November 2007

Yesterday

The talented Mr Nicholaz Beresford has a critical and apropos response to his Majesty Philip’s recent missive, “Long Road Behind, Long Road Ahead“, in which he makes a telling point.

The other bit of irony in it is the title of the post: “Long Road Behind, Long Road Ahead.” Philip certainly is a visionary and his vision is surely what made SecondLife possible in the first place. But it occurred to me recently, that a lot of friction and frustration between Linden Lab and the SecondLife residents may be caused through a difference in focus.

I do not want to go into the spiritual or philosophical arena too much, but there are many schools of thought who are beginning to discover that happiness is rooted in the here and now while constant focus on the future or past tends to create angst, frustration and dissatisfaction.

SL Residents naturally are focusing on their experience right here right now. Personal tolerance levels obviously differ, but nobody can live on a vision of a better tomorrow if tomorrow never comes.

Tomorrow

One of the things that I have learnt particularly from my experiences upon the Grid, as well as on the Aethernet in recent years, is the importance of actually having things that work, regardless of whether or not I have fixed it myself for my own purposes. In my previous employ I was somewhat separate from those who actually used the derivatives of the work that I was doing.

Within Second Life, I find that being a “Creator” focusses the mind wonderfully. Anyone who has a problem with something that I have developed may contact me whilst I am having a cup of tea and reading the paper to tell me that something is not working, and they are not impressed if I say “oh well, I have solved that problem, but I just have not gotten around to putting it on sale - I shall do at some point, really”. Similarly if they see that something does not work when used by another, they will simply not buy it. A Customer is far harder to fool than a Boss, who may be bamboozled with justifications, presentations and careful Passing of the Buck, and is already contracted to pay one in any case. A Customer looks at the final product and thinks either “this works, I will buy it” or “this does not work, I will not”.

As well as this, both upon the Grid and outside in the broader area of Modern Aethernet Services, a “Vaporous” product might as well not exist. Whilst quite a lot can be done with Hype and Spin, particularly in the case of the commercial world of Second Life, the products which exist are the ones which sell and which people are impressed by. One can see the importance of this by looking at the giant Entities of the Aethernet and the Difference Engine. Take, for example, the great and powerful Google, a firm of world-spanning importance and ability, which continually releases new Services, some of which may not work perfectly initially but which do actually exist. The concept of a “perpetual beta” is something of a running joke but it has the principle behind it that having something is better than not having something (unless that something is actually so catastrophically wrong that it makes one look like an incompetent fool).

Today?

So: apart from its obvious and highly convenient function of allowing me to pay my Rent and purchase sundry Hats, the running of Ordinal Enterprises has proved most beneficial in terms of Mental Discipline as well, teaching me as it has to concentrate on achieving goals that are tangible to others rather than faffing about with scripts to no real purpose. I certainly do faff about with scripts - I find it enjoyable, and it is “Blue Sky” research that often assists in the future and trains the mind - but without concentrating upon someone else’s eventual experience one really does not achieve much in the commercial world. Similarly if I fix a problem with a product I am now much more motivated to implement that fix in the released version of that product and get it out to Purchasers as soon as possible, since otherwise, the only person who is impressed is me myself, and whilst I can pay myself as much money as I like, that process is valuable only to Economists.

It seems to me peculiar, then, that in the case of Second Life development, we have many items upon the JIRA which clearly have fixes - and I am sure that they are very good fixes, I have great confidence in the skills of the Linden Demigods as they continue their Hephaestian toil, as well as those bold souls outside of Lindenage who contribute - but not actually a sniff of those fixes when it comes down to it. I am reminded of such issues as VWR-418 Particle burst quality fades - fixed months ago, yet apparently only to appear in the new Windlight viewer - or VWR-2046 Focus is sent to menu/money/notification window, which sounds innocuous but is a major component of Griefing Attacks.

I did post recently the meta-issue WEB-380 “Fixed Internally” should not appear as “Resolved” in JIRA; voting should continue, that issues on the JIRA should not be marked as “Resolved” when merely “Fixed Internally” rather than “Fixed”, on the basis that the issues were issues with the Viewer or the World, and thus until they were fixed in the Viewer or the World they were not actually resolved. This, though, would not necessarily increase the frequency of fixes finding their way into final Releases, it would just clarify their exact status.

The fact is that there simply is no Second Afterlife where one will receive one’s rewards for patience and piety. I hate to shatter any myths, but we must be hard-headed rational Folk of Science here - the neophyte will certainly not believe. I have great confidence in the skills and dedication of Laboratoire Linden, based on inductive reasoning and speaking to several, but the New Resident will not - and even I have doubts when it comes to issues which have not found their way into a Release. They may well do at some point but one cannot rely on that; cue the “when Havok n arrives” figure of speech, still applicable even now that a Havok 4 client exists. And regardless of whether people have confidence or not, they may not care if they find that their everyday experience is not being concentrated on, regardless of the Long View.

And it would be a great shame, because I do love the World, and the World is its People, and I wish to see the most People involved for both general benefit and for theirs. It is not for everyone, but it is not as if everyone who enters the Grid and says “this is not for me” would be better off buying appalling clothes in the World Of Kaneva or shooting people entirely un-ironically as part of America’s Army. The “road ahead” is all very well, but the immediate must be addressed.

The Ordinal Galvanic Swordstick from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

Goodness! Three of the things on one front page! Excessive, I would say.

