to those i met in Reaction Grid – thank you for enriching my life

to Phoebe – you are the only person i have ever given my parasol to – thank you for reminding me of the joy of being a kid =)

good luck to the teachers i have met and who have inspired me to look beyond science in my builds

we may be gone from Reaction Grid but we are very much in-world

once everyone gets on the same version of hypergrid, please come visit the ever growing Enclave Harbour and the start of I live in Science Land

namas te

*wipes tears and needs a kleenex!* =)

call me silly, but i have been cleaning up our regions in Reaction Grid this week. it will just all be wiped out on the fourth with probably one command and anyone would see my time as wasted

maybe it’s a spiritual thing (do avatars have spirits?) or an ener-getic thing or just a bonkers thing?

to me it is about treating my things with respect. i can’t just leave my work behind, it is important to me. even though i have an identical copy of all 16 sims on our new private SimHost grid

even the terrain! i had to return it to a more neutral state just to pay homage to my past effort (see, i am bonkers)

fortunately, it does not matter very much if anyone else thinks this is crazy

it’s part of who i am and in a weird way a part of my creativity and persistence. sure, in the few hours i have spent doing this, i could have spent adding to its identical copy on our new grid

or could i?

see, for me it’s part of the same story, the same narrative - my story. if i did not do this, it would affect my new builds. crazy as that sounds

Reaction Grid has been very good to me. i learned so much about OpenSim and am thankful to the Reaction Grid Team. especially Chris and Felix. their caring and attention was evident even as avatars. i am not sure i even met Chris as an avatar, although i did make her a strawberry daiquiri in a coconut shell (ener’s version of a Linden bear). i met Felix and he is a really neat person (good luck in your studies Felix!) =)

cleaning up the sims is like the last paragraph in this chapter. there is still a sentence or two (hint: Dream Walker, get your stuff or it’ll be poofed and same for the Learning Path Nikki – you don’t need to grab it if you don’t want to, just giving you another day or two in case you do)

so as our Reaction Grid estate disappears into the virtual ethers i look forward to it’s continued growth with SimHost

namas te Reaction Grid =)

ready to give OpenSim a try? there are options and most are quite affordable

if you want to install it yourself, Maria at Hypergrid just published a detailed post on setting up your own grid. but what if you don’t feel like messing with that (ie, read: ener is really clueless but says “i’m too busy” to sound smarter) =p

setting up your own grid could be a clever way to go (and really is not that horribly hard). for example, our work on Reaction Grid over the last 10 or 11 months could have been carried out privately for no cost. simply have subQuark install it on his mongo machine (pffft, he won’t even customize his avatar) and then allow people to hit it. doing that could allow 2 or 3 people in at any one time. frankly, it’s only been a few times when 3 builders where on at the same time on our Reaction Grid sims

now that Reaction Grid no longer offers individual sims, i thought i’d give a shout out to someone we considered using

when we first started looking, we narrowed it down to two choices very quickly. that was a year ago and much has changed – new hosts are coming online as OpenSim becomes more stable and as more people are looking for less expensive alternatives to Second Life (and alternatives to fill needs that SL can’t – like teaching kids)

subQuark had been wanting to do this educational thing we are doing now but Second Life was just too expensive. OpenSim had caught his attention a year ago and he decided to give it a shot. he made a list of a few hosts and forwarded it to me and i narrowed it down to two – Reaction Grid and SimHost. my choice was SimHost because they had a very clean website and laid out what they offered in an easy to digest way. i also knew that Adam Frisby was huge into OpenSim development (lol, slightly! he is one of the 9 core developers). but to be fair, i did not delve into it too much, i was still trying to keep the iliveisl estate in Second Life afloat

so why didn’t subQuark go with SimHost?

well about a week before subQuark made the decision, Jokay of SLEDwiki fame was served a Take Down notice by Linden Lab. she set up a grid with Reaction Grid as a result

to show his support for Jokay and the place that offered her a great non-SL home, he went with Reaction Grid (plus Jokay really really knows her stuff, so she must have figured that Reaction Grid was the best choice)

Reaction Grid is great for educators and a wonderful choice.  their support is incredible and fast. if you are an educator, for $75 a month you can get a 4 sim grid – either on their grid or as a private grid. as a business it is more ($150). their focus is educators for sure

but what about if you just want one sim?

i revisited SimHost to see what they offer – for a single region it costs $69.95 (or $62.95 with the uber secret Hypergrid Business discount – you really should read Maria’s blog anyway)

