Outside lookin in...

As my dear friend Pheobe would say, it's an emo post.... check out her recent pics, she looks amazing.

Trademark This!

First off, my surgery went fine if you care.... everything is good so far and I will have final results in about a week. Probably won't share them here unless they are negative.

Now, you may have noticed a new logo over there to the right, it says inSL.... go ahead and ogle. That little graphic and the associated legalese is causing quite the uproar in the SLBlogging community right now. This all started when Linden Labs released a new resource called the Branding Center. The new logo came with many rules for how you could use their brand names and logos. They advertised it on their blog, and tulmult results. The issue is complex and beyond me as I'm not a lawyer, but suffice it to say, to use the hand in eye logo that I've had on this site since day one I had to agree to legalese that I do my best to follow. To use the inSL logo I'll have to do the same and have. If I have to change my site because I get a letter from a lawyer I will, but in all honesty I believe this site is not in any danger. The question from most SLBloggers comes from wanting clarification of that assumption. Gwyn has her thought's here and I mostly agree with them, however I'm undecided on whether or not I shall include myself in the blogging ban. James Au has his post here. And the forums at SLBloggers are here. Once again this is a community rant and rave session so be kind and realize that passions are raised, in all liklihood this will all blow over and things will get back to 'normal.' As normal as things get when you include vampires, nekos, angels, demons, goreans, anime fans and roleplayers in a new world with the vanilla people.

The interesting thing to me in all this is that Linden Labs is going through growing pains as a company. Like all technology firms they are taking slow but sure steps to becoming a sustainable enterprise long term. Is this disruptive to the customers/content producers? Sure. Is it nessecary for those people to continue to enjoy the technology, Absolutely. Now, I know that it could be handled better but we have to realize as Taturo Nino wrote in an editorial (apologies I can't find the post, if I do I'll update), that Linden Labs overarching goal is continuance, and it is in our benefit as residents to recognize that. There may be reasons from a corporate standpoint that none of us understand but everyone at the company still wants to make money and get their paychecks, that's ultimately why they do things.

Recovery....

I may not be posting for a bit, I go back in for surgery on Wednesday, hopefully the last time on my eyes... so there may be a brief pause in posting. This is a common in and out procedure much less difficult then all the others I've been through but well wishes are always apprecitated.

Late Night?

OK, I stole the idea from botgirl, but it's still funny....

Beep! or how Traffic shouldn't Drive you.

I never understood why it's important to be part of the crowd. I guess we all want belonging and acceptance and this virtual world is definately part of finding that for many of the people who use it, including me at various times in my life. It's helped me through job losss, going blind, diabetes issues.... you name it. Well not it but the friendships I've made there. It's all about telling the stories we can tell there. But that's not really what I'm talking about today.

Go read this post here.

Traffic numbers are a measurement of how popular your land is in Second Life. This is very important to mall owners as an indication of why you should rent there. The problem is that people now have bots that inflate the visitor numbers to that particular area. There are legitimate uses for these bots as this person is pointing out and I'm not really taking issue with the use he's making of them, it makes sense from a business perspective. The problem once again is a social one. There's some inherent need for us to see what's going on, in Second Life it's even got a name, 'Dot Syndrome' is when a bunch of green dots show up on the mini-map, this seems to attract more green dots. Why do we care what's popular or not according to computer numbers? If you find something you like then tell your friends, and visit to see what's new. I personally work very hard on customer service and support so that I gain word of mouth. Please, if you like my designs then spread the word of mouth, and explore, don't just pay attention to traffic or dot syndrome.

Playboy?.... not quite.

OK, I looked at crosses for the gothic/christian set, couldn't find one I liked. I looked for bunnies, and believe me no matter what you think I'm keeping this blog safe for work. THen I spotted this one. Patrick Swayze dosen't say Easter but that's ok I can.

Hoping you have a blessed Easter spent with family, both related and unrelated.

Noel.

Random Blog Love!

OK, people I read, people I laugh at, people who've been kind enough to link to me:

Botgirl's Second Life Diary - Gosh I wish I was this well spoken.

SL Fashion Police - WARNING - may not be safe for work but good for a chuckle.

Second Life, First Person - Just a good read.

Temeritry Jane - Not SL, not even really Wow, just entertaining.

Just part of what gets me through my day....

Stop Copying Me....

