our new host, SimHost, has been highly communicative with both myself and subQuark. communication is good and trust is even better!

James Stallings II is a sweetheart of a guy (i hope he does not embarrass easily) and not only answers my questions (inquiring minds want to know) but also takes the time to explain about the background of whatever it is i ask

he is educating me, not simply answering my questions

i don’t know if he is a teacher in real life, but he is a natural born teacher and to teach techy stuff via email is pretty good! especially to me! i don’t mean that i am a dummy, but a lot of techy stuff goes over my head. but when a natural born teacher explains things, they do so in a way that reaches you. so it’s not the content, it’s the delivery that makes all the difference in teaching

i have learned so much about OpenSim and its best practices in the last week, probably as much as i have since i started in OpenSim. i can’t place a value on having someone like James running our grid =)

an important thing to me about anything i spurt out about OpenSim in this blog is to be as accurate as i can be. i know that some people will place value in tidbits i toss out and that can affect important decisions. i am no expert in any of this, but i can relay my experiences from my perspective

i want people to find the best solutions that fit their needs because virtual worlds can be used for wonderful things =)

i asked today about hypergridding and the answer from him helped me understand what is in store and it’s good stuff! here’s what i gathered from our exchange (keep in mind that this is high level and there need to be many deployments of this to work out any bugs, after all, OpenSim is still alpha, but the new hypergrid protocol advances look promising)

Hypergrid in OpenSim 0.7.x -

• it works very well for teleporting (basic eh? but good to reaffirm!)
• more secure in how it authorizes avatars (“who goes there?”)
• you enable HG at the grid level and control access regionally (this sounds awesome for schools)
• fine-grained access controls with hypergrid banlists for avatars and remote regions (must be to ban regions that might be unsuitable for your users)
• “‘suitcase” inventory which does not expose your entire inventory to other grids, only what you search for and wear *makes note to change underwear more often*
• persistent creator attribution (this is huge! if you make it, your name stays on it!)

James trusts me with his OpenSim setup files and i was all excited when i saw gravity - lol, i like that you can change it! want moon gravity - no problem! for Earth stick with 9.8 metres per second squared! now this i know very well! and geek out about! =)