Erik Gordon Bainbridge (Apollo Manga) – Page 4

Diva Wifi 7.4 released

Diva Canto has just released Wifi 7.4. This means that those of us who have been waiting since OpenSim 7.4’s release last week can now upgrade. Diva’s Wifi provides a convenient user interface for managing OpenSim logins. To download Wifi 7.4, go to https://github.com/diva/d2/downloads and download wifi-0-7-4.zip. You can download OpenSim 7.4 at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download.

If you want to experiment with your own grid but don’t want to contend with the much greater technical challenge of full OpenSim, the Diva distro is a very nice preconfigured package that handles many of the technical details for you in setting up your own standalone OpenSim 7.4 world. I’ve used it and it worked very well for me. Diva Wifi is included as part of that package. Go to https://github.com/diva/d2/downloads and download diva-r20232.zip. It includes the Wifi package.

Exploring alternatives to Second Life

With Second Life® undergoing profound changes, many of us who love it have been left wondering how we should react to the changes. Some people have been exploring other virtual worlds and a few of us have been experimenting with building our own. In future posts, I’ll be writing about both.

In particular, I’ll be sharing my own experiences in creating my own little virtual world, which is still in very early stages of development. I need to state up front that I am neither a Linux expert nor an OpenSim expert. I’m learning both as I go. My intention in this blog is to share my experiences from time to time with you, in the hopes that it will help you start and run your own world.

My little virtual world currently consists of 8 sims hosted on my own OpenSUSE server that I built and configured myself, running on my home dsl. It’s still under development. Time pressures have kept me from resolving some issues that I want to take care of before inviting more people into it.

I started by creating a test world using WAMP with Windows, and the Diva distro. Diva is great – you can read about setting it up in an excellent Hypergrid Business explanation. It allows you to get a basic four sim world up and running quickly, and a WAMP server is fairly easy to set up. The problem is that WAMP is not very secure. It’s a great way to start getting server and OpenSim experience, but if you choose to try it, don’t do it on your regular computer, or on any computer containing personal or confidential data! Because I build my own computers, I had a spare lying around on which I could run WAMP without taking any great risks. WAMP is a great way to do development on Windows, but it should not be used on a regular basis for an OpenSim grid that’s open to the public.

After getting a good introduction to OpenSim using WAMP and Diva, I built my own OpenSUSE Linux server and created an entirely new world with full OpenSim rather than Diva.

Why didn’t I stick with Diva? I was impressed with Diva. It’s fairly easy to set up and works well. Diva does require a fair amount of technical skill, but much less than regular OpenSim. For most people, Diva is the better way to go.

However I’m someone who enjoys tackling technical challenges and although I didn’t have much prior Linux experience, I am technically proficient – I’m a former software engineer and I’ve been building my own computers for 20 years – so I decided to plunge into regular OpenSim.

In future posts I’ll be writing about some of the challenges I’ve faced, solutions I’ve found, and useful resources.

I still love Second Life and although I’ve scaled back on my land ownership there, I have no intention of leaving. However the universe of virtual worlds is growing and in the future, we’ll probably be active in more than one. For me, the prospect of being able to create my own world is even more exciting. Not long ago it would have been an impossible dream, but with alternatives such as CloudParty, Kitely, Diva, and OpenSim emerging, it’s becoming a possibility even for those without technical skills.

Lamplighter photos from Burn 2 April Fools event

It’s been too long since I posted anything here!

Here are some photos of this weekend’s Lamplighter performance in Second Life at the Burn 2 April Fools event:

Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012	Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012	Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012	Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012
Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012	Lamplighters at Burn 2, April 1, 2012

Machinima of The Man burning yesterday

If you missed the burning of The Man in Burn 2 yesterday, like I did, you can view it in a very nice machinima on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJKSp4amIlg.

It can’t match the experience of being there, but the machinima itself is very nicely done.

Burn 2 – what a disappointment!

What a disappointment! You wait a year to see The Man burn in Burn 2 in Second Life, only to see a black void while others can see it and be part of it with no problem!

What went wrong? I have no idea. Some people could see the Man burn and could add logs to the blaze, while others like me couldn’t see or enter the sim. This picture shows what it looked like for me.

Unable to see The Man burn — Man was burning out there somewhere, but many of us couldn't see him

I was using two computers, but had the same problem on both. I tried three different avatars and five Second Life viewers (Phoenix, Imprudence, Firestorm, SL Viewer 3, and Kirstens), but all had the same problem. I couldn’t see anything. I don’t know whether the problem was the fault of Linden Lab or of the Burn 2 organization, or just a glitch in the matrix, but whatever it was, it was extremely frustrating to those of us who love this event and look forward to it every year.

There will be one more Man Burn in a couple hours, at 3:30am PST/SLT. I expect that I’ll be asleep then.

The Temple Burn is tomorrow. It’s my favorite event of Burn 2, even more than the Man Burn. I hope it goes better than today.

The Temple is scheduled to burn at 11:30am PST/SLT Sunday, 3:30pm PST/SLT Sunday, and 3:30am PST/SLT Sunday. Second Life members can teleport to The Man at slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Man-%20Black%20Rock/234/41/25 and to the Temple at slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Man-%20Black%20Rock/216/198/25 .

Where is everyone?

Attendance at this year’s Second Life Community convention is much less than I expected. The last time I attended one, in 2009, halls were crowded with SL residents conversing and the Grand Ballroom was packed. This year there are a lot fewer of us. It’s disappointing that I’ve only met two people so far who I know in SL, but the two breakout sessions I’ve attended so far, portrait photography and a basic mesh tutorial, have been excellent.

Lighting for portrait photography in SL

At SLCC today, Stefan Buscaylet gave an informative presentation about portrait photography in Second Life. The photographic tools available in Viewer 2 are far more versatile than I realized, and should appeal to serious RL photographers. I’ll write more about this in the future, after I’ve had a chance to work on it myself.

