Broken Nails!! Grrr!!

I really was going to do 'Catch up Part 2' as the next blog ... I really do want to get some words down about the lovely things that have happened recently including the rezz day celebrations for Mericat and Thom and the Mad Hatters Music Festival put on by Mars and lots of truly wonderful friends ... these events deserve their own article and I WILL get there (manic tittering from ditzy blonde echoes round the room).

Soooo ... for now I just wanted to mention that I have been breaking my nails on a video making package from Serif called Movie Plus X3 and the results are now hosted on you tube and linked into the OneFinalDarkness website (which has also been updated and revamped).

I actually wasn't joking about the nails ... (Grrrrr) ... I lost two yesterday when I tried to catch my mouse as it dropped off the workstation; ANOTHER  trip to my local nail salon on the way home.

I am posting this from work so I will add some links tonight when I get back and then start on 'Catch Up Part 2'.

Love you all. See you soon in Second Life.

P.S. As promised the links for the current videos are:

Mericat Rocking The Pig & Whistle
Cranston Yordstorm Live at Love's Trinity Ballroom
Yahshvah Shinja Rocking The Pig & Whistle Live
Chandra Deed Live at The Pig & Whistle
Chandra Deed Debuts at The Pig & Whistle Live

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Catching up .... Part 1

After kicking my lazy self back into action yesterday and in between many, many hectic moments of flying around like some demented PA (which I am NOT despite my managers thoughts on the subject!!). I was thinking about changes, since last years Blog entries (Gods is it really that long since I wrote anything!!), to the OneFinalDarkness & Oceans End Sims and the events that take place there. I was also thinking about some wonderful events that have taken place on other Sims which have been organised and marvellously run by some very good friends of ours; topics for more Blogs ... Yayayay!!

Anyway back to my musings today. I think the first incident that crossed my mind related to the redesign of the beach areas that blend between Oceans End and OneFinalDarkness (I was thinking about this while standing in a queue for Coffee ... not for me ... please don't ask me to explain why I do these things; I must have push-over tatooed on my forehead!).

Some months ago now Babette and I were shopping and generally chatting in IM when she suggested that she thought the beach front areas on the two sims looked rather plain and could do with being re-vamped. This thought was not entirely without some background as she had recently completed a project doing the exact same thing for an aquaintance who was trying to set up a new club. I had seen the truly wonderful difference that Babette's inspiration had bought to the beach area she had transformed at that other sim and couldn't wait to see what she would do with ours. For those of you who regularly visit our sims and have the time to explore I am sure you will join me in thanking her for a brilliant job. If you have yet to visit the Sims then for the beaches alone I would have to say (and yes I know I am biassed LoLoL) it has to be worth it.

Several hours later when I eventaully had 5 minutes to sit down and briefly slip my heels off (why do I wear them for work ... at times I really do wonder!!) I was drawn to think about tonight in pub (The Pig & Whistle) when Cosmic Beres our good friend and latest addition to the DJ's plays his weekly set. I always look forward to Thursdays and Cosmic's choices he is just a little younger than Babette and I and always produces some truly wonderful sets that make great and relaxing listening. In addition to looking forward to Cosmic I mused on the recent dramatic change to the way The Pig & Whistle looks. Once again it started during a shopping trip (I am beginning to realise that I may have to Blog about those as Babette and I do a lot of shopping LoLoL) and Babs said 'I think we need a new image for the pub!' This one was a little trickier for us to settle on but after quite a bit of searching we came up with the new bar and related furniture which set the new theme and which frankly makes a much better use of the space within the pub area. There was quite a lot of work done but I am certain that anyone new arriving would think it had been like that forever because the design is just right ... all the elements mesh together and compliment each other and yet again we have our resident style guru and image director Babette Bellios to thank for the superb new look Pig & Whistle.

On that note I have several more ideas ... but for now I am off to The Pig & Whistle to enjoy Cosmic's set and hopefully see a few regular faces at the same time *S*

Wiping the cobwebs off the Blog ....

Well it has been quite some time since I was inspired to write anything .... So what has changed?

To be truthful nothing fundamental has changed but I was reminded of my woeful lack of Blogging by some wonderful articles written by two very wonderful and interesting friends in Second Life, Mericat Ireland and Jellie Arrowmint.

I recently updated the OFD website with new pictures and videos following a series of quite major changes in recent months to Oceans End and more recently to The Pig & Whistle.

One of the changes to the website was to properly implement the Contact Info form and the 'Other Questions' form.

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to find a message from Mericat telling me how she had mentioned The Pig & Whistle in her new Blog article and would I like to check it out.

Even with my wooly overnight brain still huddled in the warm corner behind my left ear Meri's Blog looked just lovely; even without her name at the top the lady's inimitable style shines through crystal clear.

Lots of great pictures are surrounded with a superb set of prose which bubble along in a bright refreshing way. By the time I reached the bottom of the article I was wide awake (well ... Awake enough to go jump on Charlie LOL).

