Troppo The Blog
Design and Marketing in SL and RL

This is Opensim, Divadistro 11766, Kirsten’s viewer S19 (381) in Troppo Grid

3 shadows cast from my avatar one from the “natural light” at 5.30pm the other two from projected light from two different prims and different intensity setting. Lots and lots of tools to play with, building 3D environments is becoming more fun and more complex by the day.

Read: Every picture tells a story. »

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com “There’s recognition that public equals online,” said Ellen Miller, executive director at Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group focusing on the use of technology for greater government transparency. Miller said the effort represents “a sea change in government’s attitude,” with newfound support for the idea that government data belongs in the hands of citizens instead of locked away in the basement of a federal agency. All the new data collections will be added to the government’s Web site, data.gov.

Read: Us Government posting wealth of data to the net. »

My HTC magic phone had an OTA update today from Android 1.5 to 1.6 I have only had the phone for less than a week and it obviously had the older version of Android installed when I got it. I did try to force an update but no luck, then asked the friendly people at Vodafone to look in to it, the update come automatically today. It downloaded over 3G. Why? I don’t know The Wi Fi was on and it would have been my preferred way to download but no big deal.

I downloaded Google Goggles and started to play with visual search. It is impressive, I know it is only the beginning but still I can’t help but marvel at it all. I took a photo of my camera and in Google search it picked it 100% right. The barcode scanner also works well, even my tiny qr code on my Skype contact list scans in perfect, then with a tap on the screen the details are in “my contacts” just wonderful. GPS, Maps, Google Latitude, Gmail, Picasa and the rest all perform just like on my PC. Now I want to take some of the 3D homes we built in Opensim and place them on vacant lots of land, show them on the phone camera via a marker or GPS position, merge them in to the picture as some form of AR ? This might be possible with some help from 3DI in the browser plugin anyone have some ideas please ?? I think an interesting and fun way to demo new ideas in home designs, town planning and wot not……

Read: Google Goggles and the HTC magic phone »

Photosynth of a project from Opensim Troppo Grid. A 1 bedroom house soon to be built

Read: Little Mountain House »

Casey Jones is my name.

One evening, a spontaneous dinner gathering, spaghetti, red wine and good friends.

In walks a kitten. Ginger kitten with a liking for Italian food as we found out when he jumped up and grabbed a bite to eat from Trevor’s fork….. We already had a cat, Jezzabell a remarkably cat but another story. The kitten was the star of the evening did all things right and was cheeky as well.

The deal was if he is here in the morning he can stay. He was a smart cat no doubt ….. Also a very inquisitive cat like most cats … a year later he was gone. We looked everywhere. If you walked the Streets calling your cats name you know what I mean by feeling a bit odd….

Casey Jones was gone. Casey Jones was his name because we lived by the railroad and that was his hunting ground. Casey was gone for 14 days We given him up for dead or gone forever. It was a solemn mood in the family even Jezzy was of colour.

A person come along one day and said he noticed a strange noise from a house not far away that was being moved to another place an old Queenslander…

I went to investigate. The back door was locked I lent against it mmmm then I could hear a faint cry from a cat. I lent a bit more and the door gave away. The noise come from the bathroom. I opened the door found Casey was on the floor panting.  I lifted him up it was only skin and bone left of him.

Held him close and he started to purr licking my hand and my tears started to flow. He had survived on blue Harpic water from the toilet. I took him home gave him some food and normal water and he ate a bit and drank a bit. He did not leave me alone he was always at my feet or in my lap for many weeks after. He recovered and slowly got back to his normal arrogant self thank god…..

Ah what has this to do with a name well Casey Jones was an extraordinary cat and he looked just like your kitteh.

Read: What’s in a name? »

An important summit in Copenhagen. Regardless of the outcome at least the summit in it self brings awareness

to the problem of Climate Change. To totally discard our part in the climate change is rather naive akin to the earth is flat belief.

To pollute the air we breath and water we drink is stupid. We need to clean up our act,  fortunately lots of new technology  can help us do that.

“More than 2000 delegates watched the four-minute long film ‘Please Help the World’ when COP15 opened this morning. Thousands of other delegates watched the opening on screens in meeting rooms at the Bella Center.”

