Bring Back the 80's!

Holy Crap on a Cracker!

2009-07-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

Mmmm, comfy! ;D

Well, here's the scoop.

Late last year I posted an article talking about consuming serialized media in general, and mentioning an awexome webcomic called Questionable Content in particular.

Jeph is known for his serial background humor. For example, he will have posters in the background it might take one or more strips just to see all of, every in-world "day" some new barrista humor is chalked into the blackboard menu at the coffee shop of DOOM, and people wear offbeat tee-shirts at arbitrary times.

This morning I was astonished to find out that I HAD BEEN MADE INTO A TEE-SHIRT! And that furthermore, Dora be wearing me! ;D

Copyright Abolition

2009-07-04T18:24:00.001-07:00

Hello friends, I am sorry that I haven't written in my blog much recently. It seems like I only post here when I have a new machinema to publish, or when I get an email from Google that gets me riled up about consumer rights online.

In a previous post, I made my stand clear regarding online privacy. Today I would like to talk about my feelings regarding Copyright, which are probably even more unusual and surprising.

I am a pirate. I download songs, software, movies and TV shows without paying money for the privilege. Virtually everyone I know that knows how to even remotely use a computer commits some form of piracy or another on a regular basis, but they normally qualify it with strange conditions such as "I only download content that is hard to find to purchase legally", or "I only download material I've already paid for legally", or "shaddap I don't want to talk about it right now."

I have always been mystified by this ethical double standard so many practice, and until recently I shared in it. Essentially, I did not understand what copyright law should look like, but I did feel strongly that if someone online had material they chose to share with me (being an anonymous neighbor on the nets) that any law preventing this based upon the material itself is a form of censorship and I didn't get too broken up over resisting that.

Sometime over the last year, I have however been able to solidify my position. I've come to back a political ideology which would leave copyright law quite simple indeed, on account of it being entirely absent.

I have come to the conclusion that the best legal framework for society to grow and innovate in is one where copyright law simply does not exist. Period. No copyright. None. Ever. Finito.

At first glance, you would think that is a common conclusion that a pirate would come to, given that pirates are best known for logging onto bittorrent and gnutella based services to download every kind of media which exists as soon as it is released. But once you start plumbing people's political opinions in popular online dialogues, the picture starts looking very different indeed.

Apparently, most internet users seem more interested in Copyright Reform, most popularly (though I cannot find a mid-page link to a quote, tellingly enough) reducing the copyright term
limit to roughly 14 years and making it easier for consumers to legally make more use of their purchases. However, since I personally estimate that more than half of online copyright infringement involves material less than 14 years old (put another way, newer than the world wide web?) most of these people are gunning for a law that they would still be breaking once it's ratified.

I on the other hand, and the few people I know of who agree with me, submit that copyright law is simply harmful on a large scale. Put in the barest terms, creation of work should not entitle any person to interfere in every transaction that third parties engage in all around the world merely to artificially inflate the value of the work. Unhindered communication is magnitudes more valuable to the global community than the ability to profit from reselling infinitely copyable non-commodities.

I have made my point a number of different ways in the past, normally in rebuttal in online forums, but I found myself writing an email to a friend today and a couple of hours later I had completed another illustration which details my feelings on the matter quite well. So, I decided to post it here instead.

I imagine a world like ours in most respects, I will call it Lacuna. For the simplicity of this illustrations, the Lacunans speak English.

There is a custom that Lacuna artists can invent new words. So long as the word they invent follows certain phonetic rules, and so long as nobody claims prior use of the word, they can call it their own and then charge others for the convoluted right of being able to use the word in discussion. The definition is set by the author, but much like the "meaning" of any art it is really more decided by the consumers and the artist stays ahead of this evolution taking credit for meaning it that way all along.

There is glamorous public interest in Lacuna for these new, forbidden words. They do little to forward actual communication since so few people are really familiar with them, but speakers of them have status. They sound important because they utter words they had to burn money to obtain license to. Soon, commoners who hear these words spoken often enough figure out how to pronounce and write them, and some begin doing so.

