Self-Indulgence

The latest fashion amongst Diarists, I gather from chatter in the coffee shops and eating houses, is apparently to post eight things about themselves in some manner which were previously unknown, and, having done so, suggest to eight other Diarists that they should do the same. I confess that this does sound somewhat like a plan that my brother Cardinal came up with, except that he included a further instruction to send a shilling to the person from whom you received the initial request, which led to the drastic impoverishment of many Scribblers (and consequently, coffee shops) and a short stretch for my brother at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

Given that there is no such instruction here and that I was “tagged” by the explorer Ms Bettina Tizzy I thought that I might partake on this uneventful Saturday evening. Here are eight Facts of Significant Import concerning myself.

1. I am allergic to Nickel. This causes occasional issues during my activities, but confined mostly to an occasional rash which is easily countered by the application of a medicinal cream.

2. I am the most appalling shot imaginable. During my earlier years, when my Father was instructing me in the handling of Firearms - I mean no disrespect clearly when I term him an eccentric man, who had ideas regarding the role of Woman in Society, and particularly his own daughter, that were distinctly out of step with those more generally held - he regularly despaired.

   “For G-d’s Sake, Ordinal!” he would cry out in the field next door to the Hertfordshire home where I spent my early years, scaring the crows far more than my awkward shots. “It is simple, hold your hand steadier girl, and do not spasmically yank at the trigger like that. And put that screwdriver away! That is a perfectly good revolver and needs no additional parts inserted.”

   I grew up entirely unthreatening to any targets, and it was only when one stray bullet aimed at an empty jar instead went through a hedge and into the wheel of a passing cart, causing its complete collapse, the spilling of its cargo of illicit whisky, and three unsavoury types to angrily leap the hedge and chase the pair of us to our very door, where they were only discouraged by the arrival of a shotgun in the hands of my papa, that he decided that perhaps it was not advisable that I continue in this particular mode of education. Instead, my mother forced me to read more Milton. In retrospect I have to say that the .455 calibre is not terribly suitable for eleven-year-old girls.

3. One thing in which I am skilled which surprises folk at times is that I can play the trombone. It was the opinion of my mother that every child should learn an instrument, for their own artistic pleasure in the future, though it is well known that children (except on very occasional occasions) have no interest in their own futures, or at least no interest in any future which requires music practice now.

   Given that I was forbidden from the piano after ruining it almost beyond repair - I merely wondered how it worked - an alternative had to be sought, and the only thing that was available in the locality was a trombone owned by a fellow from the North, who used to play in a colliery band. The poor chap had developed a lung condition from his exposure to coal dust but offered to instruct me in its use, and I surprised my parents by being particularly willing to visit him for lessons. Actually, I confess, I spent much of my time talking to him about mining machinery, but without some progress with the trombone I would not have been allowed to continue, thus it was necessary that I actually learn to play it.

   I dare say that the number of female trombonists in the world is fairly small, though I have not played for some decades and do not even own a trombone now.

4. Initially at University I had no interest in my current profession, but instead rejected it and chose to study Mathematics and Philosophy. Not only was this more approved of as something for a lady - well, certainly compared to engineering - but I had entered a regrettable adolescent phase of Romanticism, rejecting my earlier interests and instead dressing in the most terrible purple, mooning purposely after the most witless of fellow Romantics and composing the most awful poetry.

   I spent a couple of my undergraduate years studying the Classics of both fields and the work of more daring modern Logicians and Thinkers, before coming to the following conclusions:

   1. Mathematics is terribly difficult if one is to do any more than simply use it (I have heard vague references to some American thinker, “Malibu Stacy” I think, saying the same);
   2. Philosophy is all very well but often propounded by people who could not write, and should have been beaten harder;
   3. Philosophy is routinely studied by complete halfwits who would not recognise proper Thought if it were to insert itself into their skulls via a large syringe.

   These did discourage me and quite quickly I moved to the study of the Difference Engine, in which my College was internationally renowned, and discovered for myself that it was in fact much more the sort of thing that I had always wished to do. I am known to occasionally wear purple now but I do not write poetry, an activity which should only be attempted by those who are any good at it.

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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.

Whilst somewhat re-enabled in Aethernet terms, I am still unable to enter the Grid itself, and have been attempting to ameliorate the symptoms of my withdrawal with such things as the Scripting Section of the Official Forums.

To tell the truth I have been there infrequently of late. Previously I would spend many hours bickering over semicolons, but I have found it drawing me less and less in recent months until I barely ever participate unless at an extremely loose end. I am not entirely sure what caused this change; perhaps it was the closure of many parts of it and the enforcement of apparently somewhat arbitary conditions, making the place far less welcoming as a whole, or perhaps there was some Social Shift, with either the tenor of new participants changing or the departure of those I previously enjoyed engaging with. Or, perhaps, it is entirely down to a change in my own character.

