemed might've been as the UI is so different. Alas, no, it is still broken, as it has been broken now for years and may remain broken forever.



18 March 2010

 

2.0

I've been resolutely trying to get used to it because I have a feeling this will more or less be it, but I think that the social engineering makes it more attractive to the people whose inworld activities it was made to enhance than to me.

The multiplicity of viewers is great, but there is a Tower of Babel effect if there isn't a common one that everyone knows and about which they can share information, especially with new people. Mostly because of Combat Cards and Ambat, I need to know what people are seeing so I can help them, so will persevere. When I am forced back to another viewer to, say, change permissions on an object, using it has a holiday feeling.

I'm ok with the rearranging, but a lot of things I do will now require digging to access the commands. There are quite a few broken bits (snapshots, for one, permission setting for another, the inability to suppress the UI for a third, the media buttons are backwards, landmarks in notecards can't be used, no Flycam indicator, hard to deselect, runaway scrolling in inv search) that I hope will be fixed soon, and some things that may or may not be changed which make things harder for me personally (Search in inventory can't be separate from Search in Recent, the media controls are bizarrely sited, hard to build except on the ground). I miss hovertips (all) horribly but am just sucking it up.

There are some nice UI changes like right click copy and paste, and... erm.... other things I can't think of at the moment (no, Shared Media and alpha skins and tattoo layers don't count).

The UI is a bit intrusive; when I am attaching something to a notice and have black opaque sidebar, inventory window, chat, minimap, and whatever else is spitting itself onto my screen there's very little SL left, and the panes demand my attention. As I said before the sides of my view into SL have always felt unblocked and akin to the view from my eyeballs - peripheral vision doesn't really apply, so I'd rather say it just felt like I could go left or right and the way was unblocked. Now it does feel a bit like the way I feel if I stand in rl with a wall next to the right side of my head.

/me tries to resist KLee's siren call.

I honestly can't WAIT for server 1.38 to arrive, though. Opensource Obscure's Land/Sky patch is the only 2.0 mod I'm doing at the moment as it's so freaking convenient for me. Because I spend a great deal of time on Aditi I get to look at script info to my heart's content.

Update: This is an old jira comment but explains things:

Q Linden added a comment - 24/Feb/10 08:46 PM

Hi, folks. I'd like to explain why you won't see this implemented in Viewer 2 (or probably any 2.x viewer).

The UI isn't just a layer. It's not just a bunch of buttons whose arrangement is arbitrary – we just put something like 50 person-years into development of this product, and a pretty good chunk of that was the design and implementation of the new UI. The interaction design of the new sidebar, the new menu systems, the inspectors. It's more than just "skin-deep", to coin a phrase.

We deliberately chose not to implement skins in Viewer 2 – in part because we didn't have the staffing to do multiple skins at the same time as we were doing a major redesign. But even if we had skinning – we still wouldn't have the tools to go back to the old UI.

Even if it were technically feasible (which it isn't under this architecture), the number of bugs we'd be likely to find from inconsistencies between the UIs, not to mention the QA load to test multiple UIs, would doom the project before it began.

And finally, this note: many people at LL didn't like the new UI when they first encountered it, including me. I didn't want to give up 1.23 – I was the lead engineer on the project! But I've found that after I got used to it, I really don't want to go back. Those old comfy shoes don't actually fit so well any more.

I don't wish to deny that some people like some features of prior viewers, nor do I contend we got everything right the first time. But the request in this issue is both technically infeasible and not the direction we intend to go. Therefore, I am closing this issue. Please don't reopen it to argue – I'm trying to be honest about the disposition of the issue.

If you have specific changes you'd like to see, please file separate JIRAs for them so that we can consider them individually.




15 March 2010

 
Bronson


Brilliant :-D
And I don't just say that because I'm an opera buff.

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This was the first day in ages I was able to see Frank, as I didn't have a car for more than a week. After my appointment I went to Gross Out, and saw this newspaper headline: Dicks to ‘clear air’ of pork. It was 60 something degrees today - I think I can still see a tiny bit of snow on the hills, but yesterday it was plain to see. I ran into an artist I know - she recognised me, which is something, I suppose (since deflating back to my former size I think I'm more easily spotted).


 
The Folly of Escalation

The next person who wants media attention is going to have to be a 1000lb vampire in a runaway balloon. With eight children.