Oh no! The market value of these new "works of art" are being threatened by counterfeiters! Customer demand in words that have been sullied by common tongues drops. So the industry does the only thing it can do in it's own reasonable self-interest. It either lobbies for new laws or perverts existing laws to levy ever greater punishments against those who speak these hallowed words in public.

Soon, commoners know to be careful not to say such forbidden things where they might be heard. Still, when alone and out of earshot of the aristocracy they vie for status among one another by demonstrating working knowledge of the forbidden art. This leaves commoners less impressed by aristocrats who use the words which commoner's have "cracked", dropping aristocratic demand for "cracked" words, and leading to still more invasive prosecution attempts against commoners including monitoring all private communication, rewarding individuals who report speech violations and even posing as commoners to try to catch them in the act.

All the while, new "hallowed" words are created which hew closer and closer in pronunciation and/or spelling to actual words of the original English language. If commoner's using hallowed words devalue them commercially, then surely the coined usage of hallowed words devalue the communicational power of English words, do they not? One notable wordsmith, Dalt Wisney, goes so far as to craft new commercial words which sound very similar to some of the first words Lacunans use in the English Language growing up. Whether he had planned to or not, over the next two generations he derailed the aristocracy into using his words exclusively in favor of their plain English counterparts, and guaranteed that they would pay him (and his successors) for the privilege to do so indefinitely. As time wore on, the original English vocabulary sounded crass and unpolished to aristocratic ears, and the commoners who invoked such vulgar language were shunned and ridiculed.

A time came where virtually none of the English language still had coin in this world. You can try to speak it, but noone will understand you because even most commoners work their fingers to the bone for the very privilege of communicating to their employers with alien, hallowed vocabularies. Some groups of people still try to band together, keeping the English language alive amongst themselves and abiding by what they interpret the law to require all at the same time, but it takes only a cease and desist letter or court order to quash such attempts since none of the participants can afford the bureaucracy of defending their freedoms in court.

Then a day comes when a prosecutorial equilibrium is reached. The peasants are so far subjugated they cannot recall what freedom is like (Stockholm Syndrome). They still communicate, but only by working hard to pay for what small vocabularies they have. None wish to rock the boat and anger the aristocrats — who give them language so reasonably — by speaking out of turn, so the world persists in a sort of Nash Equilibrium. No utility or true societal benefit stems from the subversion to natural language, and much suffering is evident: but not visible from within this society, nor can any party see any individual action they could take which would better their lot.

The day the wireless telegraph is invented in Lacuna, nobody saw it's potential to shift the balance of power in a battle everyone thought was over long ago. It opens a new avenue of communication between people. Between businesses, between aristocrats, and even difficult-to-monitor communication between far-flung commoners.

So, commoners begin learning Morse code and tapping at one another. Early models of the machine support abysmally low bit rates, so to begin with you can only get simple, 10-100 kilobyte hallowed words across at a time. Most commoners use this device for major announcements, such as the hallowed equivalents of "Baby!" or "Marry?" or "Won!" hoping that shared context will help to complete the communication. There is nowhere near enough capacity to reliably communicate truly lucrative hallowed words.

Soon enough, bitrates begin increasing. The thresholds by which long words can be transmitted are passed long before the sluggish aristocracy is prepared for the ramifications. Now, geographically distant commoners who have paid for disjoint vocabulary sets begin sharing one another's words so that they can understand each other. Each time they do habit causes them to glance over their shoulder, but they find that nobody is there to reprove them. This mode of communication is technologically fairly private, but the privacy people experience is practicably perfect due to lack of repressive interest in what they have to say.

Commoners find that their communicational effectiveness increases somewhat as they learn inexpensive words used heavily elsewhere, as they are used lightly where they live too. So that's what this commoner's boss has been saying behind his back all this time? Oh, this other commoner can now understand parts of news reports that were not initially meant to be perceived by poor people. The list goes on.