After the Neanderthal had shuffled off in search of food I went back for another look and slid across on the link to Jellies Blog. You really have to read this lady; sharp style great energy and very engaging!

I will have put the links in for you to hop over with by the time thyou read this and if I can coax my brain into life tonight I will do some whizzy Blog link recomendy type thing in the sidebar (I know there is a proper way of describing it ... but I am old LOLOLOLOL).

In short.... These are great ladies and you can't do better than follow their spotlights (or is that Bloglights!!) onto the worlds we span - RL & SL!

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Builder's Buddy ....

This strange title is inspired by my recent foray into the LSL Portal in a bid to work out how to build/write the custom rezzing system we needed for the colour change furniture layouts in the newly Theme Change equipped Love's Trinity event area.

I had expected this particular task to be full of pitfalls and problems which would take some serious thinking time to work out. As it turns out it took just 5 minutes of searching to find 'Builder's Buddy' in the LSL Examples Library. Builder's Buddy is a fully fledged scripting solution for managing rezzable builds; aimed primarily at the ever tricky problem of moving large unlinkable builds into place it turns out to be exactly what I needed.

Builder's Buddy offers two scripts, one is the main rezzing/derezzing and package creation script and the other it's companion item script which manages positioning. I very quickly had a prototype system working which allows a control panel to store large quantities of packaged rezzable layouts and a simple but effective graphical selection system allowing the user to decide which package they want to rezz out.

I was truly astonished to find such a polished and rock solid script solution such as this freely available for use/adaptation. A little further thinking made me realise that many of the existing commercially available systems in Second Life where clearly modelled EXTREMELY closely on these scripts; some of the commercial products are particularly expensive as well! Undoubtedly there are many value added things in the commercial packages but to be truthful with such a large chunk of the rezz/derezz problem solved the rest of the bells, whistles and flutes are easy to write in. In less than 6 hours the access control list I needed to implement was working fine and the control of options on transfer was already handled by the original script so with maybe another 2 - 3 hours of fiddling with notecards and some info passing to managed theme package the whole thing will be completed and at ZERO cost!

It really does seem that with some persistence and experience it is possible to have an awful lot of things and systems in Second Life without it having to cost Lindens ... you just have to be prepared to do some research and apply some serious thinking and common sense!!

I can highly recommend to anyone looking to spend lots of money on either things or systems in Second Life to at least explore how difficult it really would be to create the solution yourself ... you may be surprised!!!

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Product update ...

The main parts of the theme switching system are now in place for Love's Trinity. Babette has finalised another of the requested theme's (a forest glade with artfully constructed ruins and plenty of atmosphere). The multi-choice floor system is in place and ready to expand with themes and general requirements and the remote colour change tables and chairs for the more formal settings are complete along with most of the bugs worked out of the colour and access control panel for the colour change system.

The remaining hurdle which I anticipate will be overcome by the end of this week is a custom rezzing control for the various alternate furniture layouts, most specifically tied in with the colour change tables and chairs. These products allow any of the authorised staff members to rapidly switch amongst the available themes; a typical time to replace one theme with another is less than 90 seconds perhaps stretching to 120 seconds if the colour changer needs to be set up and the tables and chairs deployed.

All together we have bought to production a flexible theme delivery package which is open ended in it's scope and simple to use providing a confidence building experience for the staff and a polished performance for guests.

None of this has come without stress on our part ... the development of the system and the processes that surround it has been quite testing. I think it is however true that both Babette and I have learned a great deal about some of the limits that surround the ownership/security model that Second Life implements and on a personal note the challenges in delivering working scripts for the systems has been immense, but satisfying.

I think it only fair to pay tribute to the LSL Portal Wiki and all of it's editors and contributors. Without the LSL Portal nothing which has been achieved on the scripting side would have been possible. The examples are very good and altogether the portal provides an excellent and flexible programmers resource. I would also like to pay tribute to Babette's persistence with the themed builds. Some of these builds (in particular the latest 'Forest Glade') have proved extremely tricky to bring to fruition with a combination of challenges which include large quantities of alpha textures and the very high standards which she sets for herself in terms of finish and detail.

With at least another month perhaps 6 weeks of high summer to go I am confident that we will have a few more themes ready for the autumn/winter season and it is highly likely that we will be releasing a commercial version of the theme control system in it's entirety. I suspect it would be much too ambitious to take on the likes of 'HoloDeck' systems as there are some very accomplished and well accepted systems in that category ... however none of them are cheap! I believe our complimentary themed products will be appealing to people who are prepared to work with the system and who are happy to accept lower cost of ownership as a trade off against slightly more complex user interaction.

I am certainly looking forward to the challenge of commercialising our theme management products but I am equally certain there will be significant challenges along the way!!

A W E S O M E!!

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The long lazy summer is here ...