Have you heard of CopyBot? No? OK, go read this. Caught up? Good. There has been a resurgance of the panic that is a precursor to copybot lately because of legitimate software tools that are being marketed to people like me. People who build. The most egregious (wow big word) 'offender' lately has been Second Inventory whose marketing spiel says....

"Second Inventory allows you to save all your creations directly to your hard drive. This includes, Skins, Textures, Scripts and even complex multi-prim objects! Your precious time and investments in Second Life® content can now be securely protected off world"

So this is a legitimate use of the copying tools that were originally come up with. Do we have to trust this won't be hacked? Yes. Do we think that it's possible it could be? Sure. Are we worried? No. I haven't bought this yet, but I plan to, especially as the Open Sourcing of Linden Labs continues and I move my builds to other 'worlds' this will become an invaluable tool. There is nothing to be gained by reviling such a product or the people who create it. It's like reviling the people who make gloves because someone might steal wearing them. OK I know, bad metaphor but think about it... The problem isn't the tool, it's the person who aims the tool and pulls the trigger. (Another bad metaphor.)

The true concern I have as a content creator is not that people may steal my creations, either by tool or by reverse engineering, but that I'll never find out about it. This is what we should be concerned about. When the virtual world gets to the point that we have researchers and lawyers looking for things that 'infringe' on your creations then we'll be talking about a robust sustainable environment. Do I look forward to that point? Not really because it will become another business expense. Do I hope it happens because it means 'real' money and time is worth it? Yes.

In fact I know these people already exist in SL, trying to get a jump on when it's such big business. Don't be worried about a piece of code, be worried about the social implications that we are not good at policing ourselves. Mom isn't going to stop the car and paddle one of us, we have to be adults now.

Give me an Apple my Pretty.

Wow, I'm fixated on Disney lately.... wierd.

Anyway, ok, I've been a bit behind lately on my builds, as in I haven't been doing them. There's a big reason for that but it's under contract and I can't talk about it.... yet. So I finally got a break from the contractural stuff and started building again, those builds I'll talk about when we get to them in the timeline but I finally got to the point where I scripted every little bit of it with only one bit of question help from a friend who is an actual scripter. This was another build 'for me' with no count of prims until I was done and no idea whether there is a market for it. When I was finished it weighed in at exactly 500 prims. Yikes!

I have to do this occasionally now, stop being 'productive' and be creative with no idea whether or not it will sell. This is really what everyone should be doing and the other designers I work with operate this way much better then I do. Of course they don't worry about the bottom line like I have to either. There is a very difficult line sometimes for me personally between doing what I love and doing what will sell. Luckily most of the time it's concurrent. The best way to be successful in Second Life is to do what makes you happy and what you have fun at, if this is work, you won't stick with it. Trust me, even my most expensive build, is priced at $15. Yes if I sell thousands of them that'll be plenty. But in the SL housing market at least you don't really sell thousands. So, the two ways I recover from getting stuck in the 'work' grind are doing things I love without worrying about whether or not they will sell.... and teaching others to make their vision come true. Most of my designers started with me this way, they wanted to build, asked for advice, came up with something cool and became a partner with me....

So, if anyone out there wants to learn how to make their creativity reality.... wait.... virtuality.... wait.... I give up. I'm here to teach if you want to learn. In fact if you get to or meet a standard consistant with what I offer as products you may even get an SL job out of it. But either way I love to teach, and I'm happy to help you with whatever building or scripting idea you may have. Also, if I'm not the right guy to teach you, I probably know who to refer you to.

Just remember to bring Teacher an Apple..... (that's the explanation for the title.)

I know you're gone you said you're gone but I can still feel you here

OK, Spice Girls quote, crucify me if you want, but it's that sense of goofiness and joy with bad taste (on my end) that I've shared with one of my best friends for what seems like ages, Luna Jubilee. Luna's been an inspiration in more ways then she knows and so this is my shout out to her. She's stating that she's retiring her blog for awhile....I've sent you there before, now I'm sending you again, wish her luck, wish her joy, most of all wish her peace. Love you hun....