As small pockets of commoners begin to see the value of sharing these words illegally — and the capacity to get away with it in this new communications medium — some band together ahead of the curve of public awareness to create a clearinghouse that they call "Vocabster", where people are free to advertise what words they know and browsers can elect to learn whatsoever words they please. Soon, the users of this service command a powerful communicative arsenal.

It takes some time for the aristocracy to respond to the equalizing effect of this informational weather system which is damaging their hegemony. They know they cannot admit it's existence without drawing public attention to it and potentially worsening the problem. The story does break however with a single, wealthy, disgruntled wordsmith throwing a brick at the very segment of the population who are interested in the words he invents. Later it will be made clear that he owns no right in these words either, he has sold them to his publishing house in exchange for enhanced noteriety. One day he will publicly admit to logging on to such a clearing house to be taught how to use a word which he invented, but later forgot the details of. He states that he was not too cheap, but simply too busy to engage in the growing bureaucracy required to re-purchase his word.

Vocabster is threatened with court orders, and it resists all threats publicly, improving it's notability every time. Eventually it is taken to court, and thereafter "purchased" into oblivion, but not before other clearing houses with even more advanced technology take it's place.

Next, the aristocracy begins threatening individual commoners with jailtime for participating in these clearinghouses. This is perhaps a century removed from the early attempts at vocabularital freedom, so the public is simply not prepared for the hard demands made by the aristocracy in these cases nor are the aristocracy properly prepared to wage so many small battles simultaneously. While they try many people who have gone so far as to profit from their counter-establishment activities, all of the PR focuses on the 7 year olds, grandmothers and poor college students who are drug into court instead. Guilty or not of the sharing they are accused of, they hew as far from the picture of a hardened criminal as the public can understand. This helps illuminate how much power the commoners have achieved, how little the establishment still holds, and helps to make it clear how little the Lacunan aristocracy values the lives of individual commoners when they cannot be fleeced properly.

Another popular place online in this world is a bulletin board called Wordtube, where people can share short messages with one another. Up and coming word smiths use this place to craft and share their own words, determining their popularity and cutting their teeth. Some people share commercial words here unaltered, and when enough attention is drawn the Wordtube administration takes these down. What few expected are how many wordsmiths might create portmanteaus of commercial words to communicate their own point, and then use the power of this bulletin board to disseminate their hybrid creations. Instead of vetting the research to make sure no similar hallowed word exists, and finding out what complicated pronunciations flow easily off the tongue, and hiring a lawyer to back their property claim: they borrow parts from a pool of words which are proven to work for their audience and remix their own efforts from there. Unfortunately, this practice is also illegal and many ameture wordsmiths have their work summarily removed by Wordtube and related "legal" sharing services, unless the individual feels so fervently about their work that they can afford to go to court over the matter.

While they don't realize it, hybridisation is precisely how language evolved in Lacuna before it became commercialized, and sharing is exactly how it propagated. In Lacuna it was once believed that the common person understanding a word or finding utility for it was so much more valuable than prostrating yourself before it's coiner that everyone used words with roots hundreds or even thousands of years old, and noone remembered who first coined any of them. A man could simply open his mouth and speak his peace without first signing himself into bondage for a vocabulary portfolio.

But now the battle is engaged once more. The liberal commoners are empowered by a curiously difficult to censor communications network. The aristocrats on the other hand are positively giddy. Not because of the capability they may have to profit with their old, corrupt business model over this network if they can ever re-master control, why think so small? But because now they can paint themselves as victims to try to exact power over the very network itself, and the ability to censor non-vocabulary related material when doing so leads to their profit. The aristocrats leverage the attitudes of the commoners which they have brainwashed. Commoners who have invested in the old model, and feel as though their investments and hard work would be nullified, putting them at a disadvantage should the free-language advocates win. Commoners dreaming of the beautiful new million-dollar words coming out this summer which they can purchase a right to hear if the liberals simply do not piss off the establishment too much. Commoners with dollar signs in their eyes, imagining the earnings they could make by creating and profiting from their own words.. not realizing their artful creations would simply be purchased by aristocratic organizations and the artist simply signed into bondage like the golden goose, or relegated to obscurity if they do not agree to the establishment's terms.