You can have your own virtual world

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your own virtual world? It might be for your business or university, or maybe just for you and your friends to hang out in without having to deal with griefers. Or maybe you’ve wished you could experience other virtual worlds without having to create a new account in each one.

Both are becoming possible. Two emerging software packages, OpenSim and HyperGrid, will soon make them realities and in some cases even easy. Best of all, Second Life® members won’t need to learn much that’s new. The skills you’ve learned In Second Life will mostly carry over to the OpenSim worlds and you can use unofficial Second Life viewers such as Imprudence and Phoenix to visit any OpenSim world. The Hypergrid will do something even more wonderful: it will connect OpenSim virtual worlds in much the way that the Web connects websites. The day is coming when you can have a website that will contain a portal to your own virtual world, and when you’ll be able to teleport from your world to other virtual worlds.

I’ve tried three ways you can have your own virtual world today. All are new and still under development. None are really products yet. They are for pioneers, but they are real and available for you to try. The ones I’ve tried are:

Kitely. This is an amazing concept. It’s what will interest most people. You can have your own single sim virtual world created in just two minutes or less! I have three Kitely worlds. It’s the only one of the four that requires no technical ability to se it up. The limitations are present are that you can’t get on the HyperGrid yet and you can have only one sim.
Diva distro. This is the easiest way to get you to get a world with more than one sim and that’s on the Hypergrid, but you should try it only if you have some technical skills, such as being able to configure port forwarding on your router. Nonetheless, for someone accustomed to configuring computers and software it’s fairly easy to set up. I had mine up fairly quickly and friends were logging into it and enjoying it. The Diva distro will meet the needs of most people.
OpenSim. If you anticipate needing more than one server for your world or if you want full flexibility in building your world, then the regular OpenSim distro is what you need. It’s not for the faint of heart, however, and requires a fair amount of technical skills. If you have the skills and the strong pioneering spirit required for plunging into software that’s still being developed, the big problems you’re likely to face are the lack of documentation and the fact that because it’s still evolving as a product, answers you find to your questions are likely to apply to older versions of OpenSIm and not to yours. I have just gotten my own 8 sim virtual world going, but it still needs work to get it to run right. I’ll be writing about my progress in future posts.

Here are some links where you can learn more:

Kitely: http://www.kitely.com/

Download links for Diva and Opensim: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download

Diva Canto’s blog (Diva Canto created the Diva distro and in RL is University of California at Irvine professor Cristina Lopes): http://metaverseink.com/blog/

Don’t let a landbot take your Second Life land

My last post was about a landbot was able to buy for only eight cents the Second Life™ land that I had planned to sell for $150. Today I wrote a column on examiner.com that tells more about it. You can read it at www.examiner.com/second-life-in-national/don-t-let-a-landbot-take-your-second-life-land.

Landbots have been a problem in Second Life for at least four years. Linden Lab won’t do anything about it. Opinions about it range from outrage that a landbot can take your land instantly if you make a careless mistake to smug belief that if you made the mistake, you deserve to lose your land.

I believe there should be a waiting period after it’s marked for sale before it can be purchased. Not a long period, just a few minutes, to give the seller the opportunity to find their mistake and correct it. At the very least, the seller should be warned before completing the transactions that there are landbots who will buy the land instantly if there are any errors made in marking the land for sale.

For me, going for two days believing I had lost my land and not even able to enter the land because the buyer had banned entry was like electroshock treatment. I had been planning on buying a Second Life private region, but cancelled those plans and instead have begun creating my own OpenSim virtual world that will soon be on the hypergrid. I’ll be writing a lot more about the process.

This doesn’t mean I’m leaving Second Life. I love Second Life and have no intention of leaving. I had been looking forward for months to buying a sim and developing it, but I’m finding that creating an entire new world is even more of a thrill, not to mention a lot cheaper. I’m fortunate in having the technical skills and computers to host it myself, so my currently four sim world has so far cost me exactly nothing.

Can someone really take your $150 Second Life land from you for only eight cents? Yes they can.

When Saturday morning dawned, Hawk Lightcloud was looking forward to a starting his eighth year in Second Life by buying a full region with two friends. They intended making a beautiful place that would enhance Second Life. He had sold 75% of his Second Life mainland property a few days before and was marking the final two parcels for sale before buying his new region.

That’s when everything changed. This picture shows the result: Hawk has lost his property and is prevented by red ban lines from even entering it.

Red ban lines prevent Hawk from entering the land that was taken

Hawk got up early, before breakfast, to mark his land for sale, but the moment that he was marking the first parcel for sale, there was a distraction and he marked the sale price as 20 Lindens instead of 20 Lindens per square meter. It was a simple mistake, easily corrected… or would be if a landbot wasn’t lurking, waiting for land to come up for sale cheaply.

Hawk marked the land for sale and then checked to make certain that it was done correctly… and found that the land had already been sold, for 20 Lindens, to a waiting landbot. It was instant. The land was purchased literally the second that it was marked for sale. There was no opportunity to make a correction.

Contacting Second Life support produced no results and filing an abuse report only got an automated response. Frustrated, Hawk put up signs next to the property telling what happened. The owner of the landbot responded by threatening to charge him with harassment.

Hawk is now so upset that he’s not only probably going to cancel buying the full region, he may sell his last remaining Second Life property and cancel his premium membership. It’s been very unsettling learning how easily land can be taken.

Can someone really take $150 land for only eight cents without the owner’s permission? I’ll write more when I know how it turns out.

By way of full disclosure, the reason I know so much about Hawk is that I am Hawk Lightcloud. He is my oldest Second Life avatar, and is the avatar I use for owning land.