A quick note to announce the current availability of, at long last, the Ordinal Galvanic Swordstick:

(this is the only video I have at the moment, but I shall be doing a proper one)

[draft] Recharge Galvanic Swordstick, zooming out from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

and also a little thing that I was working on recently, the Ordinal Automatic “Flick”-Knife:

The Ordinal Automatic “Flick”-Knife from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

Available from:

• My shop in Caledon
• ShopOnRez
• SLX

For the next few hours, the Swordstick will be available for L$50 less than usual (i.e. L$350 in total) in my Caledon shop, but I shall be changing this tomorrow morning, be warned. (Please ignore the price on the box there.) Edit: too late!

subtitled: “Part the Twenty-Somethingth of Ordinal’s Scripting Primer”

When selling Items, I believe that the importance of setting their Permissions is well-known, lest either customers be unable to use the things or able to sell them on willy-nilly, and part of this process is making sure that the contents of an Item also have the correct Permissions. There are numerous instances where this can cause a bother. For instance, a gun containing a No-Copy Transfer bullet will only be able to fire once (this caused me no end of grief a year or two back), and any inventory items inside an object set to Copy Transfer will be able to be extracted using the “Open” command and distributed and resold at will, regardless of whether the basic object itself is not transferrable or not copiable.

This is, I have found, particularly an issue when in an environment where one is working with different people on the same object. It is necessary to pass things back and forward for changes with the contents having full permissions set, but at the point of distribution or sale, these permissions must then be reset appropriately.

The fancy took me this evening to show a simple script that I occasionally use to check that the permissions of the inventory of an item are, in fact, what they should be. One may find the full script here:

Automatic Inventory Permissions Checker

The above may be informative for those wishing to explore the idea of scripts dealing with the inventory of the object they are in. Its behaviour is quite simple: when initially dropped into an item, and thereafter when the inventory changes, it runs through the entire contents and tells the owner which “next owner” permissions each of them has. (So as not to bother any purchaser if it is accidentally left in, it has a “delete self” function which activates when the owner changes.)

As it stands, the script does little else, but it could be modified to, for instance, delete any item upon owner change that was copy/trans, so as to utterly ensure the safety of one’s design - this would break the product itself most likely, but a new and corrected version could be distributed, providing that one has some sort of “updated version checker” in one’s products, which I’m sure everyone does. *ahem*

A small note to, well, note that I am appearing as a panelist in the “Identity Summit”, presented by the Communications Company, Orange, this coming Friday the Sixteenth of November.

What does - or does not - an avatar reveal about its owner? How does virtual identity become a brand? Is the humanoid form the best way to express our true selves?

Come find out with us on Friday, November 16, as Orange Island will be hosting a series of discussions by Second Life residents and community leaders on the nature of identity and avatars. This Identity Summit will address such topics as non-human avatars, avatars as personas, and avatars as personal brands.

One may read many more details and the full programme on the afore-linked page (a “distinguished speaker”? moi?) but I personally will be addressing the topic of “Persona and Identity Transparency in Business”, along with Mr Forseti Svarog, at 11am Second Life Time (or 7pm Greenwich Mean Time).

The whole business of identity and persona and where and when personae exist and are evident is something that I have always been keenly interested in, and I am most definitely looking forward to discussing the said matters with anyone who happens to be around at the time. I warn all readers that I am known for both going off on irrelevant tangents in such environments, and also for being rather difficult to shut up, but I am sure Mr Svarog will be talking far more sense than I. Other items on the agenda should also prove thought-provoking and entertaining, and for the show-offs amongst you there is a Contest for Unique and Interesting Avatars, though you should remember to register yourself the day before.

As an additional matter, it appears that Orange Island is not, thankfully, entirely orange, which would be rather hard on one’s eyes. Though parts of it are.

It was suggested today (in an entirely friendly and complimentary way, I might add) that I had ceased journalling altogether, and I was forced to admit that it might indeed appear so - simply, I had found little to actually write about recently, or rather had not had sufficient rigour and drive to go out and actively locate things regarding which to write.

In order to rectify this I shall now post a commercial announcement of interest to only a tiny number of people, as well as a script so that I might persuade myself this is an entry of note. I have recently been reminded by the gracious Firiel McGann that updated versions of the .45 Shansi and .455 Webley really are requiring of being released, if only that my automatic update script can be included in them to prevent the bother which I will now detail.

For the record, the changes apart from the inclusion of the updating system are that the Webley now can now be animatedly drawn and holstered, and the Shansi may be prevented from ejecting cartridges, which causes it to be prohibited from many “RP” sims, a crying shame. Ah yes, and they are both now copy no-trans rather than trans no-copy, a much safer arrangement in this day and age.

In any case, the problem arose of how to provide past customers, who had not purchased a version of the product concerned containing an updating script, with the latest version. I have some limited Transaction Records, but annoyingly they only record the name of the customer, not the key, the latter being necessary to send things by script, and for heaven’s sake I refuse to search for a good hundred and fifty Names them drag and drop items upon their Profiles. My devotion to customer service only goes so far.

The scripting solution to this is relatively simple - one must take a list of names, which should be contained in a notecard as they may exceed the paltry memory of an LSL Script, then look up the keys using a third-party service such as the W-Hat Name To Key Records, then send a message and the updated item to these folk. I include the script that I used herein as it may provide a convenient introduction to the sequential interaction of different data events, here http_response and dataserver, both essential for a scripter wishing to work with any quantity of data.

• Send a message and an object to a list of named residents

Some may say at this point “but Ordinal, could this not be used by Dubious Types engaged in the Unwanted Promotion of Commercial Services, in a manner redolent of Potted Meat?” The answer to that is: indeed yes, if they already possess a list of names to send to, but really, this is not a terribly complex script, I am not giving away any awful cosmic secrets that Residents Were Not Meant To Know here, and quite honestly anyone wishing to “spam” already has a million tools to do so - irritating announcements on Group Channels come to mind just for a start.

Oh, incidentally, I may add that undoubtedly a number of people were left out of this distribution. If you, dear reader, have either of these products, simply send me your copy and I shall return the new version forthwith.