Head in the clouds

       Businessfurry. Yes, it's a word.
       So let's break this Cloud stuff down to distracted non-geek levels.
       Think of an Ikea wardrobe. Now, think of a tub full of bathwater.
       The intertubes are not that big. So when you need to pass something down the tubes, it can't all go at once. It takes time. When it comes to something like water, one bit is very much like another, and it's all moving too quickly for you to notice specific water drops as they flow down the plughole. Doors are small too, and to get a giant wardrobe into your bedroom, it will have to be broken down into pieces and then assembled in situ. But while water is much of a muchness, to construct a wardrobe you need every single one of those panels, screws and packets. Otherwise - well, you know. Screaming, bloodshed, divorce.
        Not everybody knows this, but when you arrive on a sim, your Viewer says to the server where the sim is located: "I'll have one of EVERYTHING!" Not a picture of the stuff on the sim, an actual copy of it. Normal people can't access the items, but it's all in your Viewer's cache - this is how copybots work.
        Why does the Viewer do that? Because ours is not a 'Shoot 'em up, Hunt 'em down' kind of  a platform. The beauty of our virtual worlds lies in the fact that average joes can make, copy and edit things. It's that picaresque, open ended quality to SL and OpenSim that appeals to us and keeps us coming back, despite the instability. But obviously your Viewer hoovering up a copy of every single item - be it a prim, a texture, animation or whatever - makes for lag, and creates all that permissions paranoia.
       But going back to the wardrobe.
       There are many ways that computers can pass stuff between them, but there are really two ways that matter to this post.  One is called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the other is User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
        Think of them as two brothers, the Brothers Protocol. Each on a mission to provide you with an Ikea wardrobe.
       TCP is the careful one, he gets all the bits, makes sure they all travel safely across town and into the bedroom where they will be assembled, checking them off against his little list. He only consigns the piece of furniture once it's complete, doorknobs and all.
       UDP is a great guy, but he's not the type to worry if some of the wardrobe packages fall off the back of his truck or get crushed in transit. "Hex tool? What hex tool?"
        So, my question to you - in SL and related worlds, which of these two protocols do you think is moving your virtual wardrobes? Yeah, you guessed it, good ole UDP. Which makes sense, because  UDP is great for things that don't have to travel far or by circuitous routes and when the Lindens set up SL they probably didn't envision a network of independent virtual worlds based on their system dotted all around the planet.  
          That, my friend, is why your hair is up your bum.
           Hypergridding. Or even visiting a place on your home grid. Imagine the scene. A group of people arrive on a sim, all asking for everything and then getting multiple updates every time something changes on the sim, a dance, a gesture, a moving prim. That's a strain on the system. UDP is throwing packages at everyone, and while most of them are okay, there's a lot that can and does go wrong.
          OK then, for all of us who haven't really been paying attention to what the geeks have been talking about for the past year(s), let's just come out and ask: How might all this strain on resources and lousy delivery go away?

Safari has a Ball

        Well, two balls this week, really.
        We got the answers to some important questions like - is 'Ball' the 51st state? How important are jars to education in virtual worlds? Is guinguette a made up word? Does Pathfinder own any shoes? What is VIBE? and... How many avatars does it take to crash a sim on Ignis Fatuus Grid?
         First stop this week, a long overdue chat with Professor Stephen Gasior, who showed us around REDgrid, the OpenSim home of Ball State University. 
Jessica Pixel: right clicking my head made it show up, so we're good
Wizard Gynoid: We are now in Indiana
Lucy Afarensis: oh my
LuAnn.Phillips: sounds like Alice in wonderland dialogue

Wizard Gynoid: why is it called Ball State?

Stephen Xootfly: It's named after the Ball Family who gave a lot of $ - ever heard of Ball Glass? 
Jessica Pixel: wait, the Ball family that gave a lot of money is the jar family?  cause that's awesome, i love those jars.
Selby Evans: My family canned with Ball jars. And made preserves.
         REDgrid is small, sturdy and has several very different sims, featuring some beautiful and accurate reconstructions of the campus buildings, and we started out by the pixel version of Shafer Tower. 
Stephen Xootfly: The grid and the original builds here are run by the IDIA lab. IDIA's work has been used for History Channel shows but, also they tend to partner with students and faculty for intersecting projects.
Serene  Jewell: It's really great that you opened up to the hypergrid. So many educational builds are hidden away where we can't see them.
          When it comes to Educational grids and regions in OpenSim, it can get a bit confusing, between the all the names of the various institutions and projects. Stephen is busy here with REDgrid, which is part of IDIA, but he's also very much a part of VIBE.  So how did he get started with teaching and virtual worlds?

