Busted Focus

OK, so you aren't getting Codex Chapter 2...... I'm dealing with aches and pains and insurance....

This is my car.... darnit.

Codex the first Chapter

It was a dark and stormy night.... when our story begins....

Wait....

At the time I started building the Codex I was in a bit of a funk, I'd done the castles, I'd messed around with some modern buildings and variations of my castles by doing Tapestry and Sandra's Place. But I hadn't done anything I wanted for me for awhile. I was in a creative funk. Yes I'd found some amazing design partners and the 'group' part of my business name was finally something of a reality but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next creatively. So I decided again not to worry about my customer's or percieved market placement and to just design what I wanted to live in. No worry about prim limits because at that point I had nearly a half sim in land holdings, no worry about pleasing anyone else with trade offs between quality and practicality, this was going to be a build for me.

One of the problems with creative people, and me especially is we are super hard on ourselves. Remember that graphic tablet I got for my birthday? (Two months ago now.) Know why you don't see me selling clothing yet? It's because I keep throwing my efforts out as not being high enough quality wise. One of my jobs as the 'manager' of IDG is to convince our designers that it's "good enough to release" and in turn have them tell me the same thing. It's part of why I like having the loose confederation of really good people that I've got. Besides the fact that many of them have become family.

So why the aside? Because this build is really about making it so I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as needing 'fixing.' Now this is truly impossible, but most of my builds, even the ones everyone loves, when I put them down, my eye jumps to something I need to 'fix' or improve upon, even if nobody else will notice. This build I was going to take my time on and not worry about any deadlines or anything else, it was going to be realistically 'perfect.' I didn't know what I really wanted to build but my favorite genres of writing have always been sci-fi and fantasy, (No they aren't the same thing.) and one of the series that off and on I think about is one that puts a naturalist (early scientist) in a fantasy setting. (The name of the series escapes me at the moment and I'm not near my storage facility with my books so you're all out of luck.) This appealed to me and I thought about a mix of science and magic. Maybe something along the lines of the early alchemists? I was at the time also reading QuickSilver by Stephenson (Amazing series, highly recommended.) which influenced my thoughts I'm sure.

So an early alchemist would be interested in the stars and formations and such. So they would be using telescopes. I started looking on SLX for telescopes and to my surprise there were not many, and none were functional. Aha, an opportunity! I started messing around with LSL to see if it was possible to take control of the camera and zoom it far away when someone sat on something as a proof of concept for the telescope. Turns out it is, but you have to know the region coordinates of the place you want to zoom to, and since I didn't know where I was going to rez this that wasn't workable... o what to do what to do?

Turn in tomorrow to hear part 2.... dum dum dum.


(That's what we call a cliffhanger. Snoopy would be proud.)

My blog is worth what?

http://www.blogperfume.com/feed-analysis/?uri=http://feeds.feedburner.com/IDG_SecondLife

Certainly interesting stats, I've only been tracking my blog statistics for a little while, but it says my blog is worth $66 and that I should be able to charge $1 per month for a banner ad. Well.... ok. I won't charge anything if you want to trade banner ads, if you're interested get ahold of me in world. Maybe I'll reconsider when it says I should charge $5 per month....


Still working on the Codex write up.... stand by.

My Favourite Build....

OK, so, I'm up to my favourite build, the Codex. I'm typing up the process now but it's probably going to be a multi post build to describe. This is really the build most me. It's a combination of scripting building, inventiveness and research that I truly loved and took me months to build. To whet your appetite here's a pic.

On top of trying to get that done and entertain you all I'm trying to pack up quite a few builds in the pipeline, reprice things, create the new store, wait for the lindens to get their act together, deal with friends and surprise you all with a new grand opening, o wait, ruined the surprise.... Stay tuned.

Vacation

I'm off work for the rest of the week so I won't be blogging much but I'll be in and out of Second Life, contact me there if you need me. Everyone take care.

Statistics, and no math...

Interesting statistics concerning this site:

Adsense reports that in the lifetime of the site I've gotten 2,574 page views.

Analytics says 213 of those are since April 7th. The most popular page on the site is the search page, yet nobody has ever clicked on an ad in the search page.

Referring sites in order of referrals, all in single digits:

secondlifebloggers.ning.com
lunajubilee.blogspot.com
winterfell.ning.com
slexchange.com (Now I've updated all my listings to include this site so hopefully this will increase.)

Biggest search words that get people to the site:
second life fireflys
bebop reality
how to sell on slexchange

Visiting countries:
United States
Canada
Australia
Romania
Taiwan

States in the US:
Oregon (Where I live so probably me since I check my own site and fiddle often)
California
Washington
New Jersey (I know who this is too)
North Carolina (Again I know who this is)
Illinois
Michigan

So there you go, just kind of interesting statistics to see where things come from.

