Vulpinus

Madelaine McMasters wrote: As for the airlocks, I've never understood them. Even when alone, I'm opening the second door before the first closes. But, they are good stage props. Don't try that with the airlocks I used to go through: They are interlocked - you can't open one until the other really is locked (and it is locked, not just shut) If you try, the probably somewhat less-than-chivalrous gentlemen with the UMP45s will be waiting when the door does open. Anyway, I'm confused now. How do I behave chivalrously when at those large, motorised, revolving doors that some places have? The ones that fit about five people (or ten pushy people) in all at once.

Was chivalry ever alive in the first place? I'm more tempted to think it's like 'we never used to have to lock our doors' and 'people were more polite in our day'. Those things might be true... law probably wasn't quite what it is now making 'natural justice' more readily usable. It doesn't necessarily follow that people were any better. That said, my personal code (RL and SL (mostly, depending on the context)) would probably be considered a chivalric one. I always has been, but yes, you get some people who seem to see it as an insult if you, for instance, hold a door open for them. That's not going to change me. Anyway, since I'm hardly female and your question is more directed towards those that are, I'd better step aside chivalrously...

Over the last couple of days? Funny you should say that, I thought it was just another glitch on my mainland parcel which is dieing under script load from my wonderful neighbours. My AO has been just sort of getting stuck in a static pose and sliding around, or standing, like that. Usually I can trigger it back to normal just by doing something different (jumping up, for instance, which can get you funny looks in the middle of a posh store). Is that the sort of thing you mean? Of course, it could just be me...

Yeah, I've spoken with Hydrogen a few times and I believe that improvements to the Alpha system are in the works. That will be a big help. I made mine quite a lot smaller, from the smallest included shape. I was trying for a more realistic size (for a bodybuilder). Picking the correct head blender (much improved in the v1.1 update) meant that the join to my SL head which I dupicated exactly onto the shape is nearly seamless. Nearly, because (I think) different lighting affects the SL head differently to the materials-mesh body. Sometimes the tones match perfectly, sometimes there's a marked difference when close-up. At normal distances though it works fine.

Don't know about seeing "one of the REAL good ones"... I've looked at male mesh bodies for a while and not been convinced enough to drop the coin. The Aesthetic convinced me at first glance. Each to his (hers, its, whatevers) own. There are lots of clothes coming out, although mostly similar styles at the moment. Even I've got involved in making stuff for it, although not clothes. I'm as artistic as your average rock unfortunately. Apparently the Enzo version became the best selling men's mesh avatar on the MP after three days. Hydrogen is one of the most responsive and helpful creators I have come across in SL, and the group is a good place for help too. So, yeah, it's pretty good! (especially when changing back from being a wolfkin) ETA: It also works very nicely with my system head and skin (once tinted to match) and resonds very well to the body edit sliders even for quite large adjustments, so I don't look like a clone.

Got to echo all the above really. The only thing I would really change is to make the use of calling cards (which I only really discovered a few weeks ago) rather than 'friends' the usual and easy way of 'adding' someone to your list. I would rather keep my friends list (with the ability to see I'm online and get pop-ups about them etc) to actual friends, rather than just acquaintances. From what I briefly read, it seems that LL depreciated that some time ago. Other than that, I haven't found any issues with the way the friends list works or the information it gives. I certainly wouldn't want any more information automatically sharing. If I'm interested in someone, I might look at their SL profile to see what they want me to know about their SL self and if we are likely to get on or clash, and check for specifics if appropriate. I'll also check it before I send a friend request, although by the time I'm thinking of doing that I probably already know the person reasonably well by actually talking to them for some time. I don't use facebook and never will. ETA: actually, there is one other thing I might change, that's the online notification that is available in more ways than just by looking at your friends list. Sometimes I just want to log in and be on my own, usually because RL is being so rotten that I just need the space and I'm not fit company. So, I would prefer to be able to do that, with my main avatar, without having to think about who might want to talk to me or have to explain myself, however briefly, even if it's someone I normally would really enjoy talking to.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: I'd have presumed each would have been the minimum possible resolution... and not something like a 512x512 texture of... blankness... /shrug. In the edit box, when I select blank it says 32x32. I haven't noticed what the default transparent is.

Yeah, I'm going to have a look around and I'll look at Wasabi Pills, see if there's anything that suits. I was outfitting my alt (actually my unused-until-recently original) and wanted some specific things which I already had on this account. When I checked (and I'm glad I did) I found they are all just ridiculously high DW, so I got stalled. Don't want to waste money. My hair isn't flexi but it's built entirely from tori, lots and lots of them. No wonder the DW is so high. My new, and first mesh, body (Niramyth's Aesthetic) is 12,167 bare naked, now. I had already made the hidden prim in the middle blank.Oh, and that's with my system head, not the mesh head. Out of curiosity from what you said about textures, I put a texture back on that prim. A 512x512 texture raised the DW by 120, and a 1024x1024 raised it by 248. This was consistent; I repeated it several times. I did have to add and remove another attachment to get the hovering text to change its reading though. So it looks like a texture does make some difference Not huge, but it adds up as usual. Anyway, thanks for the hints on where to look for hair. Time to start making a new shortlist I think.