Stephen Xootfly: I got my start teaching in Second Life at U of New Orleans. They used to have a big SL presence and many classes, and I'm a technophile. HG safari has visited my VIBE projects in the past, that's a collaborative working group with Clowey Greenwood, Max Chatnoir, and several others. I happened to come work for Ball State and got involved with IDIA Lab.  REDgrid predates my being at BSU. IDIA lab is well equipped with lots of good computers. So they just set up one to be a dedicated Opensim server. Working with BSU IT to get it setup for hypergrid was difficult, but we have an outside line now. I've recently started a community here at BSU for using REDgrid. Very recent, but we've already had a class use it for a gender identity project, and I have a build I"m going to make this summer. 

Safari hops for the best

Meet Tosha Tyran, builder, benefactor and all round bella donna. How did a nice girl like her end up in a place like this?

Tosha Tyran: I got kind of frustrated with all the commercial stuff in SL and I was sick and tired of having to pay for every upload and wanted to advance building then some Italian friends told me about OpenSim and now I think it is really great - I wouldn't want it different I came - and hell it was frustrating too - more crashes then anything but with time and patient it changed :) I started later with Tao and Licu and Lumiere in Craft and - well - now I am here in Sanctuary which is one of the best cared for grids I think it is just great and the owner very friendly and helpful :) and I can build all I want I am present in Craft as well, but my favourite place is Sanctuary.
Her latest build, a Hopi Indian village, is on a sky platform above her sim Fire, on Sanctuary grid. URIs as usual at the end of the post.

Talking Trash

Knickers. I love them. They are fun to make, because they are difficult to get right. When making underwear, a fraction of a pixel on the upper thigh can result in unsightly bleeding edges, and a single pair of panties may require half a dozen re-uploads before the desired look is achieved.

One of the first things that we all fall in love with in OpenSim is the free upload feature. Sweet - you can just keep trying over and over till you have the correct knickerosity. It's wonderful.
You have a similar story of multiple uploads to tell, for sure. But have you ever stopped to think about what your crazy uploading does to the Asset Server of your grid? 

Yeah. Billions of copies of those unsuccessful undies.

"But wait!  I regularly go through my Inventory and trash all the things that don't work or I don't need!" I hear you say. 
Of course you do. But then what happens? Ever noticed that your trash seems to just come back, like a sort of bin boomerang?

Divine Safari

          Just two destinations on this 48th consecutive Safari, but this was a week when less is more.  That's what we told ourselves, as we all kept losing our hair. What is up with that? For months, hair loss has been a rare event when grid jumping, and now it's back. What we need to do is sit down with a dev and.... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First stop, CrazyEaster.

Safari Lessons

          Yay it's nice to be meeting on OSGrid at the ole homeplace again. 

          But no time to feel homesick for Francogrid, because our first stop this week was on that very grid. Sim Avatar crashed - had to be an omen - but a second top secret alternative destination was immediately made available. 

           

Safari goes extramural

         This week Littlefield Grid celebrates two years of existence, and Walter Balazic and friends are celebrating with a gigantic fair on Littlefield Anniversary sim. In honor of the event they have put up a VAR region, and all kinds of residents have contributed stalls stands and exhibits showing the talent and wide range of interests of Littlefield folk.

Walter Balazic: it's a fairly large VAR, so there's a lot to see. I've been looking at it for 2 weeks now, so it looks small to me now! The users here love to build.  Mudpuddle put an interesting Yellow Submarine display up. The Germans put a village up, I put a little display up, I really never build, but it's the one behind you. People do things that are geared toward what they know, mine is all prim and minor scripting, cause that's all I know. Some people are really good at mesh and focus on mesh things.