“Frustration” by Sally Dunham

One thing that most definitely has put me off ever returning, or at least offering actual Script-Code Solutions, is the current impossibility of posting up any sort of Code in any sort of Legible Form. I fear that I became infuriated by this and vowed never to return, or at least never to attempt to put up examples again. This is yet another manifestation of the dread [#WEB-156] BBCode not working on official SL Forums, one the annoyance of which I had not fully appreciated (and believe me, I have been incredibly annoyed by it already). This one thing now makes the huge Scripting Library unreadable and greatly discourages any further contributions, as well as vastly increasing the effort required to actually help anyone with their own problems or post solutions. Short queries and functions and theoretical discussions are bearable, but the prospect of struggling through some poor novice’s hundred lines of unformatted code in order to chase down curly brackets is enough to make one simply not bother.

It all infuriates me even more as there are dozens of people eager to help with this, perhaps the most opaque skill within Second Life for a beginner or Non-Technical Sort to deal with, yet they face obstacles which even have the effect of making previous stored advice less valuable. A grid full of professional Old Resident engineers, lonely newer auto-didacts and terrible ancient scripts handed down from generation to generation due to the lack of anything more recent and efficient is not the sort of vision I have ever had, and discussion and mutual education at least goes some way to preventing this dystopia and helping the broadest group and greatest number of people. Even if one has no intention of dirtying one’s hands with any sort of Coding, one may still benefit from proper samples to be cut and pasted directly into an In-World Device.

As a small sticking-plaster I have now set up my own Scripting Colloquium, where one might post Code in a manner which can actually be Read (as well as Images and Links and Things In Italics and So On). These things rarely survive for more than a few weeks, and it may die an undignified death, but I would encourage anyone with scripts and questions about scripts who is put off discussion within the Official Forums by this or other matters to visit and participate. At the least it may build up some useable examples.

I must say that we have not had a Good, Old-Fashioned, Update-Related Scripting Function Break for some considerable length of time, and it is good to see that Tradition is re-establishing itself with the most recent “Rolling Restart”.

I had been considering the announcement of a small product that I had produced, a simpler variant of my as-yet-unreleased-and-generally-exceptionally-tardy Galvanic Swordstick designed for use with Rifkind Hapsburg’s “En Garde” game. Whilst I have been both busy and distracted recently, I was charmed by En Garde, which combines simplicity and depth most pleasingly. The game allows the use of alternative weaponry to the standard épée, more as an Especial Effect than anything else as they will only give one an advantage in terms of Fashion, and I tinkered with the Swordstick for a little while, adding a few animations and such for good effect, to make it compatible.

Whilst I was absent over the weekend of En Garde’s release (engaging in a business in Europe of which it is best not to speak) and was forced to rush the crafting somewhat, I put the En Garde Swordstick up for sale on ShopOnRez, and also in a little box at the main En Garde stadium, for L$50, with the promise of adding a few more features in future days and weeks.

Unfortunately I discover today that a particular, and at first glance minor, use of a particular scripting has been disabled - the ability to change the position of a linked avatar using llSetLinkPrimitiveParams. Reactions to that previous sentence I would suspect to be one of:

1. “Pardon?”
2. “Why would that matter?”
3. “OUTRAGEOUS! THIS IS AN UTTER DISGRACE AND I DEMAND SATISFACTION!”

For those responding in manner number One, I should explain that llSetLinkPrimitiveParams is a very useful little function allowing a script to change an awful lot of the details of a Prim that is linked into an Object - anything from its position through its type and sculpt texture to whether it emits light or not. In the past one was forced to use a subscript in that particular prim to change these things, and instruct it via a Link Message, but being able to do this from a central script is far more efficient and convenient.

For those responding in manner number Two, I should point out that, as most scripters will be aware, when an Avatar sits upon an Object, said Avatar is actually linked into that object much as any other prim and may be treated as one as far as Scripts are concerned - which is why the changed event triggers with CHANGED_LINK should someone sit on something, a Vehicle may only be 31 primitives including passengers, and so on. One may find the link number of the avatar (a simple loop through the prims suffices here, checking their names and keys) and then use llSetLinkPrimitiveParams to move them around, which otherwise is completely impossible. The use of llSitTarget defines where an Avatar first appears when initially sitting down on something, but changing it does not affect their position after that unless they stand up and sit down again.

(I will add a note of reassurance at this point that it is not possible to use said function to change other parameters of an avatar, merely its position. No script will be able to turn a hapless sitter into a torus.)

This function is widely used these days for all sorts of purposes. I myself have used it to adjust someone’s posed position when standing on a vehicle according to their height, so that their feet do not go through the floor and they do not appear to be hovering in mid-air; it is also used in different types of furniture, and in the case of Mr Habsburg’s En Garde, it is required to move the players back and forward as they engage in their swordplay. Clearly its removal is not cricket.

Why, though, one might ask, would this be removed at all? It appears that some sort of exploitable aspect existed which could be used to crash Sims, clearly something that no right-minded person would desire to remain. However, I wager that it is not at all impossible to restore the useful part of this function.

