New Star of Diablo III is WIZARD!

I used to be a Diablo and Diablo II player.  I was a maniac about it.  Then World of Warcraft came out and everyone forgot about Diablo…

Well, Blizzard has been working on Diablo III and the new star character is… Wizard!

Ta da!

Second Life CEO Mark Linden likes me!

Back in October 2008, I received an IM from someone named M Linden.  He told me he was looking at some of my work and wanted to buy some.  I asked him where he was and he said he was at Rezzable Visions.  So I immediately dropped everything and TP’d over there.

Chatting with M Linden

M Linden happens to be Mark Kingdon in Real Life, and he is the Chief Executive Officer of Second Life!

Luckily, I knew that when he IM’d me.

I helped him buy some of my stuff, and he said at the time that he wanted to put them up in his own personal sculpture garden in SL.  I went looking for his land at one point but it happens to be on protected Linden land, so I couldn’t get in to see what he did with it.

I thought that was the end of that.

Yesterday, Torley Linden posted a Tweet (on Twitter) about a Flickr picture of M Linden’s SL office.  I was ecstatic to find a picture of two of my sculptures floating over his office:

Two of my geometric sculptures floating over M Linden's office in SL.

I then went through all of Mr. CEO Linden’s posts on Flickr and found some more good shots of his visit to my Rezzable Visions build.

"I love this. Bought one from the creator and it's sitting on my roof :)"

Invisiprim Bot Farm

Wizzy found an Invisiprim Bot Farm. These bots are hidden in an invisiprim box.  I got inside the box and found that the bots also had invisiprim bodies.  What are they trying to hide?

What are they trying to hide?

Crashing Rezzable Alpha Open Sim Grid

My marching orders are to try to crash Rezzable’s Alpha Open Sim Grid.  So I set about to do that with a passion once scripting was turned on on my two regions.  Somehow Foolish Frost fixed the script engine, commenting that Rezzable Open Sim doesn’t use the Xengine script engine.  In that case, I would expect this grid to behave differently from the Reaction Grid.  So far, all behavior seems very similar.

Rezzing the E8 Concentric Circles Projection on Rezzable Alpha Grid

Next, I tried to “stretch” the object as large as I could, given the limitations of the Linden Lab viewer.  Initially I had a lot of problems getting the viewer to allow me to stretch.  It was acting kludgie and I think it might have had to do with the sim stats.  Check out the sim speed:

Note the Frame and Sim Times

After I relogged, I was able to “stretch” (after the selection tool accepted all 2956 prims).  With the ten meter limit on prim size however, it didn’t stretch much.

Stretching the object

After I stretched it to maximum, I moved it straight down to ground level.  This is easier said than done, because you’ve selected about 3,000 prims to move and the sim creaks and groans and complains.  It’s not done easily, let me just say that.

E8 Concentric Circles on Wizzy sim & Desde sim in the background.

Remarkably, with almost 3,000 active scripts on the region, I was able to rez a prim and create and compile a script afterwards.  Only one anomaly was noticed – I couldn’t “take” a prim that I should have been able to.  Instead I had to delete it and then restore it.  This small anomaly might count toward “crashing” the sim, but so far Rezzable Alpha has been resistant to my banging on it.  Will continue to do so tomorrow.

Goth Wizzy on Wizzy sim with Desde Sim in the background.

Building on Wizzy sim @ Rezzable Open Sim

RightAsRain Rimbaud gave me two regions to build on the Rezzable Open Sim.  I’ve been testing it out and it seems to be almost identical to the Reaction Grid.  I can get to the Rezzable grid direct using a new shortcut for the SL viewer, but I would really like to use the Hippo Open Sim viewer.  The main reason for this is that the viewer allows building 256 meter objects (provided the server code allows it.)  I actually was able to log in with the Hippo viewer once.  But not since then.

I did a little testing and found that scripts weren’t working on my Wizzy region.  This is consistent with the behavior I observed at Reaction Grid.  With Open Sim 0.6.1 the script engine keeps breaking and is unreliable.  The engine can’t seem to handle much of a load.  On Reaction grid it would slow down and break after I rezzed about 3000 objects with active scripts.  I selected and “Inactivated” the scripts, but even so the script engine broke down.  Some regions continue to work though.  The behavior is inconsistent.  This is the issue: http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view.php?id=2853

Also the LSL function ( llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());) that can be used to delete out the active scripts from the objects doesn’t work in Open Sim 0.6.1 or is not enabled.  This is a serious bug and if fixed could be a workaround for the major issue above.

I went to the Rezzable 5 region and found that scripts were working there.  So I rezzed a complex geometric object (Compound 5 Octahedra) and added a rotation script, then copied it and rezzed it on Wizzy.  And there it is now.

Rezzing a Compound 5 Octahedra @ Rezzable Open Sim

Linking Prims and Changing Colors

Rezzed on Wizzy Sim @ Rezzable Grid

My Goth Outfit

I'm a Goth!

North Dakotan Griefs @ Metanomics

At the risk of encouraging this kind of behavior…

I attended the Metanomics presentation today in SL.  The host usually has guests on and he interviews them about the business of Virtual Worlds, and Second Life in particular.  Today, the guest was Forterra CEO Robert Gehorsam.  All well and good.

Now they can’t afford to have a big crowd in the SLCN studios during the show because of the lag effect, so they have all of these partner locations around SL where you can go and watch the show live on a video feed.  Meanwhile, the local chat of these remote locations bridges back and feeds into a common chat.  Which is then broadcast back out to all of the remote locations, and onto the Metanomics website.  This is rather a cool idea.