SimHost does not have their own grid like Reaction Grid does. the RG grid may offer some benefit to you if you are a teacher. i can’t really speak to it because since i started building in earnest in March i have not had much interaction with anyone, i like to build alone anyway. but it was nice having some teachers come and visit and compliment our sims two weeks ago =)

SimHost will set you up as standalone grid or connected to other grids such as OSGrid, ScienceSim, or v-Business. if you are standalone (a private grid) you can be hypergrid enabled if you like

something that is either new, or that i missed, is a neat page explaining resource usage. coming from Second Life, i had no idea what sims needed resource wise (but that’s another post) =)

another neat thing is that SimHost also donates two servers to OSGrid for the welcome areas and they also donate some of their profits to OpenSimulator (but far more valuable is the time that the two main partners donate in coding OpenSim and running some of the OSGrid)

SimHost is just one of the options out there if you are looking for a single sim

for more options and a short blurb about each, take a look at the OpenSim hosting directory

I apologize in advance if anyone’s posted the links below already.

Hate some (or all) of Viewer 2.x?  You’re not alone.

But…  there are some fixes/tweaks available, none of which are difficult!

Here are some links,  should you want more info. Use at your own risk! I’ve done the “StarLight” tweak and find it improves things a bit for me. I’ve not tried the others listed on the wiki page.

• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_2_Tweaks
• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Skins/StarLight_for_2.1_Beta (works fine for me)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/felineslade/4393320025/

If you LIKE 2.x, or don’t want to hear what I dislike about it… stop reading now.

Like Ener, I’m not a fan of Viewer 2.0 or 2.1.  It’s too dark (even for my Goth blood), and most of the changes and re-wording of old terms (“Local Chat” is now “Nearby”, for example) seem nutso. The pop-up sliding menu dance… awful. The whole sidebar/slide left thing drives me nuts. And the non-transparent widows and changes to chat/IM windows suck. There’s a lot more that I hate. So do many, many others. Granted, some peeps (esp. some noobs I’ve talked to) seem to think that 2.x is just fine. Hmmmm.

Don’t get me wrong. I like NEW. I like EXCITING.  Take me to the mall or an amusement park if you don’t believe me!

I do not, however, like waking up one day to find out that the names of everyday things have been changed, or that my usual direct route to the local S&M shop requires 3 detours, or that someone has posted flyers all over my car’s windshield, obscuring half my view.  It’s like waking up in an alternate universe… one with poorer design than the previous one.  Oh, I was kidding up there… I meant Krispy Kreme shop, not S&M shop ;p

I’ve tried 2.0 and 2.1 for extended periods of time.  It really sucks that so much screen “real estate” gets obscured by the (non-transparent) sidebar and huge menus. It sucks that some of my old keyboard shortcuts are gone, or that I have to go through 3 levels of menus to do what I used to do in 2 clicks. It sucks that basic communication is more difficult (to me), unless I rearrange the default options.

Don’t rename things and make me have to stop and re-learn keystrokes and shortcuts and menus I’ve used hundreds (or thousands) of times. Is that a violation of good rule of design?  “Don’t alienate your existing user base by making changes… unless the change is either necessary, useful, or both.”

In other words, change what needs to change; do not change things that worked quite nicely. Gee, you could at least offer an option to revert to the older menus, like new versions of word-processing apps often do.

Okay, okay, some of those annoyances can be fixed. Kind of.  And the “notification” area in the bottom right is welcome (and long overdue), replacing tons of dialog popups when you first login.  The teleport history is nice as well. And thank goodness I can set the top bar to actually show my (Sim & vector) location… seems pretty dumb to me to not have it there as the default. There is more than one way to accomplish some of the old tasks (hmmm, I’m neutral on that one).

I know, I know, it’s all been said before.  I don’t DESPISE 2.x, but I am not feeling any ♥.  I’ll use it. Someday.  IF I have to.  But so far, it just gives me a headache. One day, after a few more versions, I may actually like it. But for now, it kinda does less.. with more.  *Giggle*

Feel free to post your loves and hates of 2.x. Or just google it and read what others say. Hmmm, you’re probably wishing I’d taken that route!

*sigh*  I miss the pie wheel already. I have a feeling his time in the virtual universe is limited.

