Echo Canyon

I was to go and help my mother in-law to configure her voice in a virtual environment today. The snow came in last night and hasn’t let up yet, so my plans were abandoned. Since this is hardware based diagnostics as well as software configuration, I could not visit her virtually. My physical presence was necessary. My roads haven’t seen a plow yet and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

One of the places that I heard about in the past for voice diagnostics in this virtual environment was Echo Canyon. When you arrive, anything that you say is played back in your headset. You can hear yourself talk, but you can not hear others around you speaking. However, you are free to talk to them via text chat.

Adjusting the volume in the device settings didn’t seem to have any effect on this. (You can adjust your volume level by editing your preferences and clicking on the voice chat tab). I got the feeling that my voice wasn’t being played back from the vivox servers, but being played strait from my own computer.

Another handy tool that I’ve used in the past to detect voice settings by calling echo123 on skype. Once you call the echo sound test service, an automated message asks you to start making some noise. After 20 seconds, it is then played back for you.

Since I didn’t go off to mom’s house today, I spent the time importing my blog posts from my real life blog related to virtual worlds into my virtual blog. I finally completed importing them all manually. The next thing that I would like to work on is importing my snapzilla snapshots as well. When I send images to social networks, snapzilla also gets a copy sent its way. Usually snapzilla will have blog posts that other systems did not interpret properly, or that other services did not crost-post to my main virtual world blog.

posted by Dedric Mauriac on Voice Echo Canyon using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

3 Years ago…

I was reading about Stuart Warf’s rezday post now that he is 3 years old. I was starting to add my memories of the grid three years ago and it turned out to be a post in itself. So here it is … oh, and happy rezday Stuart.

3 years ago … it was more like the servers would break on Friday night or the weekend and wouldn’t be repaired until Monday. Sims would go down and not come up without linden intervention. Think “Relay for Life” as the main event happens on weekends with a track that covers multiple sims. People would just wait for hours hoping the sim would come back up so they could walk. Large amounts of content rezzed on sims would disappear (rarely) for unknown reasons. Logging in would reveal that inventory was missing when it wasn’t. Grid attacks were so destructive that the Lindens would have to disable scripts grid-wide until a resolution could be found. Push attacks occured so often that the best advice was to sit down to avoid the effect. You couldn’t change clothes or attachments while setting down. Weekly die-in parties would occur every wednesday. A grid-wide rolling restart would take a couple of hours, successively. Meaning you could track which sim was next to go down by looking at the ones that were currently offline (red). Sometimes there were multiple patches within the same day. The lindens would have regular town hall meetings and encourage people to give input via skype and/or text. Teleport hubs were removed, thus causing value of nearby property to decrease drastically and the prediction of boxes all over the mainland to create enclosed environments. People avoided groups of green dots on mini-maps to avoid lag. Now people gravitate towards them. Bad geometry wiki was the place to go for scripting advice, but then was taken offline and moved to various websites. Now we have the wiki back and its for more than just scripting ( http://secondlife.com/badgeo ). Hamlet Au was Hamlet Linden and would have yearly events to walk accross the mainland. Today it’s just a little to big to walk the distance. Promises of havok upgrade was a joke for many years. Dazzle and Windlight didn’t exist. Linked prims (joints) still existed (but buggy) and were primarily used for windchimes, revolving doors, and tire swings. People often knew their neighbors on a more personal level when living in the same sim on the mainland. First time land buyers could purchase a 512 sq. m. partcel for 512 L$. The weekly income for premium accounts was 500 L$ (mine still is) and basic accounts got 50 L$ as long as they logged in within the past week. Money trees were a great way to drive in traffic. The lindens paid dwelling bonuses (L$) based on the amount of traffic generated each week. The rating system was phased out since the lindens stopped paying for people to be rated high due to abuse. Flexies, Megaprims didn’t exist. Glow pre existed as “bloom”, but worked in a different way with fullbright objects. Lights existed a bit differently (on or off along with fullbright and based on prim color) but often caused crashes. People were just starting to figure out how to hack the clients god-mode to track where anyone was on the map. If you were friends with people, you couldn’t hide your location on the map back then either. Groups were limited to just 10. Snapshots sent via email would also appear on the main second life web page. The windows client still had a video recorder built into it to make uncompressed AVI movies. You were limited to 10 votes to put on issues that you felt need to be addressed. You could move your vote to other issues. A police blotter gave generic information about social griefing on the grid. The price of a private sim was 1000 US$ and 195/month. The color/texture picker didn’t exist 3 years ago. The list just goes on…