14 March 2010

 
Up and Down

This is a very good film from 2004 that echoes the confusion of modern Czech life by tracing the intersecting stories of a number of people in crisis.

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Happy Pi Day!



13 March 2010

 
Nooooobs

I was called to Ambat, then after working on the issue a bit had this conversation:

[11:13] Rosy : how do i say things out loud
[11:14] Osprey Therian: Using Voice?
[11:14] Rosy : yes
[11:15] Osprey Therian: Make sure Voice is activated in Preferences. There's a toggle to speak - often middle mouse button.
[11:15] Rosy : preferences? where is that?
[11:15] Osprey Therian: Shortcut = Control-P
[11:16] Rosy : found it
[11:16] Osprey Therian: Is anyone here using Voice? I'm not as this puter doesn't do audio very well.
[11:17] Rosy : ok
[11:17] Rosy shouts: i think i have it
[11:17] Osprey Therian: Let me turn it on
[11:17] Rosy : never mind
[11:17] Rosy : i dont
[11:18] Rosy : there?
[11:18] Rosy : UGH
[11:18] Rosy : this is so HARD
[11:18] Osprey Therian: I'm in the beta viewer, and it's hard for me to find it ===:O
[11:18] Osprey Therian: lol
[11:19] Rosy : k
[11:20] Osprey Therian: ok I have it on
[11:20] Osprey Therian: I think heh
(speaks)
[11:20] Osprey Therian: aha!
[11:21] Rosy : HOW ARE U SAYING THAT!!!! I WANT 2 TALK 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[11:21] Osprey Therian: I can see you don't have it on Rosy
[11:21] Rosy : ya . . .
[11:21] Osprey Therian: ok get Preferences up
[11:21] Rosy : it wont wrk
[11:21] Rosy : k its up
[11:21] Osprey Therian: oh you DO have it on
[11:22] Osprey Therian: ok now what happens if you push the middle mouse button and talk?
[11:22] Rosy : wait do i need a microphone on my computer?
[11:23] Osprey Therian: yes lol
[11:23] Rosy : SHIT
[11:23] Kleine Gans: lol
[11:23] DISGUISE Draken: Kle :)
[11:23] Osprey Therian: a headset, mic, or w/e

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12 March 2010

 
ZOMG cover surprised me

Record Club: Skip Spence "Lawrence of Euphoria" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.



 
This is awesome!



11 March 2010

 
2.0 User Opinion o.O

"those who don't like it suck it up! its LL software and they do what they want with it

and if its hard to navigate true it, then your just to stupid to be in sl annyway, in ONE day i alredy knowed where everything was"




10 March 2010

 
A Brief History of OKGo on A-R.

This.
Then this.
And now:



That should be enough :-D


 
Goodbye, There

The last day, 9 March 2010, of the virtual world There, was sad for regular users of the service. Even long lost Therians like me (I started at the tail end of beta testing in 2003 and left mid 2004) gathered inworld to see it out. I felt sad that Osprey will live no more, but grateful that I had the gentle and playful world of There to distract me in 2003, a terribly difficult year for me as both my parents died.

With Voice/lip sync from its inception, ai dogs, exceptional vehicle physics, a shopping website, user-made content (but it wasn't easy), fluid avatar movement, and - due to the controlled avatar sizes - the ability for avatars to interact (kiss, etc.), There was cutting edge when it began and steadfastly remained accessible to even users with dial-up. A whole raft of There hacks added gps and other features. It had been so long since I'd been in that I hardly remembered how to work things, yet I remember vividly when I decamped for Second Life, which felt like L.A in contrast to Hawaii.

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09 March 2010

 
Saddened by the latest round of Lindens going away.

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08 March 2010

 
Bits come trickling back.

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Nigerian Massacre Report

Hundreds of nomadic Fulani herdsmen launched coordinated attacks on three Christian villages -- Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot, just south of Jos -- about 3 a.m. Sunday.

The killers planted nets and animal traps outside the huts of the villagers, mainly peasant farmers, fired weapons in the air, then attacked with machetes, according to human rights lawyer Shehu Sani of the nongovernment Civil Rights Congress, who visited the villages and interviewed dozens of survivors.

"People came out of their houses and started falling into the animal traps and mosquito nets and then they were hacked down," he said. "They were the kind of traps used for wild animals."
----LA Times


 
2.0
A few things need to be fixed:

The play/pause button is reversed (hit play to pause, pause to play)

The UI doesn't suppress (the top bar is visible).