By the way… I mostly use Snowglobe. It has some unique stuff not in the old 1.2x viewers. And it doesn’t make me learn to brush my teeth with my non-dominant hand (I can do it.. but I dribble a bit). Oh… and I can also use SnowGlobe as an OpenSim viewer (for Reaction Grid and so forth).

a neat thing about OpenSim is that anyone can use it. many people setup their own grid (like Breen who has encouraged me to try again) and there are many grids from all sorts of groups, companies, and universities

all this variety leads to some lighthearted and fun events. Second Life used to have this “fun” vibe four years ago before it became so corporate. by that i don’t mean corporations but the success that Linden Lab has had and all the money that changes hands everyday has forced them to become more corporate as a business

have you ever worked at a place where people tell you “a few years ago we used to have barbecues every friday and a keg of beer” but now they have dress codes, sexual harassment training, and a general corporate vibe?

when companies are small they can get away with that. but as they grow they get scared of lawsuits, offending people, and no longer trust their employees as friends. that’s the case for some companies anyway and i think that happened to LL a little bit. i mean when you get big enough that the FCC investigates you and congress wonders how they can tax user transactions, then you are in a way different league than a handful of friends sharing a dream to make some money (and sharing some beer!)

but there are many OpenSim grids out there that are very small and can still have some silly fun. Reaction Grid does that by having movie nights and showing some really awful science fiction movies. the type of movies that MST3K used to do and that are so bad you just have to watch them (as you can tell, i love those)

when i fired up Hippo tonight, this was the login screen (below). any knock-off Godzilla movies are for sure great ones to watch! i have never even heard of this movie and how the RG Team found it, who knows!

but it looks like fun and is just an example of some of the open nature that many OpenSim grids have =)

leaving second life was a huge change for me. from worrying about 60-100 residents, converting Lindens to dollars, and always having stuff to fuss with. i was in-world anywhere from 10 to 30 hours a week on top of a 40+ hour a week job and my blackberry constantly blinked with IMs forwarded from in-world issues “so and so has ban lines up”, “my music won’t stream”, “can i pay a week late”, “i fell through the road”, and on and on . . .

i did like that pace, i am pretty manic at times, but if i took an entire day off, there would be a pile of things to deal with the next day. i loved helping people but hated doing things like the occasional Hippo tier box update. i was also lucky to have very little drama. in the 26 months of owning sims, i think we only banned 6 people from the estate

that's subQuark - but what is he?

but now, over in Reaction Grid, the pace has slowed way down. only a few IMs get forwarded to the blackberry per week and they are all helpful ones, not emergencies. and i can do what i like – building

that suits me fine, i am doing builds for subQuark to be used for teaching science and that draws on my rl education. i’ll be building an oil rig soon *makes note not to call it the Deepwater Horizon* =p

subQuark is writing out a field activity kind of book for middle school kids that will use my builds and he is hardly in-world except when i am having a nervous breakdown because my inventory won’t load or some other minor OpenSim hiccup

it’s just as well because i think his avatar would scare off people, i can’t figure out if he is serious or the BP tar ball poster child? (he never was one to do anything with his avatar)

DW scripting or needing the bathroom?

Dream Walker is still active in Second Life (she is crushing on a certain sl builder but also loves helping n00bs, which are few and far between in Reaction Grid) and is our expert senior scripter guru can-script-anything-in-my-eyes person. she also has an online store she is working on that has goods for both Second Life and OpenSim (recently mentioned here along with Sunny)

Krissi is in Second Life and Reaction Grid and is honing her furniture skills, something that is needed in OpenSim

Nickola is a fine scripter who continues to build in second life and, along with Micheil, has an exhibit for the SL7B party. Nickola built our Learning Path which is designed to help new people build in-world skills. she also liked Reaction Grid so much that she got her own sim! (we didn’t make anything off of you Nickola, if we had we would have bought you a poutine – yum) =D

Micheil is quietly working on who knows what in Reaction Grid in his secret private lab, we have yet to tap his in-depth scripting skills. he does contribute his scripting insight here on the iliveisl blog

Sunnygirl is busy in Second Life, Inworldz, and probably several other worlds plus has a shop in Enclave Harbour – she is an industrious clothing maker who truly has talent

together, we loosely make up what i call the iliveisl team of Enclave Harbour and i think we embody what collaboration is =) have fun in-world!

