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Interview with Starla Huchton, the author of The Dreamers Thread. The serialized book is available in podcast form on podiobook and iTunes. The book was written during the NaNoWriMo, a thirty day challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words.

Music in the podcast:

Waking Dream by Natalie Walker found on music alley from mevio.

Intro and closing Jingle by THE Geoff Smith.

Blue Hair is available at Rezzed.tv and mevio

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I just finished interviewing Starla Huchton of The Dreamer's Thread. It's an amazing fantasy novel that you can listen to as a serialized book in podcast form on podiobooks with a full cast of voice actors and very great production quality.

I'm down to doing a lot of post production in getting the episode ready before I publish it. As always, you can always find my Blue Hair podcast on Rezzed.tv to listen to all episodes. This one is going to be a really good one. Stay tuned, and subscribe the book in the mean time.

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Now that I got cron jobs running, I started to see a bunch of errors in my log4php database. It turns out that PHP executed directly from the cgi bin (/web/cgi-bin/php5) instead of through a web browser, leaves out the headers. Since the job was running locally, there was no remote address to look at. I was able to clear up the problem with an "isset" call to determine if the index that I needed was available.

This is a bit of a reliefe to me. I was concerned about people hacking the system by gaining access to this page and never completing the work, or providing bad data back to the site. Since I can detect local connections (those without headers), I can deny access to anyone else attempting to access the page through a web browser.

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The creator of LISA and slToyBox contacted me to clarify a few issues that I had when Mathew Ordinary introduced me to LISA. Apparently, a lot of folks didn't take too kindly to Mathew's style of marketing and he was fired.
KaiKonn is a very helpful person and technical. Just like myself, he has worked on real life web applications that are heavily trafficed.

My main concern was the debit permission requests on the inventory servers themselves. They were also constant (spammy) if you denied or didn't answer. KaiKonn tried to clarify why the debit permissions were necessary. It has something to do with splitting funds.

The background of LISA appears to have been based on in-world servers. In-world servers without a web interface often deal with debit permissions. This is different though for most web pased servers. For instance, I have web-based drop boxes for 10 different store fronts. None of them asked me for debit permissions. This is because all the money is handled on a web site. If I make a sale, I go to the website and ask it to pay me in-world at a later time. If I need to buy something, then I find a terminal and pay it (or pay a "bot" directly). With LISA, the money is not handled on the web site. This is very unique compared to any other web-based market place. This is so that retailers and designers do not need to visit the site daily to retrieve their funds from the daily sales. If this is a feature desired by individuals, I don't see why you can't have a setting in the site itself to release funds as they are acquired from sales.

LISA is a complex system. It is more like a bunch of systems. You have a server that represents your store, and another for your inventory. If you wish to sell the products in world, then you'll need a third server for "retail" and then you setup your sales vendors. There is documentation that walks you through each step, but I was finding it to be difficult to get setup on my own and asked KaiKonn plenty of questions.

Many parts of the site are still in development, and I was finding errors in performing various tasks. Much of the site is developed with a user centered approach rather than human centered. It is difficult to edit product listings, such as the order of features. I was a bit confused as to how a product is meant to be listed as well. There are multiple types of feature sections for each product. I believe this is one of the areas that he is still refining and may see many new improvements and fixes in the future. One thing that I did like was that I could embed you-tube videos as strait HTML in the product listing. It does leave me to wonder how vulnerable that HTML is, especially if I can add scripts to read cookies or submit forms to purchase products without the end-user being aware of it.

I'm slowly figuring out the system, but the learning curve is pretty steep. The other day, I setup a product listing in 10 different web-based markets in just one night. In this system, it's taken me most of the night to list one product. It really needs an approach that leads to a quick setup if it's going to take off. I'm still looking for that "Ah ha!" moment where something jumps out and really makes the site stand out as being useful. There are supposedly graphic reports for sales, as well as a way to see average visit lengths of visitors to stores. I just haven't gotten around to seeing them in action yet.

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I've started to expand into many of the marketplaces that Peter Stindberg had written a while back. Peter wrote an opinion about the different marketplaces comparing features with each other. I had used apez, xstreet, and metalife in the past. I am now starting to list my products on slapt.me, metaverse exchange, myslmarket, vitty, and cbox. The initial registration and setting up of inventory boxes take a bit of time. I've also populated each market with only one item - my emotional HUD. I'll start expanding into getting other products listed later. I would prefer it if all of these market places shared a standard API to manage products. For now, I'm building up a small database of my product information. Some of these markets have features I had been suggesting for the now defunct, OnRez (formally known as SL Boutique). I haven't been able to find any other marketplaces other than the ones that Peter had mentioned. I would also like to concentrate on getting my SLX and Apez boxes consolidated.