Memes, because I'm lazy today....

OK, another Meme, copy if you wish:

Welcome to the 2008 edition of Getting To Know Your Friends. What you are supposed to do is copy the text on this entire note and paste it onto a new note that you'll send out. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to your friends including the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

1. What time did you get up this morning?
Too fracking early - 9:30am
2. Diamonds or pearls?
DIAMONDS
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Juno
4. Favorite TV show?
Doctor Who
5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
Nothing
6. What is your middle name?
Depends, ranges from 'Dangerous' to 'Stupid'
7. What food do you dislike?
Liver
8. What is your favorite CD at the moment?
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
9. Favorite sandwich?
Meat
10. What characteristic do you despise?
Disloyalty
11. Favorite item of clothing?
On you or me?
12. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
Somewhere I'm loved
13. What color is your bathroom?
Yellow
14. Do you make friends easily?
What other people would call friends yes. Real connections that feed my soul, no.
15. Where would you retire?
Somhere I'm loved
16. What was your most recent memorable birthday?
30th - I went blind.
17. Favorite sport to watch?
MMA
18. How many towns have you lived in?
Metro Areas - 3
19. How many people do you think will send this back?
No clue
20. What’s on your bedroom floor right now?
Carpet
21. Favorite saying?
On the other hand....
22. When is your birthday?
2/22
23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night
24. What is your shoe size?
11 Mens
25. Pets?
Yes and they know who they are
26. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us?
Nope
27. What did you want to be when you were little?
Define little - since I was 5? Whole.
28. Which talent would you most like to have?
Conversational Spidey Sense
29. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
/me chuckles.
30. What is your favorite flower?
Dandelions
31. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
One ending in Y
32. What color are your eyes?
Depends on what I pull out of my inventory.
33. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Legos
34. Summer or winter?
Winter
35. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs if under 30 seconds, Kisses if over 30 seconds.
36. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Vanilla
37. Do you want your friends to send this back to you?
YES PLEASE
38. When was the last time you cried?
More then a year.
39. What is under your bed?
The boogey man - on a chain, I feed him small prims from time to time.
40. Who is the friend you have had the longest in SL?
I won't out them with the embarrassment of being my oldest friend, after all, they barely want to admit they know me to other people. (That IS a joke.)
41. What did you do last night?
Work.
42. Favorite smell?
Vanilla
43. What are you afraid of?
Being inadequate
44. Plain, sweet, or salted Popcorn?
Butter and Salt, lots.
45. How many keys on your key ring?
4
46. How many years at your current job?
2.5
47. Do you have any scars?
Yes - Damn needles.
48. Favorite day of the week?
Saturday
49. How many people will you be sending this to?
Over 2000

I'm a Scriptwriter! I work on my computer....

Work sucks. Seriously, I can't do anything except write blog posts, respond to email, look busy when the boss walks by.... you know, sucks. But this helps right here...

So what you and I need as enterprising young scripters, willing to slave long and hard to make a name for ourselves in this brand new world building bots and things and widgets and guns and swords and ghosty doors and stuff. Is the ability to do it without having to be in Second Life at all. Why? Well, for one thing Second Life can be highly distracting, friends, beautiful avatars, (and victims) nice scenery.... (Although if you're going to have this problem you probably won't be saved with this tool.) And secondly it allows us to do this in an environment that is not subject to other people's equipment. Look, I love Second Life and I think they do pretty well, but if your PC goes down it's your problem, if SL goes down, you can't fix it. This allows the scripting portion of things to move offline to be worked on even if the grid comes down. In the author's own words:

"LSL-Editor is a standalone LSL (Secondlife) script editor and run-time
environment for Windows and compiles and executes LSL scripts. No SecondLife
viewer is needed nor connection to the SecondLife grid.The program is updated on
regular intervals. When the project emerges, more and more code can be compiled,
debugged, and tested outside SecondLife world."

If you're an lsl scripter this is a great tool, the ability to make scripts outside of second life with full access to the lsl wiki and the examples there? This will help you learn scripting.

Just be careful when the first life boss walks by.

I am too can read goods!

I'm literate, I have attained literacy. And the people who need to know can know that I redeemed myself tonight more then adequately.

Use their own tools to make a statement...

OK, I said HTML on a Prim was put to bed, and to a degree that's true. The script that I'm open sourcing is here on this blog and is open for you to use as you see fit as long as you don't take away the credit from me or sell it for yourself.

