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I was going a bit nuts trying to find out why I was getting an error when adding one of my inventory items to the database. I have a primary key that contains a varchar(64) data type as one if it's keys. One item got in the database that was 63 characters long. I tried to add another item with the same name, except that it had a trailing space. It appears that MySQL thinks that this is the same name without the trailing space. It appears that it may be related to Bug #14131. I'll look into changing the collation from PADSPACE to NOPAD.

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One of my tests that I use on my drop boxes is to copy the large list if notecards in my inventory into the contents of my dropbox. I've had a message pop up each time I attempt to do this: Inventory creation on in-world object failed. I'm assuming this has to do with inventory loss. Just about any information I have found on the Internet indicates that the item disappears in both their own inventory and the content of the prim. The message doesn't go into detail regarding what the name of the item was. In the mean time, I'm trying to identify the limit of how many items a prim can actually hold, and if it has an effect on the scripts performance.

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Continuing development of my drop-boxes, I now have a back-end that is able to record which items are in a prims contents. I've got one box setup with over 800 items to try and stress test the system, monitor the scripts memory, and watch the time that the scripts take up on the top scripts. There are minor hiccups (duplicate names in a single prims inventory) that I'm identifying and fixing up, but everything is working like clockwork. I'm also going to hook up a log4php library on the back-end to enable me to monitor the behavior much better. If all goes well, I may have a simple web-interface to test the delivery of items soon.

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After trimming the fat off of my code for my drop-box, it is back online again. The server-side scripts had to be rewritten to handle the newer/condensed form of communications. The backend database is being updated to reflect when each box had last been verified along with it's api endpoint uri. The next step is to process the inventory that the box sends to the server. I have a method that throttles the http requests to prevent problems with people who have multiple drop-boxes sending inventory at once. It also sends a condensed, serialized batch of inventory information (name, type, perms) so that there is less traffic needed.

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I've been working on my inventory server again in regards to optimizations. I've really cut it down to size while retaining much of the functionality that I had originally put into it. One thing that strikes me is the size of memory available when it's compiled in Mono or LSL. LSL has a limit of 16 KB. The free memory reports 12,431 bytes free, so it's safe to assume that the script itself takes up about 3.5 KB. Mono has a limit of 64 KB and reports that I have 48,298 bytes free; resulting in code roughly 16 KB in size. With Mono scripts taking up roughly four times the memory for the same written code, it's understandable why the memory limit was increased to 64KB for mono.

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Found some odd looking bunnies. One appears to be handing out twenties of the teenage mutant ninja turtles money, while the other is wallowing in self pitty. Each bunny has buttons for eyes, reminding me of coraline.

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I saw Bevan Whitfield plurked about being at Timless Prototype's party. I decided to head on over and the first words I see is Timless shouting "DEDRIC!!!!!!". Timeless puts on spectacular shows. Prokofy Neva had mentioned earlier today about Timless having a unique message board when he had visited me. I think I just spotted it. Perhaps I'll have a closer look.

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I was waiting for the weekend so I could take a picture of myself outdoors in the daylight to get light that wasn't so yellow, and to get subtle highlights/shadows. An overall even distribution of light seems to make a big difference. I can still see shadows/highlights, but not as bad as in the house. I'm impressed with the latest skin that I made using the AvMaker software from CyberExtruder.com. For a dollar for each skin, it is pretty inexpensive and allows me to correct problems without costing me an arm and a leg. The software reminds me of a simplified version of Morpheus targeted specifically a morphing a photo into a skin template rather than a different photo.

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CodeBastard RedGrave was talking about how my images were compressed compared to XYText. I started to take a look at the XYText images. I found that they had a pyramid look to them. This is inefficient because each row has unused whitespace. If XYText had used the entire texture, they could have saved 5 images. They used 512x512 images, giving a better resolution, but takes longer to download individual images. However, this may help improve the blurryness that I see when I'm at a distance from my own 256x256 textures. It appears that they use reversed pairs. I had problems getting this to work on my own and have more images as a result. I'll have to take another look at my solution.

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In my earliest days entering the world of Second Life, I created a script that would allow me to display dynamic text. I was able to create a script that would display 10 letters per prim. Later, I found out about something called XYText that did something similar. I stuck with my own scripts for years. I finally released the script two years ago as a new years gift to the community. I was talking with CodeBastard Redgrave and dug up the original program I used to create the images and sent it her way as well. With the font builder, you have the capability to support just about any characterset (Japanese, Chinease, etc.) along with the style and size. The LSL is compressed and light-weight.

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I was having a bit of a problem getting the calendar cog working and asked CodeBastard Redgrave for help. She responded promptly and we were able to troubleshoot the problems. After the problem was ressolved, she had demonstrated how the calendar cog hud worked, which was pretty nice. (Disclaimer, CodeBastard handed me a free hud) Afterwards we chit-chatted about a shirt she had with the front saying "XgreedSL" and the back said Exit. All in SLX styled colors. The funny thing was that she was just in a room with Lindens when wearing the shirt.

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I keep hearing a lot about the CalendarCog. It's mostly good news that a few people can't stop talking about how great they are. I decided to jump on down to pick up a copy to check it out. I arrived and found many different variations of it. I don't know which one I need to get it to start working. There is a Kiosk, HUD, Board, SuperBoard, and a Business Package. Not sure if they all work on their own, or if there is an initial package I need that is the CalendarCog itself. I'm about to head off to sleep, so I'll just take a guess and go with ... Kiosk?