Take a Bow for the New Revolution

Phillip Linden is the man with the creative vision who started Linden Labs - creators of Second Life. He has announced he is looking for a new CEO. My personal take on this having worked in the tech industry for years is that this is a logical next step for the company and not a sign of either the decline of Second Life, nor the death of the grassroots content creator. I chose the blog title from a Who song whose chorus goes, "Here's to the new boss, same as the old boss." They mean it as a criticism, but when dealing with a fairly revolutionary paradigm shift such as Second Life it's actually an acknowledgement that the revolution we're part of will continue. I plan to stick around and work here, I hope you all do too. Phillip's comments are reproduced in their entirety below.

"We’ve decided to search for a new CEO, and I wanted to briefly talk to everyone
here about the reasons for that decision. I feel that the most important contributions I have made and will continue to make to Second Life are related to building both the product and the company through my direct contributions to vision, strategy, and design. As we grow, the role of our CEO will increasingly be to hire and grow the right team - to lead and help the company scale - to thousands of people and tens of millions of users of Second Life. I believe that we can hire a fantastic person in that role, and also give me the ability to totally focus myself on the job that I do well. I bet this will be the most interesting job opening in the technology world.
As to title, I will become chairman of the board. I will be 100% involved and fulltime at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life’s work, and I am not going anywhere! I will focus on product strategy and vision, continuing to design the right kind of company, and being an effective communicator and evangelist about Second Life. As a community member, you will probably see more of me in-world.
Again, this is a decision driven by my desire to best grow SL and match my job to both our needs and my passions. We don’t have a specific timeline, and I don’t expect my job to change while we are looking for someone.
We’ll organize some further conversations in SL on this topic soon, and as always, feel free to talk to me about this if you run into me in-world."

Full blogpost available here.

Thailand? Really?

Wow. OK, so I put in a new widget to track statistics for fun, and something interesting happened, I got a couple visits from Thailand IP addresses. That's incredible, I can't imagine.... just goes to show that the nets really aren't bound by regional boundaries. I think I know who's visiting from Oz, and from Canada, and from the different US states, but I don't know who I could possibly know in Thailand.... introduce yourself in comments. I'm curious what you think.

For those interested here's the last few visits:


Location:
Birmingham, AL, United States
Beaverton, OR, United States - This is most likely me.
Deal, NJ, United States
Boskoop, Netherlands
San Diego, CA, United States
Bangkok, Thailand

Scheherazade would be proud ~ Arabian Nights Castle

OK, so back to my discussion of my builds and how I've progressed as a builder:



Arabian Dreams


The Brochure:


This gorgeous Arabian styled castle looks like it should come out of the old stories. Rising out of the sand it's highly detailed and includes custom textured. There are 4 'hidden' rooms 4 floors and gorgeous onion towers to climb to. Perfect for Gor related sims as well. This isn't small and wieghs in at just over 300 prims but everyone who's seen it loves it. Try it out today.
Packed in an easy Rezzer.





The Story:
This is actually a fairly straight forward build except for a few things, this was inspired by someone who wanted a build off of a description, so it was my first time trying to do a build off of someone's word picture other then my own. It was also the first time I attempted to do circular towers bigger then one prim would allow. They aren't actually circles but rather blocks put together in a hexagon to appear circular. This leads back to start a discussion about megaprims.

Megaprims are prims that are bigger then the standard 10x10x10. They were created by an 'exploit' in the openlife programming and they are available by various means. If used I could have made a cylinder that was 20x20x20 for the back towers and used it with alot less prims. However, it has never been made clear by Linden Labs whether or not megaprims are 'allowed.' They seem tolerant of them until they cause problems but is that because they don't have the staff to police for them or because of their previous 'hands-off' approach. I just don't know and haven't been able to determine. As a result in pre-fab buildings that may be sold to anyone I do not use megaprims.

OK, so, no megaprims in my builds.

So, now that you understand that those towers are actually made up of lots of smaller prims rotated and made into hexagonical shapes you can see how it would be frustrating to rotate and do all hte math. Much as I'd love to tell you I took the time to do that and my degree from MIT makes it as natural as counting to 3, I didn't. There are tools available that will rotate and mess with prims to help you make a circle. The one I use is made by Melight Korvin and makes things absolutely easier to deal with, though it was intended for the fashion industry it works great for towers as well. You can find it on SLX here.