However having done that I made an improvement for those of us who aren't scripters. Many thanks to a scripter friend who I don't want flooded with project requests so I'm not giving her name but she's amazing and special and deserves major down time for the crap I give her. Together we came up with a website viewer that will click through to every site listed on the notecard in the viewer. It's a simple and effective way of showing all the blogs that you like to see. You can get it in world at my store here.

It'll cost you 1L. That's 1/3rd of a penny in real money. Why am I selling it so low? Because I want it all over SL. I want you to put your favorite Second Life sites in it and show the grid how much we help promote and sustain the metaverse world we all love, love to hate, and can't stay away from. Let's use the tools LL has given us to show them just how misguided this new trademark policy could be. We now have less then 90 days before many of our favorite sites go dark due to percieved or actual policy changes. You can read about it at NWN, or Gwyn's blog (I so wish I could write like she did, she writes what I think sometimes.) Or imagine losing SLExchange or OnRez.... this is technically possible. I've written before that I don't think they will take it this far, but they could and it's wise to show them how much it could change.

I'm not good at making funny ear-rings, or tshirts, sometimes logos are my thing. This is my stand right here... my chance to give us tools to protest in a productive, quietly insistent way. I hope you help do this with those of us who think it's nessecary. And if not, it's a damn cool little toy that I hope you enjoy.

HTML on a Prim Revisited and Put to Bed!

OK, I'm a true geek..... as you can see. I'm posting to blogger from within SL. That's me and a friend looking at this website with blogger open below, my big screen tv and video players, Tiny Empires Hud in the left.

I got my Prim script to work and I love it, but you have to be very careful with permissions, the script itself does not warn about permissions at all so you are warned.

integer site = 1;
string site1 = "http://ingmanndesign.com"; //replace with your site
string site2 = "http://slfashionality.blogspot.com"; //replace with your second site
string site3= "http://lunajubilee.blogspot.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",
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY
]);
}

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",
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY
]);
llSay(0, "Site 1");
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",
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY
]);
llSay(0, "Site 2");
site = 3;
} // end this else if stuff

else if ( site == 3)
{
llParcelMediaCommandList
([
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_URL, site3,
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE, "text/html",
PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_PLAY
]);
llSay(0, "Site 3");
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.

HTML on a Prim Revisited.

OK, so I can't figure out why this isn't working at the moment, but they seem to have changed some things that aren't quite documented yet. It works sometimes, sometimes it dosen't. I'm revisiting the script and should have an update in a few days. Thanks for being patient everyone.

The Arena! Combat in the Round.

The Brochure: All you need is the Slaves and Lions. Gladitorial combat at it's finest. Two skyboxes for the lords to view their champions and plenty of seating for those not of the upper class, the poles on the outside make the perfect dividers for fesival vendors. This build is approximately 50x50 meters and wieghs in at just under 200 prims.

The Story: So I had found the ability to make large circles without relying on megaprims for my Arabian Dreams Castle. And working with a designer friend of mine we thought a combat arena for those who play in gorean or medievil sims might be a good plan. This wasn't that hard to do with the tools I've discussed in prior posts but it does have full flexi skybox awnings which were fun to implement in a large build, and quite a bit of texture flair. It's in my temp rezzer above my shop so if you want to see it come on by and take the hot air balloon.

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as
wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.

100,000 Geek Points if you can name the above quote without using Google, Episode title, series speaker and such included....

Megaprims revisited.

April Fools? No, I don't play that....

So, Megaprims, talked about 'em before and how I don't use them because Linden has been back and forth about it too many times to count.... seems the current thinking is that a certain size is going to be ok, bigger isn't.... well... maybe not. See why I don't use them? The creators of the world aren't even sure. As seen on the SecondLife Official Blog:

DEV-12585 Details: Megaprims discussion # who knows by now? attempt at a joke
In office hours discussions it had seemed that no one was using megaprims
over 256m in general ways, but Andrew had the good idea to scan the grid just to
check… What we found surprised us. There are over 80 regions using larger than
256m megaprims, in almost all cases in order to generate an artificial horizon -
either sky or water.

Given the number of these completely legitimate builds that would be affected, and the ability to implement megaprim clamping code essentially on a moment’s notice if it seems appropriate, we reached a new and somewhat different conclusion. In addition, I will be doing some performance and capacity work to determine specific overhead for this amongst other cases so that we understand the real impact of these on region design.

We have now decided that the best path will be to not restrict megaprim size to 256m as we had previously discussed at length (for months), but to only limit them to 64k meters, and have an upcoming project create better tools for managing large
prims, both in terms of tracking them and providing methods to prevent mis-use
that create problems for residents in overlapped parcels (where a megaprim
overhangs their property, for instance).

Best regards,
Sidewinder
LindenProgram Manager