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Today was the day that I look at the list of tracks that I recently marked as "Love" on my Last.FM profile and go on a shopping spree in iTunes. Here are my recent purchases:

• Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.
• Goldfrapp - Ooh La La
• Flunk - Play
• Goldfrapp - Happiness
• Moloko - Sing It Back (Boris Musical Mix)
• Bitter:Sweet - Take 2 Blue
• Hooverphonic - Waves
• Royksopp - This Must Be It
• Elsiane - Mend (To Fix, To Repair)
• Novika - Movie Girl

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One of my favorite shoulder pets is a snow monster created by aEoLuS Waves. He sent it to me three years ago as a gift. I only bring him out during the winter holidays. I even have one setting on top of my TV grabbing onto one of the rabbit ears. Long ago, we didn't have sculpties, and this kind of work was among the best out there, but prim heavy (95 prims). aEoLus has some pretty interesting stuff he makes such as radio control vehicles, laptops, and dance floors. I believe I found out about him because he had some interesting sales log servers that worked with the JEVN system. You can get your own Snow Monster or Valentine Monster on XStreet.

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Mathew Ordinary contacted me regarding a new marketplace called LISA System. I told him I was working on my own market exchange system, but he continued to enlighten me about LISA. I started taking a look at a link he provided explaining what LISA System was (Listing, Inventory, Sales, Accounting). The information was hosted at a place called SL Toy Box. Links seemed not to work, but he said that the site wasn't live yet, and will be available on January 1st along with all links becomming active. He provided me with a package to look at. I rezzed it and unpacked it. One of the objects sent me over to a quick start guide for the SL Toy Box. There are lots of words and even a personal cell phone to call KaiKonn Lerner direct. The main thing I'm concerned about though is the requirment to grant debt permissions to the servers. I denied it and it continued to ask again and again. I haven't seen other market places require these permissions, and I don't trust my wallet to a stranger.

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I saw a windmill over in the linden office area and I decided to make an attempt to try my hand at making one of my own. It's pretty simple and strait forward. It is all shiny and reminds me a bit of my days of the tech-blue erra. I'm wondering though if windmills are ugly or a thing of beauty. I suppose only time will tell based on any feedback from the nighbors. I'm still in egg-shell mode trying to feel out what is acceptable and what is not, without getting the natives upset. Perhaps I can hook up something to record how much power was generated based off of the wind speed at various times of the day.

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I woke up today and saw over two feet of snow outside my door. Usually we only get a couple inches each year. I had lots of fun exploring the snow covered roads. It seems that my second life had met up with my real life.

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I don't know what to say about this place. It's got to be the worst theme that I have seen yet. The "A" frame house usually reminds me of ski lodges and winter retreates. The steep roof is mainly to prevent snow buildup and falling ice cicles. These regions do not have any snow. They also appear to have some kind of cowboy or wild-west theme going on with a few horse drawn carts placed about as well as a bucket well. This place cries for help. With the dense population of houses, the rugged western memorabelia feels out of place.

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Just in old days, the moles threw a bunch of rocks together to identify the boundaries between different themed regions. Rather than using a few open space regions, the lab has provided full regions to host nothing but a few trees and rock walls. There are less than 2500 prims in use on these regions. I'm wondering if this is overkill, or if there are plans to put some additional homes are activities on these border regions as well.

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Flying around, I found an area with 4 plots next to each other forming a condominium. A common area in the center allows neighbors to meet with each other around a small fire. I believe they need a bench or two around that fire. I also found a park nearby with a few benches on a small hill.

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This region is full of houses that all appear to be the same, except for the texture. Talk about cookie cutter. The quality of the homes are ok, but the lack of diversity is really hurting the community. Each home here has large clear windows that allow you to see into your neighbors home. I imagine the control panels inside each door allow the owners to put up some privacy in different parts of the house. Although there were a few regions with this themed style of architecture, I did not find a community hub in the center of them.

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The Elderglen infohub has it's own region in the center of it's community. There are a few things that are really oriented towards a community. The first is having a stage available (although small) that can allow live performances to carry on. It would have been preferable if the instruments could be derezzed for live performers, and instructions provided to allow community members to change the music stream. I half-expected the Linden Radio to be playing, but found that there wasn't any media playing. In another corner of the room, I found a few remnants of a Linden telehub with informative posters about video tutorials, bug reporting, and general information. Another corner had your classic sandbox signs posting rules about violence, commerce, mature behavior, and griefing with audio. The last corner contained a nice bar with free fantasy drinks. A room on one side lead to a large kitchen to grab items (apples and oranges) or to do some work (scrub floors, knead dough). The room on the other end was an alchemists workshop with books, potions, candles, powders and more. It also had a game to catch faries. The region itself had supporting buildings such as a forge, wizards tower, grave yard, and ancient ruins. Each type of resident home was also on this region fully funished.