10,800 word Ener

they say a picture paints a thousand words and if you want to paint that picture with a second life snapshot, you have to read 10,800 words

that’s how long the current TOS is and that does not include the 2,500 word XStreetSOL TOS

10,800 words – who says size does not matter?

did you read them all? i have not for sure but we all agreed to them when we set up accounts. sure, second life is very complicated, deals with money, is international, blah, blah, blah

so what? i dunno =p

all i know is that, to me, the wordier something is, the more ways “they” are likely to be able to mess with me

ever buy a house? holy cow, talk about fine print! all of it geared to protect “them” and leave you with the minimal rights mandated by law

with all the talk about those last second life TOS changes i decided to look at other immersive community type things where you can create content

blogging is immersive and communal, you typically can have conversations via commenting, flickr is collaborative and has groups and all its content is user generated, facebook is way larger than second life, and world of warcraft is a far bigger cash cow than sl

how do they stack up? certainly facepoo with all it’s latest scrutiny must have beefed up their TOS, right?

• facebook – 3,700
• world of warcraft – 4,700
• Flickr – 5,600
• worspress.com – 2,900
• second life – 10,800

269 word Ener

dang! second life wins the prize for wordsmithing!

oh by the way, here is another thing that i love about being in Reaction Grid, their TOS is actually written in normal English and to the point

reaction grid – 269

i think i will submit Reaction Grid’s TOS to the award nominations at the Center for Plain English!

ps – if any reaction grid big shots read this, what does the upcoming “economy system” mentioned in your TOS  look like? that’s the kind of thing that will attract second life refugees at this very moment

this is the first time we have tried to do music in Enclave Harbour. the Haxor Lunar Lounge was a fun place in Second Life and is just coming back to life now in Reaction Grid. the lounge was imported into Reaction Grid six month’s ago but sat incomplete while making stuff for subQuark’s virtual science field trips. the Second Life version had a great dance floor and a sound system setup so that anyone could select from several streaming radio stations

the dance floor is not in yet and may be a big project for Dream Walker (hint) =)

i needed a fun break today so decided to mess with the Haxor Lunar Lounge and made all the dance floor seating VIP and added tables for two in the more private rooftop deck. then i thought i’d just try the old script i had from the Second Life sound system. i figured it probably would not work – there are differences to how OpenSim does code works, although a lot of LSL does work

well, call me surprised – it worked right off the bat! and here is just a quick video to show it and, in person, it sounds and acts just like it did when it was in Second Life

i am most pleased! have fun in-world! =)

this week has been grueling in virtual worlds =(

even though i don’t log into Second Life anymore, it is still an important part of who i am. it showed me a way to express my creativity in a place where i could work on projects with people from all over the world

but . . . second life suffers from a few stumbling blocks for bigger adoption by some groups. this week we blogged about some options out there, including the one we are using – Reaction Grid

Reaction Grid, or another OpenSim solution, is very good for people like you and me. sure it can be pretty wonky, but it keeps getting better =)

however, what if you are a university or big company (heck, even a band) that wants to look at virtual worlds again but the limitations that Second Life and OpenSim just don’t cut it?

concurrency per sim is a big issue. second life only holds 40-50 before lagging out and hosted OpenSim holds fewer (it’s a different architecture – like our estate – it’s based on the server and not number of sims)

that won’t cut it if you want to hold a conference, teach a big class, or hold a concert

also, downloading the viewer (even though that is really easy imo) is seen as an obstacle and so is creating an account

these are big issues: concurrency per sim, browser-based access, and universal login

well . . . tada . . . Jibe!

Reaction Grid has been working on a project that uses the Unity 3D player (like a flash player, it’s a browser plugin) and it connects to facebook and LinkedIn to handle logging in. check out the Unity site, install the plugin and look at their gallery, i was impressed at how fast it is (of course, it is playing in a small window so that makes it fast too)

subQuark told me about its amazing graphics last January after logging into it from facebook in a secret sneak peek! i wish i had some screenshots to show you (ya would think that the person that taught me how to pimp myself online with zillions of flickr pics would have taken one screenshot? and i can’t find any from Reaction Grid, bah) =p

screenshot from Unity 3D gallery

and you can also access it via phone and iPad!

how much does it cost?