Inventory Search fills both All and Recent fields (counterproductive for my way of using Search).

I can't create a prim except on the ground.

I can't easily deselect things.

If I Search in Inventory then try to scroll down and select something it zips itself back up to the top before I can get what I want.<-- I couldn't repro that just now so maybe it's fixed or was just limited in time/place.


 


Join the reenactment of an event from
Nova Albion's history on 20 March at 2pm!


In 1887 a large number of wild migrating ducks lost their way and came down in the middle of an important municipal gathering, then ran amok through the city. The mayor cried, "Fowl!" but the city fathers attempted to whitewash the situation.

Join the flock of confused ducks as they struggle to find their migratory route! (Duck avatars supplied - meet in Southern Grignano). Increasing the mayhem quotient will be the Bay City Blurtophone Band, who will attempt to drive the ducks from the city!


 
Absolutely pounding hail at the moment.


 
Chile after nine days, on the Big Picture.



07 March 2010

 
Raglan ended its Mardi gras celebrations with a steampunk parade!


 
Don't Forget to Vote in the jira for a UI suppression issue!

The issue is here: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17009

In a nutshell, 2.0 doesn't suppress the entire UI as viewers have always done beforee. The workaround I'm using is to shoot at a larger size, then crop the UI out.


 
Update: It seems to be removed, finally, which is good.
Made the thief a lot of money, which is bad.

Stolen Animations Pack Ranks #1 On XSTSL

Come on, LL, do the right thing, and fast.


 
MaxCase's Sim Neighbours was a very enlightening database, and when it went belly-up it was missed. There's a new database, though, which is interesting to query as the Lindens now put eight sims to a server, supposedly.

Find That Laggy Second Life Neighbor!

Argent Stonecutter explains it clearly: "Most sims don't actually need 800MB working set. On average a sim will be N megabytes below 800MB working set. If you have 4 sims, on the average someone would have to be 3N megabytes over the limit before you start paging. If you have 8 sims, they'll have to be 7N megabytes over the limit before you start paging.

Another way to look at it, with 7 sims on the server, the odds that you'll have an unusually "fat" sim go up, but the odds that you'll have one or more unusually "thin" sims go up as well.

Another way to look at it, if somehow they were putting ALL the sims on one server with I don't know how many terabytes of RAM, the impact of the "fat" sims would be so diluted you'd never notice.

This is basic queueing theory. It's why timesharing services and any other service that has large scale sharing of resources allow overcommitment. It's why sharing a motorcycle with a fat guy is so much worse than sharing a 747 with 30 fat guys. The more resources are shared, the less impact any given freeloader has."


 
It's been a complete pain that I haven't been able to access my Transactions all day, as Kat sent me some spacebux and I need to repay her, but I dunno the amount. She logged off without telling me.

WTF is going on that the SL website has been down so long?


 


 
"Elderglen," a Linden Homes community, sounds like it should be on the Geezer Grid.



06 March 2010

 
Useful Mod

Opensource Obscure has a 2.0 mod to the top nav bar that adds parcel and sky setting buttons. That's extremely useful because:
1. I change WL settings constantly because of machinima needs
2. Script info in server 1.38 is accessed through the land pane.

Thank you, OO!


 
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Kid-Owe
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorSkate Expectations


=============:O



05 March 2010

 

Reckless Drivers

From Shyotl at SLU: "Forceware v196.75 introduced a bug with fan control. Reportedly many users have found their cards to be running at dangerous temps, and some have even had their videocard die all-together.

If you've installed these drivers, it's recommended to roll back to version 196.21 immediately."



04 March 2010

 
Inventory Search

It really is counterproductive for the search field in inventory + recent inventory to be the same. That's the opposite of the way I use inventory search.

Update: I was talking to a Enjah and she said she has had that off and on for ages. Unlike her, my Inventory all/recent tabs have functioned properly 100% of the time - so of course when 2.0 functioned entirely differently 100% of the time I thought it was a feature not a bug. I still don't know. Anyone have any input for me?

Is this working as intended/expected now, or is it a bug?

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Also: this.


 
Workmen.

Yesterday my landlord and a workman appeared at 8 am to install a thing (I dunno what it's called so have to resort to an old term that at least I understand) - a geyser. Then a carpenter came to estimate the cost of building a door in the hallway that leads to the stairs. He decided it made sense to build it flush with the kitchen wall, capping the hall, and I blanched but said nothing because it isn't my house.