This was also the first build I ever did custom textures on. The only texture shop I recommend to new builders is Textures R Us. They are members several digital artists organizations and make the most beautiful textures I've seen in Second Life. Pay very close attention to the liscence agreement when you buy from them. Texture artists are inherently in danger of getting ripped off in Second Life because in order to sell their work for use by builders it has to be full permissions, which means that unsavory people can rip it off. I admire them for sticking with it and having one of the best variety of textures out there, however I couldn't quite find what I wanted for the store so I messed around in PhotoShop until I found something I liked.

I like this build particularly because Second Life itself is a bit like having a magic lamp, if you stretch out your hand and you have the doggedness or creativity or money you can make it.... fantasy, reality, something completely different.... it's all possible here to a degree.

So, if you want to play Scheherazade, Aladdin, Jazmine, or Abu..... Yeah, I know I disneyfied it.

Elder Statesman, Woman, Person.....

If you don't know Gwyneth Llewelyn then welcome to an introduction. Gwen is one of the deepest thinkers when it comes to Second Life, the implications and the future. She's also one of the kindest people I've ever spoken with. Here's her recent article concerning content theft, I recommend you read it now.

HTML on a Prim cycling web pages - perfect for blogs.

Linden Labs did a small first step towards making shared browsing in our 3d world yesterday. To do it you'll need to download the new release client, which is running pretty well on my machine. Afterwards you can do some neat stuff as a landowner that wasn't possible before, such as putting a webpage on a prim!

Here I have created a script which allows you to set up three sites, when you touch the prim it cycles to the next site. Perfect for your blogs or other things. Remember to replace the http addresses at the top of the script with your own. Happy browsing.


integer site = 1;
string site1 = “http://ingmanndesign.com”; //replace with your site
string site2 = “http://site2.com”; //replace with your second site
string site3= “http://site3.com”; //replace with your third site
default{ // beginning of state
state_entry()
{ // stuff between this set of brackets happens when script first loads.
// or the script gets reset.
//Currently set to display the 'main' site.
llParcelMediaCommandList
([
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL, site1,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE, “text/html”
]);
}

touch_start(integer total_number)
{ //start of touch stuff
if ( site == 1.0 )
{ // bracket to start doing stuff if the site is 1.0
llParcelMediaCommandList
([
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL, site1,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE, “text/html”
]);
site = 2;
} // bracket to end the first if statement

else if ( site == 2 ) // “else if” is what you use for the script to keep
// checking stuff in case that first if statement
// isn’t valid
{ // bracket starts the else if stuff
llParcelMediaCommandList
([
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL, site2,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE, “text/html”
]);
site = 3;
} // end this else if stuff

else if ( site == 3)
{
llParcelMediaCommandList
([
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL, site3,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE, “text/html”
]);
site = 1;
}
} // end of touch stuff
} // end of state


// Please note I am not responsible for anything you choose to display using this script, it is entirely possible to display items offensive or against the TOS, if you modify this script to do so know that I did not design it as such.

Abra-Ca-Dabra.... or Yabba Dabba Do?

OK, so, here it is, the new and improved Ingmann Design site? Do you like it? Do you hate it? Do I have enough readers to worry about?



*listens carefully and hears only crickets, so starts talking to them*



I thought it was getting way too busy with just two columns so I went looking for a three column template I could actually live with. Of course, fiddling with it took 3 hours so.... there you go.



Let me know.... in the comments. Just remember I know Bam Bam.

Yak, Yak, Yak..... SL Bloggers new home.

I haven't mentioned it before but I'm a member of SLbloggers. A bunch of us who blog about our alternate reality. They recently opened a new home. Check em out, ooo and scope the logo.

Steal my heart, not my living....

I'm blatantly taking the pictures from NWN, but click them and it'll take you their story.



Just an aside - Inspiration is one thing, outright copying completely different. Please patronize those trying to create our world, instead of those trying to rip it off.

I See you!

Announcing my new product line: Eyeballs! I've been putting that wacom tablet I got for my birthday to use, although who knows if it's good bad or otherwise, and these are the results:

I'm particularly proud of the last one, as it's from a photograph taken during 9/11 in Manhattan of the NYC memorial Twin Tower lights, as a result all sales of that eyeball will see part of the proceeds donated to charity.

It's also gratifying as someone who's been through 7 surgeries (1 to go) on their eyes to be able to create them for our avatars. I have 14 so far but blogger won't let me put more up in a post, come by our shop to see the rest or check them out on SLX.

Oh and by the way I do custom eyes. Ask me for them.

Here's looking at you kid.