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I found out about CyberExtruder.com yesterday. They offer some software that lets you use an existing photo of yours, and then create an avatar skin from it. I pulled my hair back to get a better picture. The software is free, but you can't save unless you purchase licenses in batches of 10 saves for $10 USD. The quality looks great until you upload the skins into Second Life. I think it has to do with the limitations of the pixel depth in Second Life itself. Afterwards, I was spending a lot of time getting my avatar to look like me, as well as shopping for hair that makes me look a bit more like the real me. The hairs a bit too flowey, but I can't find anything closer to me yet.

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I often find myself at a loss with the scripting language. Although it is powerful because we can make interactive objects. It is lacking in many simple methods that are found in most programming languages (string replacement, case statements, error handling). In addition, upcomming functions seem to be on hold forever (text box, url on a prim, dynamic textures). I've even create/voted a few feature requests (encryption, html encode/decode, name 2 key). In the end, we settle for crude ways of implimenting these features or leaving them out. The end result is often scripts that use more memory, or server load. Unhappy with the results, many of my product ideas are abandoned.

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Many scripters have had the problem of running out of memory to store information, or losing the information when a script resets. Ways around this include adding threaded scripts, using note cards, using the description field, or adding a back-end service such as a database. I happened to come across TinyPaste.com in which you can paste text from your clipboard, save it, and hand the link out to your friends. Amazingly enough, it has an API. Using a bit of my LSL scripting skills, I was able to create a script that makes use of this API. Have a look at the code: http://tinypaste.com/70c90ce.

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I decided to pass up detailing the actual grooves between keys as well as flatening the spaces between the black keys. I started working on the texture and dug up an old program - AvPainter. With it, I was able to load a sculpt map and start painting in 3D. Combined with photoshop, I had a nice set of keys decked out to texture the piano with. It fits snug, although the keys appear to be wider now, so I'll just make the width of the piano smaller. Now it's time to start remapping key locations. Rather than dealing with a sculpty, I just laid the image out on a large floor matt to make it easier to calculate the touch positions.

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I started looking more into how to make my piano looking more realistic. Using Tokoroten, I have been able to create a sculpty based on the profile of the paino keys. It's a step into the rite direction, but it is very limited. I tried using it's successor, Rokuro Pro, but the pro version has always been confusing for me to use. The TrueSpace plug-in seems to be crashing on me when I try to load up the sculpty. Perhaps I'll have to look into how sculpties actually work. I know in my head how the verticies should be placed, but the tools available are a bit too limiting. Perhaps I should look into SculptyPaint before I get side tracked.

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My wife had asked for a copy of the musical notes that I made for the 1 prim piano. She has a project of her own that would do great with them. I packaged up the notes in a classy gift box, but I also went on to make a script that explains how to create songs with the notes. A diagram of piano keys, their notes, and numerical indexes are all described in the comments along with a sample song of Yankee Doodle. I've incorporated the ability to have rests and a beats per minute setting so that songs sound normal.

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Matthew Kidomen got a copy of my touch-based piano today. He thanked me for a "working" piano after he opened it at a sandbox. I expected to just see a regualr SL piano that would play it's own music. He seemed pretty surprised and amazed that it was a real keyboard with working keys. His last words were that he could only play Yankee Doodle Dandy. This was pretty funny because that was the only song that I've been playing on it myself. I even posted a video of it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTPfmTwwnGc

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Tonight I've been typing away like mad to catch up on my NaNoWriMo. I've written about 2500 words today. My daily goal is to write 1,667 words per day. I've fallen behind a few days so I'm trying to catch up. I've got a total of 14,625 words towards the main goal of 50,000 words. It's about 30% complete. I believe that I'll have caught up to the daily goal tomorrow or the next day. Dividing 50K words by 30 days comes to about 1,667 words per day. There are 66 of us in SL taking on the challenge. You can follow our check-in's on twitter. http://twitter.com/vwnanowrimo

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Radar Masukami offers some help making sculpted piano keys with lips. An optimal solution would be to make a full set of 88 keys to reduce prim count. Due to the level of detail, we'll probably be limited to one octive per sculpty. However, sculpties seem to be the way to go to get realism for little prim investment. I wonder how long it will be before SL fully supports mesh objects.

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PhoebeAnn Theas was in the write-in tonight for the NaNoWriMo. She asked if I was the same Dedric from two years ago. Apparently it turns out that I was an inspiration for one of her novels that is also a podcast. Check it out, and look for me in episode 4. Apparently she thinks the guy who did my voice is brilliant.

The Dreamer's Thread - A podiobook by Starla Huchton.

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I jumped on over here after I saw a plurk by ina about a free AM Radio work. AM Radio demonstrates the folley's of blowing up sheds, and how they can affect your Public Liability Insurance coverage. Plenty of people here watching things blowing up. This place has the look and feel of the burning life event.

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Today I packaged up the piano keyboard and put it for sale on XStreet. I've rebranded with my old BrighterWorlds trademark (long before the days of SL). Maybe easier for people to remember. I saw most keyboards were priced around 250, so I put mine up for 249 L$. I had help from a couple of friends translating the information to French and German. I also hired some help to translate into Portuguese and Japanese. I've started to work on the ability to record and playback my songs. It's starting to become an interesting concept of making things talk to each other. I have plenty of ideas of the direction that I would like to move these into. I need to keep from making things too complex.