Maybe the film clip can jolt their minds and maybe help to make a change…..

Read: COP15 »

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com “Adaptation is going to prove to be the most difficult, the most combative, and in many ways, the most important part of the climate negotiations,” said Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation, adding that when it comes to global warming, “The people who are most impacted are the ones who have the least voice. That’s going to emerge as a very important political dispute.”

Read: Dutch approach to climate change: Adapt »

Is Exporting, Importing objects from or to Secondlife and Opensim possible.

Yes a few applications work either way, how useful that is, is depending on what you are exporting or importing.

SecondInventory will import and export (backup)most items,  a few 3^rd party viewers will attempt to do the same in some sort of a fashion.

Meerkat and Emerald

The flow of content as expected is from SL in to other grids, mainly because SL “has it” and the the other grids are new and looking of content. This is changing with lot of content being made in opensim based grids right now.

When we first started in Opensim our aim was to take what we had in SL and transfer it to Opensim. This was painful, lots of imports got screwed up and lots of time was lost in cleaning up. That was more than 1 year ago and things have improved. With hindsight we should have rebuilt and made a fresh start.

Using Opensim as your workshop (developing platform)) and exporting your product in to SL sounds like a good idea and it can work.

However if you use lots of large building blocks (prims larger than 10×10x10) as you do in large buildings it gets hard if not impossible to export to SL (max prim size in Sl is 10 x10 x10).

This stops a lot of design flowing from Opensim to SL . On the other hand importing a build from Sl containing lots of prims that could be built with far less in opensim is also not a good idea.

Conclusion: As a first step SL should change and allow building with larger prims!

SL has far more users and content. Removing the wall and have free trade will benefit all ( free trade removing trade barriers I have heard this before…). The platform is sound it is inexpensive and relatively easy to learn, that can benefit everyone from large cooperations, governments to individuals.

OpenSim supports: Large prims, Hypergrid, Megaregions and Oar backups that alone makes it an advanced and professional 3D simulator.

Read: Importing Exporting to and from Opensim and SL »

Yesterday I tested the new “Oar merge” by Justin Opensim.

Working in a new 2×2 Diva Distro, it worked fine for most of the bits I wanted to do. I loaded Oar’s in to the 4 regions, starting in Sw region no problem as expected. I deleted a few prims and added a few, did a save Oar, re started the simulator and “load Oar merge” and every thing fine. I did the same with the other 3 regions and all worked just great. When I first load the oar’s I of cause change to the region I want to load the Oar in to.

I only save the Oar in the Sw region and load the “new” oar from SW also. Amazing to see 4 regions grow and develop before your eyes.

As a final step I dropped the new database all together. Started a new fresh 2×2 Diva then loaded my final Oar file the one with the 4 regions from the first Diva 2×2. All worked except the terrain had only persisted in the root region SW. No big deal I loaded the terrain files for the other 3 regions and all is sweet.

The final step was not needed but I wanted to see how it was going to work exporting a megaregion and that worked to 99%.

The Dev’s at opensim keep on doing amazing things Oar’s, megaregions and hypergrid wonderful stuff. Thank you thank you thank you…………

On the wish list:

Would be great if the terrain did persist ( it might I might just have screwed up)

It would be good to be able to save an Oar from a specific region not just as a whole megaregion.

Say if you change “CombineContiguousRegions=true” to false and that acted like a switch reverting the position of prims back to a position in a 256 x256 region.( I am dreaming mmmm )

Over all all this is mighty impressive stuff . It is possible to have a team working in a megaregion.  save an Oar every now and then and when things go wrong it is easy to pick up the pieces.

Now what more?? ahh yes “The Mercedes-Benz” no prob I pick it up, thank you , thank you ……..

Read: Opensim new load Oar merge option »

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Patient trapped in a 23-year ‘coma’ was conscious all along By Allan Hall Last updated at 7:21 AM on 23rd November 2009 Comments (26 Add to My Storie A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night. Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed. He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said. Rom Houben was trapped in a coma for 23 years and had no way of letting anyone know he could hear what they were saying (pictured posed by model) ‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46.

Read: This is scary »