... and just like last year everywhere has started to go very quiet! I am hearing reports from friends about clubs shutting down, I have seen notices from people who are actually selling their sims due to lack of business. One of the less dramatic but nonetheless still important trends that is occurring is that businesses are making large cuts in prices on everything from home rentals to combat weapons.

In a lot of ways this is interesting for those residents who are principally consumers stretching their Lindens out nicely. For those of us providing the goods and services it is of course rather lean times. I am yet to be convinced that more than a handful of people make any serious money running businesses in Second Life and from that point of view I always counsel new people looking to 'Make a successful business!!' that they need to be realistic about their economic expectations. On a personal level both Babette and I are content that what we do is satisfying in itself and any income is a pleasant thing ... but not to be either expected or relied on.

There are other ways to view the business model in Second Life and I suspect it may help some who are new to Second Life to appreciate that the economics are rather less like a bustling modern metropolis and much more like an ancient southern European holiday resort that is essentially a ghost town out of season. In this case summer is out of season in Second Life; people seem to spend the long summer evenings catching the breeze outside with friends and a long cold alcoholic beverage rather than sweltering in front of a PC!!

Babette and I view the summer as a quiet opportunity to catch up with some of the development ideas that we have gathered over the busier, cooler quarters of the year. This is our chance to build the things that we simply haven't the time for when we are in full swing and personally it is a time to either rewrite scripts that need bug fixes or as now develop a brand new Remote Colour control system for the furniture we are using with some of our 'Rez on Demand' entertainment and wedding themes.

Scripting in Second Life is much the same as any software development environment where you are writing control and interactive systems which are heavily reliant on environmental factors ... in other words it is frustrating and time consuming!! The issues are even sometimes not about what should be happening but about the fact that Linden Labs have yet again 'Tweaked!!!' something without proper testing.

With all of the frustrations though I have to say I find the scripting projects I take on in Second Life to be most rewarding ... they are usually a complex octopus of a problem that takes a considerable amount of determination, perspiration, inspiration and of course a fair helping of 'Cussing!!' to make it work.

Over all I think the summer in Second Life is a fine time but I do empathise with the business owners who sit staring at their empty shops and apartments wondering who is going to pay the next months tier to Linden Labs!! In short beware the business model in Second Life it is not entirely what it appears to be from the beginnings in mid winter when Second Life is crammed with people avoiding the cold dark nights by sitting in front of a PC in a nice cosy room!!

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Despite Linden Labs...

... And their appalling handling of Second Life as a paid for service; the weekend was not a total loss.

Babette and I have completed the start-up phase of the new Theme Switchable format of our beloved Love's Trinity. It was the first project which we completed back in the Ikyoto days which was driven by design and passion rather than practicality ... 'Form over Function' ... We transplanted it with great care and pride to it's new home on OneFinalDarkness and we have carefully protected it ever since.

It was a chance comment by Shelly that triggered us into finally making changes to our much loved and adored Love's Trinity Temple area ... a comment and an echo back to memories of when we regularly constructed themed sky boxes.

Shelly asked if we had considered doing some more themed event builds and perhaps using the popular 'Holodeck' technology. I am pretty sure Babette and I said much the same thing "Hmmm .... That sounds like a good idea!". In short order several things happened; I looked into the Holodeck options and had to report they would be both prohibitively expensive and far too restrictive for the scope of our typical themes and, we both realised the ideal space to use would be Love's Trinity.

After a little more research we decided to use 'Primtechnics Platform Rezzer' package which is similar to Rezz Faux but has access list control ... Perfect to allow our regular hosts to swap out the themes without having to involve either of us.

Babette launched into action and created the 'Gothic Temple' variation of the original, specifically because she had already made preliminary design decisions after a request from another good friend Masiko who wanted to hold her wedding at Love's Trinity but wanted a Goth Theme. I helped out with the design of the production and packaging work flow plus the 'Theme Switcher Panel' to allow easy presentation and selection of the themes.

With the Goth variant ready to go I helped Babette to carefully package up our original and still much loved temple area and that now resides safely in the 'Theme Switcher Panel'. With the system tried and tested Babette and I have put a 'Moroccan Courtyard' theme together and have plans for at least 4 more already with great suggestions from Shelly and some natural choices springing easily to mind.

I think if it were not for our delight at turning Love's Trinity into a wonderfully versatile and open ended themed resource the weekend would have been a fiasco to cry over. With 5000 sims offline and confidence falling to an all time low events and clubs were deserted and performers and audiences alike were annoyed and upset.

In amongst the scant acknowledgements from Linden Labs (and pitiful indeed were the updates) perhaps not surprisingly there was no suggestion of a compensation package for all the lost hours when businesses, clubs, and the multitude of other diverse established Second Life ventures were unable to even log in to the system.

Well done Linden Labs ... Score 0 out 100 for customer concern and satisfaction!!

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