Just to follow up: as expected, the owner has been in touch and is removing that 'ability' from Everybody post-haste.

Oh great, thanks. It didn't occur to to me that it was the same measurement. I use that on furniture I'm looking at buying.

Yeah, having read your linked thread on what little could be taken I see what you mean. The group doesn't even have any land linked to it. I'm even more suspicious about the person who announced the fact saying what they did. Anyway, I've sent a message to the owner so it should get sorted. Panick (not that there was on my part anyway) over.

Oh yeah... D'oh!

Thanks - that's what I thought and exactly what I've done. The owner seems very decent so I doubt it's anything deliberate. Someone claimed to have had money taken, but I can't see that I have, and the few others on at the time don't think they have either. I'm taking that with a large pinch of salt.

OK, I know this thread's a little stale, but it's exactly what I've just been looking at. I've read the thread and watched the video... ...and it's left me with some concerns, and certainly stopped me going shopping for stuff for my new body, which I was just about to do. First thing - if LL are going to introduce this 'feature' of not rendering those over a certain weight (it's a liltle like the airline companies tried to introduce for fat (or just big) people, isn't it?) they had better fix the "Show Draw Weight for Avatars" reporting. I mean, I'm trying to figure out what my hair is, and everytime I detach andd reattach it, I get a different reading. Wildly different, like from 2800 extra up to 37,000. Come on LL - how does that help me? The only consistancy seems to be if I add my usual shoes, plus the hair, to my otherwise naked self. Then, apart from looking a little odd, I go from a naked 1000 to 72,103. Doing this a few dozen times leads to the conclusion that the shoes are about 17,000 each (Huh? - they are plain, uninteresting, black, mesh shoes) and about 37,000 for the hair :smileysurprised: I recently pulled the textures out of a small antique telephone I had bought, because I found out it had thirteen 1024x1024 textures in it. Thirteen! A bit of remappping later and I had the whole lot on a single 1024x1024 and I can't tell the difference. Looks like I need to start doing the same with my avatars. It's a shame - I really liked that hair. ETA: If (when) this is introduced, seriously LL, we need some help in the matter regarding what we are buying, or rather what to avoid buying. Otherwise things won't be pretty. Literally. I've just checked the hair in my profile picture - that's 42,000. Ouch.

It's come to my attention that one of the shop's groups that I'm in has "Pay Group Liabilities and Receive Group Dividends" enabled in the Everyone group (which we are all in of course). My guess is this is potentially not a good thing? Just checking with the wiser folks around here...

Erm, does griefing include coming back from getting a cup of coffee (in RL) to see my avatar, stood patiently awaiting my return in his own house, with someone attached to his face doing something very rude? I nearly spat my coffee out in laughter, right before I banned his (well, more than just his ass!) Then I watched him flying around the sim looking for other unwitting participants in his prefered method of social interaction. You just have to laugh!

Dresden Ceriano wrote: Well, I can only speak for myself when I state that I'm rather intoxicated. Of course, that's no excuse... if anyone else has a good excuse, raise your hand. Oh wait, we can't see raised hands here... in that case, post pics of dead cats instead. ...Dres *loves playing to a crowd of one* Thanks for making me spew half a mouthful of Glenmorangie over my keyboard! Talking of dead cats - ours is in season, she's locked in, and she clearly (and very loudly) has intentions on me... anyone want a cat, dead or otherwise?

No matter what assurances we are or are not given, LL can and will do whatever it chooses whenever it chooses. It makes no difference whatsoever what is 'promised'. Desicions and policies can change at any instant. I thought all of that the day I decided to sign up annually. That said, it's a little different to SL Go. Some people here (like me) have longer term 'contracts' that, whatever the TOS might say, could lead to legal action if LL suddenly closed its doors and pulled the plug. A business decision could still be made to do just that though. I trust companies as far as I can throw their headquarters and rely on them to do what they say as much as I do the English weather... actually, a lot less. Anyway - what steps would I take if LL did what you suggest?... Let anyone I felt was worth keeping in touch with have my RL contact details (if they don't alread), pull my few L$ out, and start a claim with PayPal for services not received, not that I would likely get anywhere with that. Then I would get more fresh air, and carry on enjoying life, pretty much like I do now. I would find other things to fill the down time, and ways to keep in touch with people. But then, SL is just a bit of fun for me (actually it is more, due to circumstances, but it's not irreplaceable), not in any way a business interest. If it was, I would hope that I hadn't made too much of an investement that hadn't already been returned. In short: life goes on, until it doesn't. The end.