Today another carpenter came to give an estimate, and we had a fruitful chat about where the door should be placed. I didn't lead the conversation; I asked him where he thought it should be, and then gave my preferences. He thinks set back, so there's an alcove, a wide door so there's minimal wall, and a transom or whatever they are called (if different) when they don't open - a window above the door. I was concerned with how dark a door would make it, so that possibility pleased me. I liked how he is concerned with design/aesthetics; he was well able to imagine the door flush versus the door set back three feet, which obviously the other man was not.


 
2.0 Sidebar Thoughts

I think that, much different from the way we always used inventory, profiles, groups, etc. in the past (i.e. on the fly, as something integrated into our big picture), the new UI wants us to stop and focus on that single aspect, which is separate from the world.

It is what it is, and I'll adapt. One thing, though, is that the sides of my view into SL have always felt unblocked and akin to the view from my eyeballs - periferal vision doesn't really apply, so I'd rather say it just felt like I could go left or right and the way was unblocked. Now it does feel a bit like the way I feel if I stand in rl with a wall next to the right side of my head.



03 March 2010

 

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My view as the morning cloud burns off.

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This seems, on the surface to be full of win: a hypergrid payment system that operates seamlessly across grid lines, and uses Open Metaverse Currency (OMC), which converts to and from various real life currencies as well as linden. The currency name doesn't fall trippingly off the tongue, but maybe I'll get used to it.



02 March 2010

 


Komuso on Saturday, experimenting with shared media.

Update: He adds on yootoob:
If we don't live test prototypes or tech ideas we a. don't find out what may work and b. miss out on the happy accident of screwing around with shit to see what happens and where it may lead;-)

This video test (a smaller moulded cyborg attachment would be better) has given me the best "feel" so far in terms of adding an extra element to the audience/performer feedback loop with video.

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Psi

I logged into There and immediately was hit with an IM from my friend Psi.

"Remember me?" He cited the little business we had together for a short time.
"Of course!"

He had just heard There was closing and had logged in to say goodbye to it after not having been in for ages.

"I'm a college student with a double major, so I don't have much time."
"You were thirteen when I met you."
"I'm nineteen now. It feels like yesterday."
"I'm 56."
"Wow, you seem much younger. I always thought you were in your twenties."
"What majors?"
"Business and economics."

We chatted on for quite a while (he said a lot of nice things but I don't have a log) and he's going to friend me on FaceBug and check out my machinima on yootoob. He's into martial arts and WoW, and wants to go to Japan. We each remembered where the other lived, which was a triumph of something or other.

There had a lot of good things from the beginning, including bitchin' vehicle physics, avatar interactions, natural movement (which is what we should've got when SL got JJ Ventrella), voice/lip sync (which was great for the vibrant There machinima makers), ai dogs, and so on. I came in at the tail-end of the beta period. It was fun exploring, and for me, because both my parents died in 2003, a gentle distraction. My father had died less than a month before I first entered There, I think. I'm grateful I found that playful, relaxed, welcoming place as it was healing to spend time There.


 
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Update: Yes, I'm sure I'm FOS, but this is what I'm thinking about right now.

The first time I heard the name "FaceBook" it was in a printed magazine (I'm sure it was The New Yorker) article in 2006. It was mildly interesting, but of course, I'm not a college student so it was just a report on something that didn't apply to me.

A year or two later I made an account just because I'm on the internet and going around trying things out is what we do on the net. Then I wandered off because FB wasn't interesting to me.

Sometime later Doc, who had coded the CC arenas so they tweeted after each match, asked me to make a Combat Cards page and hook it up to our Twitter account. Actually first I made a fan page, then thinking it wasn't what we wanted I made an account, then Doc said "You need to make a fan page," which points up that, obviously, I had no clue at all what I was doing :-D

Since then I have logged into FaceBook periodically, but it still has no interest for me. A few rl friends and lots of esselians are in my (small) friends list, and I did attempt to get interested, yet it never "took." After Metaplace tanked I installed the Island Life app out of curiosity, but it has nothing that draws me at all. I haven't bought into it, so my Island Life actions are on the griefery side: every once in a while I log into it and try to fill up the island with cows for 2.34 seconds then leave.

