The Glory of We

A Viceregal address

On this day, 1993, April 30. The World Wide Web was made free to use. Without which, we wouldn't be living, working, and playing together in this borderless and nearing boundless realm of possibility. We are the first generation in a global shift toward global understanding.

We are changing the world. May these changes bring good fortune and fulfillment to all.

The Masses?

From this post in Seth's Blog. (It's short and really neat.)

It got me to thinking. I'm a member of most of the Victorian estate groups so I hear most of the chatter going on. On the New Babbage channel I once heard a comment suggesting tea parties are something for Caledon.

Caledon was founded in part to be an alternative to the masses. Now, it appears, we're the masses. Good problem to have indeed. I'll have more of that problem please!

Reinventing The Wheel

I recently built a control based movement engine, and extended it to play animations on demand as well. Works nice. :)

Anyhoo, one thing led to another I discovered it disregards no fly zones, and since you can regulate the speed you're going it has all sorts of potential. Effectively, it makes an avatar behave like a vehicle.

I started on a mermaid system, it's in beta, and runs rather well. :) The goofy thing is, and I really should have known this, there was already a huge mermaid market out there with standardised animations. I didn't even check before I began. But that's okay! This engine is completely new, can be applied in a variety of other applications, and it means I'll have to make some vastly superior animations than the ones I already have, and make them compliant with the existing market. Meaning, point toes like ballerina. No problem.

Other bugs and features to be hammered out as we go.

Dreaming

Some see things as they are and ask 'Why?'
Some dream things that aren't and ask, 'Why not?'

Music Downloads in Canada

A month (or a little more) ago I had a less than wonderful experience with Amazon music downloads. Short version:

• Searched Marco Torrance.
• Linked in via a search engine to the MP3 download page of an album I deeply desire.
• Performed a virtual vault over the virtual counter with my very real credit card thrust out before me in my very real hands.
• Went through the motions of a download manager.
• Skipped reading the license stuff on install. (I generally trust Amazon.)
• Poked my way through the billing and order process.
• Came to a screen asking for a new billing address.
• Filled in particulars, including the field stating Zip Code/Postal Code. <--Hey, Canada has Postal Codes! Amazon recognises this!
• Could not advance, no Canadian province options.
• Retried process.
• Explored the website looking for some documentation, found at the top of the MP3 downloads main page: "Please note that Amazon MP3 is currently only available to US customers."
• Wasn't particularly annoyed despite the disappointment. Looked for a contact page where I could report the lack of clarity with the residency restriction when entering the download artist page through a search engine.
• Couldn't find such a contact page. Left Amazon site annoyed. (I still use Amazon extensively for CD and book purchases.)

That's a minor marketing fail there, but expected of a Humungous-Co. Inc. Ltd.. The Epic Fail came this weekend when in an electronics store, where I found gift cards for an outfit called Bonfire.ca, hocking music downloads and boasting 750,000 songs. Already burnt by Amazon, I didn't buy the gift card, but wrote the name of the site down, to look at their titles later. I bring up the site and see:

Questions this raises:

• Is there a copyright violation here in posting a screen grab, and if there's a legal page on the website, why can I not access it with Firefox on a Windows Vista machine?
• Why do I get the same page using IE 7?
• Why does the page mention Macs?
• Where's Vista on the list?
• Why does it mention IE 5.0 and above?
• Why can't I browse the download stock regardless of whether or not the site likes my browser and OS?
• Did they really have to use the word 'reject' in the URL?
  
• In the light of the previous questions, would I trust this company to behave in a competent fashion with my credit card?

I still really want that Marco Torrance album, and despite the various walls, and various insulting walls tossed up between myself and this album, I still will not resort to going to a pirate.com.

Still with a fistful of dollars no one wants,

Kami

Addendum: I managed to order the CD through Cardamar Music. Paid in Euros. Enough of this silliness, when in doubt, go direct to the artist. :)

!Lion

Last year, more further back, it's hard to remember, I was toying with branding my work under 'Light A Match Productions'. Like an idiot, I didn't pounce on it right away, and like a further idiot I didn't Google search the name before I stuck it on all my banners this year. What do you know? It's been used since sometime last year.

This is a good thing, it forces me to rethink it. Does 'LAMP' really describe what I do or who I am? Well, sort of. Bursts of inspiration leading into imaginative takes on old technologies. Sparks. In fact, one of the first things I did when hardware lighting became available on the Second Life grid, was rescript a free gas lamp to emit hardware light when the sun goes down.

But, Light A Match is taken.

On the train today I was reading more of Connect!, and barely into chapter eight I had a mini brainquake. I'm a scriptor (hammer and anvil style currently), I specialise in animation gadgets, and, ridiculous as it sounds, I'm not a lion, per se. I came up with !Lion.

Not Lion. !Lion.
Pros:

• Short and to the point.
• It does describe me.
• The programming NOT symbol says a bit of what I do.
• The exclamation point jazzes it up a bit.

Cons:

• Corny, almost precious.
• May have trouble using it in any non-string element, including URLs.
• Not, denotes negativity?
• Punctuation starters not allowed in SL Classifieds system. (It did get abused badly.)
  

Bottom line: Have I had any better ideas in the last two years? No. Run With It. (And make allowances where necessary.)

Productivity or Lack Thereof

Ballroom fans, lots of people make them. A year ago I made a system that actually uses real Victorian fan signals. Just now I'm rebuilding it after having removed it from the market a month ago or more. I can't believe I used a timer to run a sensor repeat. Out of the stone age and into the bronze age with my scripting. :)

I hope to have a working beta on the weekend. This one will be more open source in the code, so people can make their own fans to work with the system. Essentially, the hud declares which hand the fan should be in, and whether or not it is open or closed. Protocol to follow at a later date. Too late, too tired to work any more tonight. And far too many interruptions for good coding.