Oh, at least it's not just me then! (he says, logging in twice again to be able to post)

I can concur with a lot of that. My first proper contract after leaving college was to computerise everything in a large manufacturing plant, except accounts who wanted to keep their minicomputer. The firm was quite laid back and we did it basically by me sitting in the various departments asking the people who were doing the jobs what they needed, following their work patterns, and putting code together in the afternoons. We phased the systems in department-by-department in parallel with their paper systems, adjusting things and adding "hey, can you make it do this as well?" things as we went along. Completely not what my books on systems analysis had told me to do. At the end of a year, the stock ordering, automated production planning, QC, real-time order processing, warehousing and transport planning were running smoothly and doing just what they all needed. This was in the days of 8088/8086 PCs with a 10base2 ethernet network and MS-DOS 3.3, so you can imagine the work involved in writing a multiuser software suite from scratch. 100% success - the suite was in use for over a decade. A few contracts later, I landed one with the UK's NHS to develop a three-year-forecasting system for their IT systems' growth in the hospitals (and even new hospitals being built), to aid planning annual budgets. The systems they wanted me to model and forecast for were minicomputer networks, and they had written very detailed specifications for the competing contractors, right down to the user interface for the software which was to run on a PC, now with an 80286 CPU. Wow - the power! The system required large amounts of data to be entered monthly in order to keep the forecast accurate for a rolling three year period. I told them their proposed interface was too hard for people to use, and they should let me design a simpler one; perhaps even try to link with the minicomputers and automate much of it. They refused to listen, despite which they offered me the contrract (I undercut everyone else). I needed the money, so I took it and wrote things to their specifications. My model worked brilliantly; I found out several years later that it had been accurate for all that time... right up until they stopped entering the monthly data. Both of the staff I trained to use it had left, and no one else could handle it even with the detailed documentation I wrote. "I told you so". The customer might think they know what they want, but it isn't always what they need and all the specs in the world won't help in that case.

Well, tha's my window script done - saved about 90μs of idle time on my linked windows. Now it's just about 4μs (I needed to use two linksets). Of course, even that's only a tiny fraction of what is going on somewhere in the sim. The only thing I miss is a nice sound. I need to find a good sliding window sound to drop in there.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: I remember programming Dad's PDP-11/73 and being amazed that it could multiply two (floating point!) numbers in a couple microseconds. I spent the next two decades counting those microseconds to make sure my code would always run in its allotted time. Like you, most of my work was on microcontrollers in embedded real-time systems. As the processors got faster, I started counting nanoseconds. Now we're looking for ways to vectorize problems because the processors can't chew any faster, but we can get a thousand of them chewing in parallel. We live in a different world than IT people. ;-). That sounds familiar. "How many machine cycles can I have?" Squeezing code to make it fit in 100 words of program memory. Different worlds indeed! I would love to do development with big FPGAs. I used CPLDs in my projects for years, replacing the entire digital guts of a device with a single chip, and have done some simple things with FPGAs and soft cores. The big ones are incredible though. If I were to start again, I think I would go there. Similar to CPUs though - the more powerful they get, the more we are practically forced to move away from coding them at the machine level, and develop instead using high-level languages that remove the fine control and optimisation that we could do better ourselves. My CPLD desigs were mostly by schematic and placed manually - I avoided the compiler whenever I could. ... Yeah, there's a big difference between most commercial development and what we might like to do, or once have had to do, to 'improve' things. Like Sassy mentioned, I learned long ago when to stop developing something, and just make it saleable. It still sometimes makes me itch though, and most things that I do for myself I can't help but to push a little further on; it is my obsession. Nanoseconds matter! I once was picked to work on a project to develop a geological analysis method working at the picogram level - I wonder why they asked me??? ... You might all find these blasts from the past amusing. Mel certainly knew how to optimise code: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal The story of Mel

Sassy, you are so right, lol. I'm going to work on more significant matters now... Sometimes, my obsession to optimise things is my undoing!

*#!**! There's a mistake in the code isn't there? I was just making a simplified version to test, and spotted it. It's not a case of not switching off the sleep timer, but not switching it back on when a short click happens, so it never goes back to sleep in that case. Testing now... (funny but I'm sure I did have that in before - must have messed up somehow.) ... ETA: OK, that killed it. You're right, it doesn't work. I sort of knew it shouldn't, but it seemed to. What is now annoying me is that I've just rezzed two new copies of this fireplace, and put the fixed sleeping version of the script in one with the original non-sleeping version in the other. The sleeping version is now running at about 3.5μs, longer than before now that the sleep is active all the time as I intended. So that's rubbish. But... The non-sleeping version is running at 1.5μs (like the broken sleeping version was), while the fireplace I used initially to test this, which is just another rezzed copy of the exact same fireplace with the identical script, is still running at about 2.5μs. LL is just trying to confuse me. I give up. I'm going to work on my window script.

Yeah, μs, not ms. The scripts I'm working on, I might have twenty or more of them in total, so it is a case of numbers. I'm looking at combining some into linksets (like my windows) with a single controller script (already have for some) but for a lot it gets a bit unwieldy. Griefer object??? Hmmm - I'll have a look around! Certainly something isn't good in the sim.