the version that allows up to 1000 peeps runs $675 a month

o_O well, this is for big power users and two sims in second life will cost $600 and only hold 100 +/-

if you are curious and think this may make virtual worlds viable for your business or school, check it out and if you are in the Big Apple, there is a launch party Monday

here is a YouTube video showing Unity 3D for a game =)

it’s been a heck of a week for second life, especially for the Lindens. it is very tempting to say “screw you guys, i’m going home” and leave second life. no doubt, many will leave and this may be the reason you do leave, but make a plan, and set your expectations to match where you might go

like i say a lot on this blog, OpenSim is not Second Life. it looks just like it, but it is not as stable. as i write this i am fighting with getting onto Reaction Grid and stay for more than a few minutes without crashing. i don’t know why this happens, but once a month or so i experience really crappy performance

serendipitously, this is perfect to explain how OpenSim is not like Second Life and to be ready for frustration from time to time. it is beta and it is much less expensive after all

here are details of what is going on right now:

i saw that Dream Walker just posted on the blog and fire up Hippo to see if she is in-world, she is and i talk with her for about 4 minutes and try to rez a vending machine i am making. my inventory only loaded 123 items, so i TP to Core1 (the Reaction Grid welcome sim) and load my stuff. i try to TP back but her sim won’t let me in. so i TP home (next sim over). i fly to her sim and rez my vending machine which makes me crash. i log back in and still can’t hit her sim. i go home (i had logged into Core1 this time) then fly over and make it. i try to rez my vending machine, but it’s not in my inventory. i decide to just copy it because it’s in the sim south of hers. i then rez it on her sim and crash again. i log back in to Core1 and still can’t hit her sims, so i go home and fly over but this time i get stuck in the sim crossing and keep going down forever. i try to map TP but i am stuck, then appear on the ocean floor, but i can’t move, TP, or get chat from Dream Walker, so i quit and wait a minute

now i try to log in to Core1 but hang on the connecting to Reaction Grid screen for over 2 minutes. so i hit quit. i wait a minute and try to log in again

this time i get stuck on the same screen for the 5 minutes it takes me to type this! ugh . . . now i try Core1 again and . . . voila!  i make it to her sim via my sim and try to rez my vending machine, but it’s not in my inventory again! this time i dupe it and slide it over to her sim. i try chatting with her but she does not respond, then i get that “your session has ended” screen and quit

so i log into Core1 again and head home. fortunately, she is smart and is waiting for me at my home and i get to chat with her as she scripts a pose ball for me that lets you drop in as many animations as you like and then arrow trough them as you please. i see that my skirt is not on and open my inventory but my inventory is partially loaded and i can’t put on my skirt and now Dream Walker is stuck in a tripping gesture – it’s just one of those nights

luckily, this only happens once a month and oops, there i go, i crashed again! it’s enough to make you drink a martini!

i run a speedtest online and get a download speed of 38.50 Mb/s and upload of 9.77 Mb/s (that seems adequate eh?) =D

so i log in again to Core1 and try to TP home, but it says i can’t TP to that location. i try again and make it. Dream Walker is still there but i can’t see her hair and her face is gray and she is not chatting – i have a feeling i am crashing in a minute. yep, my hair just poofed and any second i will get that “your session ended” message again . . .

okay, so logging back in (how many times is this now?). well it is stuck on the Connecting to region screen again. i will wait 5 minutes. i fix typos here as i wait, and now it has been at least 7 minutes on that connecting to region screen and i hit quit

as you can imagine, this is very frustrating and i ponder RDPing into the server and restarting the sims. but Dream Walker is still on there and scripting away. i don’t want to restart without telling her, but i can’t log in

so here we go, i try logging into Core1 and make it! good thing i did not shut them down, Krissi is there with Dream Walker now. the sims are fine for them. i don’t think it’s my connection (as seen above), i am on fibre optic and never had connection issues in the three years isl

i resign to chatting from Core1 because i know i will poop out on our sims. i ask Dream Walker how long it has been since i first logged in. she has our chat record and it says 45 minutes. but i do get my skirt back on =D

i sure would love to visit with them both but am so frustrated that i will go to bed and restart the server in the morning. likely it will work fine; like i said this only happens once a month

i am not bashing Reaction Grid, they are a great team and will likely offer suggestions (but putting a ticket in at 1 AM won’t help me now, so why bother. the morning will bring renewed hope)

if i had known there would be issues like this, i would have been a bit better prepared for the switch from Second Life to an OpenSim host. considering the price and OpenSim being very young, this type of behavior is acceptable to me (but still a drag)

so if you leave Second Life – don’t run screaming, take a breath, and explore your options and remember:
if your biggest problem is having your skirt poof in a virtual world, life is pretty darn good! =)

lol, i was also invisible for much of tonight's fun