Second Life Voyage

Holidays

2007-10-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry to disappoint many of you if I've been a long time out of Second Life, but First one is always the most important and it has really eaten a lot of my spare time. It won't really change for the next few months but at least I didn't totally disappeared.

RL dictates its rules to SL

2007-06-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

This post from Vint Falken made me think about a RL friend of mine who's too much afraid to play now because it's much less a community than a marketing buzz system like the web became when RL companies started to invest.

You won't be able to fight this system has LL need money to run, and companies come here more and more to invest and show off. We are only a few months before advertisements based renting of land or free based renting if you use company tools.

So, to answer you Vint, movies are pure fictions whereas avatars acting in wars or griefing are really doing malicious actions against other people hence TOS violation.
Writing rules is a hard task especially as SL is such a new playground, it's not your usual free chat room backed by university, it's a business that needs to comply with RL rules.

However, LL plays fine with us with open-source client, open bug-tracker, open-blog, open script and build system. It's still a freedom playground.

FlickrView 0.5 & 16kB barrier

2007-06-03T02:44:00.000-07:00

Spending some time on improving FlickrView to make it more user-friendly and shareable, I've stumbled upon a dreading trouble :

[2:38] FlickrView: Script run-time error
[2:38] FlickrView: Stack-Heap Collision

Huh ? Everything was under control until I checked memory :

[2:41] FlickrView whispers: Script uses 16048 Bytes

Ok, I've only 16384 bytes available, so my margin is really thin now.. or I have to rewrite / split the script in chunks in order to make it deal with more than 16kB which is not so easy.

Now, I understand more why advanced objects have so many scripts inside to decouple the logic of the code and not break the 16kB barrier..

Time for refactoring..

Paradise Lost under WindLight

2007-06-02T04:04:00.001-07:00

Paradise Lost under WindLight
Originally uploaded by Kris Constellation

Here's my contribution to show off new Windlight's First Look in Second Life. I'm still amazed about that simply changing sky and lighting can enhance so much the rendering.

There are still some glitches and slowdowns currently of course, but future seems a bit brighter since as I've blogged earlier, a whole new team of programmer is now dedicated to graphical improvements.

Finally... Linden Labs seem to be listening users which is really fine.

FlickrView 0.4

2007-05-28T01:43:00.000-07:00

I finally took some time to progress in LSL scripting :
- rewrote the notecard reading to be reusable in future scripts (and allow easier configuration for end-user),
- control panel with dialog menu (a simple way to reset and restart slide show currently),
- two-pass photo show (medium size first for fast download then original size for best resolution in larger frames),
- automatic scaling (only adapting on original size currently),
- automatic resizing (follow the size of the frame in-world, playing with linked messages between scripts).

I could quickly be able to share to some beta testers soon before playing with a more with dialog menu and authentication (would love to check new pictures from contacts in world).

SL sky becomes clearer

2007-05-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, after months of massive slowdown due to the sudden amount of new residents things are slowly recovering to a normal state (like TP finally working regularly, crossing fingers that Group IM will be fixed today).

Linden Labs eventually improves its graphical engine by acquiring (and not only licensing the technology) Windward Mark, a company which excels in graphical simulation of atmospheric rendering (sky, weather, lighting, shadows, ...).

Extracted from Windward Mark website the pictures show off the possible improvement.

First LL seems to integrate the sky in SL client but I really hope for more and see the whole engine inworld (or will it be only available to pro/premium users ?). I'm eager to see it as soon as possible and rediscover some sims.

Sky becomes clearer in SL world.

Another WebService inworld : Google Calendar

2007-05-23T00:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Second Style I just discovered another way to link both rl and sl with the use of google calendar and a hud inworld. Finally a new tool to play withing sl, maybe we could eventually have access to the firefox burried in the SL client like the help system and merge both web and SL.

Slowly both worlds are intertwining and we will maybe come closer to the matrix (from Neuromancer from William Gibson, not the movie, This Is a Must Read). Our life will maybe not only be from RL, but slowly becomes a patchwork of many "little" lives around virtual worlds..

/me checking a date in his SL calendar to remind to post new philosophical thoughts later.

FlickrView 0.1

2007-05-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

After a bit of work (copy-paste, error trial while coding,tweaking code), I have a proof that accessing Flickr API from SL is possible without help from server code hosted elsewhere.

Currently it only slideshows the first five pictures from the account of an avatar touching the frame (if its SL name matches Flickr username).

Soon I'll include slideshow through the whole Flickr account and some exceptions in a notecard so that friends not having a matching flickr username could click and see !

Googled as soon as Blogged

2007-05-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

When first starting my blog I subscribed to Google webtools in order to track when it will get indexed and in fact it happened a lot sooner than I thought ! First blog on 8th of May, and already googled since 10th of May.

Thanks to all viewers you certainly helped my little blog to appear in the sea of the web !

SL & Flickr meets inworld

2007-05-08T01:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Vint Falken, I finally found a way to merge my desire to script in Second Life and merge SL with RL more, blurring the line with a neat way to connect both : showing flickr pictures inside world. According to this source it is feasible despite the author using some sort of "easy and obvious" server code he doesn't share with us. FreeView seems an even more interesting source for an intuitive way to import external media in world.

I just hope to have enough time to merge both in order to have an automatic slide-show from a flickr RSS feed.
Holidays are soon !