Today, about three quarters of the way through the show, a griefer shows up at the remote location I was at —  which happens to have been NMC Outreach.

Now remember, anything that is said in local chat at the remote locations goes out via the bridge and is merged with *all* of the local chat.

This kid (and obviously he was a kid) starts commenting in local chat to the few of us who were there in attendance on that sim.  Everything he said was immediately piped out to the entire audience.

Now the interesting thing is that he wasn’t born yesterday.  In fact, he was born today!  And… he’s from North Dakota.  I know because he belongs to two North Dakota groups.  One of them is the University of North Dakota.

Now, I spent my earliest formative years in Montana.  Yes, it’s true.  And back home we used to tell North Dakotan jokes.  This guy seems to live up to the stereotype:

[12:58]  Griefer: Second Life really sucks ass doesn’t it?
[12:58]  :: SeanCinquetti: “centrally isolated” love that term
[12:59]  :: Sonja Strom: [Griefer’s name] ?
[12:59]  Griefer: Hey you all suck
[12:59]  :: Sonja Strom: why are you here then?
[12:59]  CallieDel Boa: No not really, took my other world 7 years to become somewhat stable, SL is only 5 & 1/2
[12:59]  Griefer: because I am checking out how much this program blows for universities
[12:59]  Wizard Gynoid: [Griefer’s name] is griefing at nmc outreach
[12:59]  Griefer: What class is this
[12:59]  :: Fleep Tuque: With teleporting here, geography seems less relevant unless you m ake a REAL effort to create a sense of “place”
Tammy Nowotny: cool! a round workd wd be a good idea
[13:00]  :: Jane2 McMahon: [Griefer’s name], on the contrary, many postsecondary institutions find SL valuable in program and class delivery
[13:00]  CallieDel Boa: Perhaps you’d like to talk later, I work with people at Universities, seems those who do not understand didn’t take time to learn how to use Second Life.
[13:00]  :: Joia Sands: voice is breaking up a little again
Fleep Tuque: Best not to feed trolls. 😛
[13:00]  Griefer: WHat university is this
[13:00]  CallieDel Boa: After the show please I’ll be more then happy to help
[13:01]  :: Fleep Tuque: How many folks attend events or locations and hardly even notices the terrain or surroundings?
[13:01]  :: Al Supercharge: pdf page 12: “Integration of client pre-requisite SCORM e-learning modules hosted on the
clientâs LMS” “Integration of client-related Flash-based mini-games” please elaborate ?
[13:01]  Griefer: Wow this is fucking is stupid
[13:01]  Griefer: good bye
[13:01]  :: Fleep Tuque: I TP in and out of things all the time
[13:01]  :: Tammy Nowotny: Callie rocks
[13:01]  :: Joia Sands: Fleep, not me…I totally notice, enjoy and interact with the location/terrain
[13:01]  CallieDel Boa: [Griefer’s name] just left, disregard his comments

I just bring this up in this manner because there seemed to be no way to deal with this problem.  I was searching through my inventory for my Quantum Core in case I had to orbit him to shut him up.  Luckily, he left before I had to do my civic duty.

This was a bit timely, because only a short time earlier the topic had been the perception of young people about Second Life.  It has been noted before at Metanomics that younger people tend to find Second Life disappointing and boring.  Presumably, this is because it is not as slick as popular video games and there is no spoon-fed content.

So, consider this guys.  You have to think of a way of policing this kind of activity.  Got to nip it in the bud quicker than this.  Know what I mean?

MiniMap Reveals Symmetry

I rezzed only the vertices of the new “Concentric Circles” rotation of the E8 Polytope on the new Soror sim at Reaction Grid.  Then stretched the vertices out to fill the sim.

The scale is so big (200 meters in diameter) that my computer had a hard time rendering them so that I can see the symmetries.  I was looking for that axis that reveals the concentric circles.

By accident, I happened to look at the mini map.  Lo and behold, there is the symmetry.  The order is revealed from the seeming chaos:

MiniMap from Reaction Grid reveals Symmetry

Not Possible in Second Life – NPISL

G2 Proto gave me four regions on the Reaction Open Sim Grid to build and display my E8 Polytopes.  So I rezzed the newest E8  “Concentric Circles”  on the Wizzy sim and the older E8  “4_21 Gossett”   on the Xeno sim next door.  I stretched them so that they almost fill a whole sim each.

Sim-Sized E8 Polytope

This is not possible in Second Life due to the stretch limitation of ten meters.  The circular base under the E8 in the photo above is 200 meters in diameter.

Wizzy's 4 sims @ Reaction Grid

This is the way the four sims appear on the Open Sim map.  Obviously, there’s a problem with the rendering program, but it gives you an idea of the scale.

Two Sim-Sized E8 Polytopes - on the left "Concentric Circles" - on the right "4_21 Gossett"

Reaction Grid (http://reactiongrid.com) seems to have a working relationship with Intel and Microsoft.  According to G2 Proto, Intel has developed a strategy to increase the concurrent avatars on an Open Sim to 150.  If true, this would be the long-awaited solution to the laggy sim.  And he says that Microsoft is bringing their Open Sims to the Reaction Grid.  This may mean some good traffic to see the E8 Polytope works that I have done in collaboration with Desdemona Enfield.

Go and check it out and set your draw distance to 512.  I recommend downloading the Hippo Open Sim viewer (from http://reactiongrid.com).  Then you will have to add the Reaction Grid to the list of Grids.