Kirstens Viewer

I saw a post on New World Notes about a new release for Kirstens Viewer. This was the first (only?) viewer to enable shadows in Second Life. I decided to try it out and see where it takes me. It operates similar to the regular SL viewer with a few addtions. The asset browser is a nice way to view your textures. The scanner was handy showing me a list of people and their distance from my location. It even works with skype, although I don’t know how it uses it just yet. In my first five minutes, the viewer crashed.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Nantucket using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

SLCN.tv Commercial Shoot

I had a ton of SLCN.tv people show up to shoot a commercial at my store. Unfortunately, I had forgotten all about it. Fleche contacted me through skype to get my butt down to the store and get the film rolling. On top of that, I had microphone problems and had to play musical computers until I found one that worked properly. The old lappy came in handy for it. Everything worked out great in the end. Yxes Delacroix interviewed me for the show and a few people came with cameras to tape the conversation as well as the items on display at the store. Fleche Xeno was helpful as my coach who I hired to help me prepare for the interview. The video may be available in a couple days.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Woodbridge using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Diva in the house

Another great night over at SoHo. TheDiva Rockin takes the mic over at the mainstage. She’s a funny one and knows what tunes gets people out of there chairs and rockin the house. The usual podcast crowd is here as well as a lot of new people I haven’t seen before. We even have Delek’s here. Who knows how that’s going to end? It can’t be good. PodPoet Clinquant had me on skype for a while just asking a few things here and there with a survey he was making. I believe he said it was something for work? I wish him all the best in that endever.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on SoHo using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Second Talk Litter

Dropping by the Second Talk booth, the first thing I noticed was a lot of prim litter along the floor. It seems a lot of people rezzed the Second Talk ear bud, but just left it there afterwards. My guess is that people didn’t understand how to use it, were new players, or couldn’t see the ear bud after it rezzed. Some of the resis profiles are a few years old in SL. Perhaps we will see a bit more things in the future that are easier to use from these guys. Maybe an object that says (wear me) as part of its name and the ability to set your skype name through chat rather then editing a description. Perhaps a way to let others know your skype handle too who don’t have the product.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Maui using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

SecondTalk for Skype

At the Mr. O Show, we talk about virtual worlds integrating between each other. Mr O brings up a new product called SecondTalk ( http://www.secondtalk.com/ ) and I teleport over to a sim to check it out. SecondTalk senses who else is nearby wearing the object and prompts you with a dialog box to start talking with them over skype. I introduce a similar product I’ve worked on called the skype status indicator. My version simply lets you know the persons skype id and there online status. I also have a yahoo status indicator too.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Chief using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Mr O Show, New Location

Orange and Indigo host another night of the Mr O Show at there new location in Chief. Most of the night was dancing away to some good tunes. I got on skype to talk about Artificial Intelligence. Yxes Delacroix came on and talked about her podcast at gbaffair.com. Zermit Vasilopita came on who is a DJ over in Transylvania and still recovering her voice. Fun times.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Chief using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Mark Barrett from SLBuzz.com on the Mr O Show

Mark Barrett talks on the Mr O Show about SLBuzz.com. Questions are asked inworld or via skype while we listen to the show live.
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Bolinas using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Postcard from Second Life

I stumbled upon the Mr O Show the other day. Got a group notice and came to listen again. Somehow I became the main guest on the show via skype and demonstrated how my message board worked. I had problems with my microphone being too loud. Found out windows was boosting my microphone to +20dB. ouch!
posted by Dedric Mauriac on Bolinas using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]