For those responding immediately in manner number Three, or those who have taken an interest on account of the preceding paragraphs, I humbly suggest that you visit the Jira Page “[#SVC-750] Avatar sitting on a prim no longer able to be manipulated with llSetLinkPrimitiveParams” and therein vote for the matter to be resolved. I am sure that it will be mere moments until we are all content once more; Mr or Ms Soft Linden has already stated that

There’s no plan for this to be permanent, and I’m asking for this functionality to be added to the test plan for future releases. (I’m bothered too - it broke some of my furniture!)

Well quite.

I should not finish this piece without at least mentioning that certain New And Improved Laws Of Physics are currently available for - and definitely requiring of - thorough testing within the parallel world known as the “Beta Grid”, but I dare not actually name them lest this cause them to disappear into the mists for another hundred years.

I have very little to report in terms of Progress at this time, but I can say that those of you wishing for whatever reason to observe me wittering on at even greater length than usual may be interested in reading this extremely patient interview with my good self by Miller Copeland, who writes the always-worth-reading Aethernet Periodical “In The Grid“. The subjects of my discourse are slightly different to those I usually propound upon here, which may make a refreshing change, and the piece includes an image of myself, unusually enough, not appearing to be dying of consumption. Honestly, I am completely unable to obtain such pictures myself; clearly it requires a better photographic eye than I possess.

Oh honestly, what a lot of self-indulgent rot I do write at times. Do buck up, Ordinal. When Second Life hands one lemons, one makes, well, a pot of Earl Grey, and has several cups and a small slice of lemon with each. And maybe a scone. Though not one scone per cup, which would be greedy and probably result in crumbs going everywhere, and not too much clotted cream either, you little piggy.

Anyway, stiff upper lip in the face of adversity, and so on. If vehicles and things-that-move-about are not working very well, it is clearly time to concentrate on things-which-do-not-move-about for the moment. On this note I shall leave the transport airships upon which I was working (they will not go stale) and instead continue to work, when I have the time, on the holsterable version of the .455 Webley which continues to be demanded; it does actually exist, but unfortunately I am having a terrible time creating an appropriate holster for the thing, and I am too much of a perfectionist to have it simply be a bundle of prims. I wonder if I should just provide a couple of attachable versions of the undrawn pistol - a full one, one with just the grip, and so on - modifiable so that they can be added to existing outfits. It is also an appropriate time to add any other modifications I suppose.

Oh yes, and the dratted swordstick, I should finish that as well for release. I was also working on some animations for a sabre based on Hungarian sabre drills, though that proved to be a bit of a challenge.

(I hope that nobody felt I was fishing for compliments or any such. It is just that sometimes, and I am sure that I am not alone in this, one does feel that one’s problems and experiences are swept under by whatever Grand Plan exists for the World, and some poor soul’s tinkering is of little importance compared to Difference Engine manufacturers coming in and holding conferences and whatnot. I draw some comfort at least from the fact that everyone will be experiencing the same and having the same concerns, prince to pauper, and also doubtless expressing them.)

(I also hope that nobody felt that I was criticising landowners for lack of prim parsimony. In my experience, everyone that I have spoken to has been very kind and enthusiastic to ease the passage of the Tram. Sometimes getting hold of them within an “avoiding Ordinal frustration” span of time can be a challenge, but if I will live in such a timezone I must expect such things.)

…that I am not the World’s greatest Complainer. God forbid.

I am sorely dissatisfied with the current state of the Universe, though. I have been absent for a little while due to OtherWorldly pressures, and I see that, on my return, everything is appalling.

Perhaps if all that one does is walk about in a small area and maybe teleport occasionally or trigger off the odd poseball or two, things are all right. I, myself, am hardly the habitual traveller. However, it takes very little to terminally disturb anyone using a vehicle. I am sitting here composing this piece on my Automated Dirigible, which takes a tour around Caledon, and every movement that it makes is jerky and awkward. Even though it is a regular physics-powered vehicle moving fairly slowly, it bumps forward at a rate of once per second, like a child’s cart kicked by the child’s friends.

This is not what I became an inventrix in Second Life to explore. When the Master of Balloon-Related Transport on the Grid, Cubey Terra (and all scripters and designers should acknowledge their debt to he and Apotheus Silverman - thank you Illyria for the correction) declares that he is grounding all of his automatic vehicles, things have gone seriously wrong.

I will be keeping up my automatic vehicles, but, you know… I grow tired. I grow tired of having to chivvy landowners to spare a few prims for the passage of the tram, gawdblessya, I won’t spend it on drink, honest to goodness. In previous ages, this was not an issue; nothing has been proposed to return this functionality, regardless of how many times I have mentioned it.

I grow tired of having my Instant Message box filled with nonsense reports from my automatic vehicles telling me how they are unable to enter a certain parcel. I grow tired of not knowing that even the simplest movement script will continue to work after I have left it.

I grow tired. And sooner or later I will fall asleep completely. I am sure that nobody will notice.