Humans like to do things that make them feel as though they are accomplishing something. Note the "feel as though" well, as we don't need actually to accomplish anything, just to feel that we do. That's an exploitable trait, as it turns out - and exploitable in a big way.

FaceBook is absolutely chock full of pointless dig-a-hole-then-fill-it-in applications that - wait! DO have a point. All those micropayments add up to big bucks for the app developers. It's an uneven trade that I find rather sinister - coopting billions of hours of real human energy to create a programmer's robot army, in a way. Yes, it's the person's choice, but I'm not interested in one person, but in the way this plays out in general.

To be addictive the dig-a-hole-then-fill-it-in ungame* has to have a "moving up" scenario, be time-based, involve sharing and gifts, and have rewards for line-toeing. To get to the point where people will voluntarily invest small amounts of money, the app has to be formed in such a way that they will invest hours of their time, a precious commodity that should be used elsewhere. Better to plant a real seed, read to your child, or if you are at work, do your job.

A dig-a-hole-then-fill-it-in app can become too obviously addictive, at which point the host may cut it off at the roots. My friend Con was so involved in one (Farmville?) that one day she was contemplating rushing home because her apricots needed harvesting or something - and decided instead to stop playing entirely.

I'm wondering what effect this energy siphoning-off will have on the world. There's the slight chance the applications offer in play form the aggregation of far-flung individuals, the effect of which, once realised and used for real purposes, may be key to the resolution of my no-them-only-us theory. Dunno.

The thing it reminds me of is cigarettes, without being as pernicious. Cigarettes are designed to be as addictive as possible, and the trade a smoker makes is lop-sided. The amount spent on the cigarettes is just one part - the smaller part of the trade. In order to sell cigarettes they make them as addictive as possible to get long-term users, so the smoker is trading work time used to generate the immediate cost, then time subtracted from the smoker's life, and time spent in that continuum that includes "not well," pneumonia, emphysemia, and lung cancer.

There was a Martin Amis book where the character said something like he looked forward to smoking a cigarette while he was smoking a cigarette - in other words smoking was like an itch that in the smoker's head, would be scratched by smoking - yet it didn't offer any relief. In fact the urge deepened. An essentially unsatisfying cycle like that would, you'd think, be easy to walk away from, yet it seems we humans are easily manipulated.

The quick-and-dirty scenario offered by pointless apps, with their lop-sided-by-design trade required to generate billions of micropayments is very different, in my mind, from the more even bargain offered by full virtual environments in which users can do any number of things from create art environments, role-play, develop businesses, and so forth. The success of the pointless ungame apps has at the base, I think, the fact that they are stripped-down to the essentials of addiction to better manipulate through human nature. Have fun!

* I think a genuine game has a point.


:-D


 
There.com is closing in a week.

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01 March 2010

 
The Long and Winding Woe
Uploading Trouble

After not having trouble with yootoob uploading suddenly the new one JUST WOULDN'T and failed every time starting at about 3:30 last night (a bad time to be uploading, however I'd started it a long time earlier it just wouldn't finish). I tried sans progress bar and in various ways but no joy. Finally I miniaturised it and sent a link from my server to Kom, and googled for two minutes.
Answer (untested): AVG link checker/shield causes the uploads to fail and that *twinkling of an eye* superfast progress bar illusory upload speed.


 
Because YOU Asked For It!
An old unfinished post!

Sometimes I wonder...

What The Hell Is It That We Want?

What is we want from SL/LL? That's a question with a huge number of answers, most of which I'm sure I don't know. What is it I want? Even that's hard to answer. I'll try, but this is just an experiment and probably won't make much sense.

  1. I'd like to feel my digital data is reasonably safe, and my real life data is not subject to data mining or thievery/crackery.
  2. I'd like to feel like customers in general all have an equal value and ... and then I would gallop into the lake on my mare, who loves to swim, shampoo my hair with the funky weeds that grow at the shore, and finally let the horse fly into the clouds, me clinging to her mane. -- Ending supplied by Enjah. Thank you, Enjah!


 
Update For 2.0

/me carefully closes the barn door after the horse* has been deleted.


(*chatlogs and settings)


 
I'm shocked at the number of posts I write halfway then save as I've run out of energy. Maybe as an exercise I should publish unfinished posts and just tag them "run out of energy" or something. That would make this a messy blog, though.

I could call for people to finish the posts in whatever fashion they like! That would be interesting! Maybe.

 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?