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The lab is now inviting residents to look into it's new program to help premium residents settle into communities. This are some mixed feelings over this. The homes are pretty much prefabs setting on 512 sq. m. plots. The quality isn't that bad, but the repetitiveness of homes degrades the experience. On one sim, I found about 55 homes, but only 4 varieties to choose from. It would have been better if each home on a region was unique. My impression is that these folks were on a tight deadline and cut things short. A few paths around the area may improve the community aspect a bit.

I arrived at a community hub when I first came to take a look. The hub takes up an entire region and appears to present many smaller games and opportunities to role play. This may be great, but I believe the games will become outdated unless the lab introduces new content over the next few years. Something tells me that it will not happen and that things will be set in stone. The overall quality on the community hub is amazing.

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I had a look around P Squared and I got the idea that this was probably Philip Linden's Island. I'm guessing that P Squared means that there are two Philips - one in real life, one in the virtual environment.

I had a look on the Internet and found that P Squared often has additional meanings.

1. Women who tolerate men because both their paycheck and pleasure satisfy the women enough. It had me thinking of how much people tolerate Philip. He neither pays nor pleases us though.

2. A 40 something guy pretending to be younger and who likes small children. This had me thinking back to the RockSpider inccident. Their really isn't much perversion about Philip though except for his rhinestone crotch pants, so I moved onto the next definition.

3. Someone who doesn't want to break rules to help out so called friends. I passed this one over because he doesn't seem to be the kind of person who holds back based on fear of getting in trouble.

4. Getting pleasure due to pitty. Philip's married, so I passed this one up as well. I don't think there is much pitty being felt for this guy to build an island for it.

5. Getting premium pleasure. ...

6. Party posse. I haven't seen a posse following Philip around. In fact, I haven't really seen him around at all.

7. Someone who leaves a party with the best looking people, causing the rest of the night to be a drag. Well, Philip would first need to show up to said parties.

What do you think that "P Squared" means?

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I found a service called Odiogo that allows me to provide audio versions of my blog posts. Odiogo offers this as a free service. I'm trying it out for now. It inserts a brief intro at the beginning of each post before it reads the information. It is synthesized, so it sounds a bit computerized. Check out the web interface or an RSS link for a podcast.

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I was browsing through some of the pending fixes on JIRA and am starting to get excited over a few things. In SVC-1638, the Lindens are adding a new parameter to retrieve the UUID from a parcels details. Another issue (SVC-4089) looks as if they may be giving or cripling the ability to move objects further than 10 meters at a time. There are two known hacks for this - warpPos and posJump.

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Babbage Linden talked with residents yesterday about the new script limitations with the next viewer early next year. He appeared to be focusing on no more than 100 scripts per object. This would primarily affect content creators of hair with resizable scripts within each prim. There are two new methods being added to support resizing linked prims - llGetLinkPrimitiveParams and llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsNoDelay. The large number of scripts are also haveing an effect on lag when entering sims or rez/derezing objects. Multithreading will be introduced for these events to allow the sim to run without delays

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I was hunting for a few more services to create MP3/RSS posts via phone calls. I found Cinch to be very good in a few aspects. Here are the features: RSS, Post via phone, Free, Phone Number within US, No Access Codes - based on caller id, no specified limit (I talked for over 10 minutes), Quick Dial-in & Start Recording, No drops, Immediate posts, good voice quality. The even have a Cinch iPhone App. I was leaning towards Utterli, but I kept getting dropped, and other peoples utters were showing up in my sent view. Listen to my Cinch.

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I was talking with Radar Masukami through Instant Messaging when he revealed that he was using Touch Life on his iPhone to talk with me. He said he was blind as he could not see things around him. I tried to give him some eyes, but got a message that he declined the inventory. He said he got the inventory though. In turn, he sent me a head. I knew just the place I would put it and left for Nowhereville. Happy Holidays!

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After the majority of the day, my postcards now appear on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, GTalk, Tumblr, LinkedIn, AIM, Identi.ca, Brightkite, Plurk, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Blogger, Plaxo Pulse, LiveJournal, Bebo, hi5, Xanga, Friendster, Wordpress, Koornk, Diigo, YouAre, Multiply, Flickr, imeem, Vox, SHoutEm, myYearbook, Photobucket, Posterous, Yahoo Profiles, Yahoo Meme, SL Universe, Bloghud, and Mixoom.

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I started to look into ways to crosspost my wordpress blog entries to other social media sites - specifically Plurk. I found a way to do it through my old twitterfeed account, with the addition of Ping.fm. Twitter Feed looks for my RSS feed from wordpress hourly. Once it detects a new post, it sends that information to Ping.FM. Ping.fm is the mother of all crossposting services. There are about 46 different sites that I can cross-post to, where plurk is just one of them. This should be the first message on plurk. Hopefully it will help out my Karma.