Such unfortunate souls worry that if liberals had their way, there would be no incentive for people to invent new words! Who would spend millions researching long, complicated utterances when they will not make return on investment? There is so much risk involved you see, since your word may prove unpopular, and you won't know until after you've already committed your investment. Everyone would get tired of the words we currently use to one up one another, and then all speech would grind to a halt! Apparently, we would drown in our own liberty. They call a liberal who merely sits at home, learning whatever words he chooses easily over the telegram "greedy", adding the hallowed equivalents of other choice inferences such as "unprincipalled, fat, slob". It is claimed that the liberals rock the boat simply to one-up hard working citizens with their ill-gotten vocabulary, and any claims to natural right over language are scoffed at.

Thus, the 3-part opera occurring in the real world we live in can be illustrated using slightly different terms, to help illuminate to the layperson the depth and breadth of how natural rights are perverted by our global content production industries into a new, innocent-seeming status quo. Most people cannot imagine the power of an interconnected network like this world's Internet, they see it only as a means to purchase and obtain canned content and perhaps to pass short emails to one another. However we can cooperate with each other instead if we choose. We can participate in the creation of content, we can be both producer and consumer. It's not an activity everyone would feel comfortable investing themselves in overnight, but if it becomes a fad and enough of your friends and family participate you know that one day you will too. However, such processes cannot get off the ground so long as creating, sharing, and echoing content are forbidden by powerful people and company's with no interest in anything but monetizing whatever content is in their control. You cannot share their content without being sued or cut from communities such as Youtube over threats of suit. You cannot make your own creations based upon their content or anything conspicuously similar for the same reason, you cannot even make fully original content which competes with theirs or which they would have any reason whatsoever to object to because court threats function as a form of censorship. Unless your content makes so much bank for you that you can afford to meet your accusers in court, you are simply gagged by process, while in the meantime access to all meaningful art in our culture is traded and groomed by profiteers. Notice I said "meaningful" art, not "good" art. The Lacunans in my parable found that the versitile, natural English language lost all import once the publicly vaunted, though inferior hallowed language came into coin. This is the crisis we face in our culture as well, as fewer people consume old media and we are alienated from any cultural reference that is not covered by copyright.

I hope this long post has made sense to some people (though I am certain zero people would read it through, even if six billion were given a chance ;3) now I'll go try and see some fireworks with the family.

One small step for bat

2009-03-25T16:58:00.001-07:00

One giant leap for.. well.. I'm not really part of any larger groups at all, am I? lol

So after much work, I have been able to perfect recording movies out of that Second Life game that I play so much. Here is my first test complete with voice chat and in-game sounds. Let me know your thoughts, ye fictional reader? ;3

Taking a step to resist Google's advertising-based privacy invasions

2009-03-13T13:03:00.000-07:00

I run a website that has traditionally run Google's adwords advertisements. I don't get a lot of traffic, but after 5 years of business my adwords account is now up to a handsome $13usd.

Because I run this website, Google emailed me yesterday to let me know that — as an advertiser — my website will need to update it's privacy policy.

Why? Because Google will now be tracking the behavior of individual users via their "interest-based advertisements" in order to better target them with ads. Apparently, this is among the suite of technologies they gained access to by purchasing DoubleClick.

I have to update my privacy policy, now that Google has drafted me to help them invade the privacy of my users. I guess they just don't want me to be caught off-guard and get sued for their actions. Thanks for the head's up there, Google.

So I've researched the matter further. According to this faq item there is no way for a publisher to opt out of this "service". While you might be able to opt out of displaying ads resulting from such collected data, there is no way to opt out of actually helping to collect the data aside from quitting the adwords program entirely. (Well Google, it looks like you'll be cutting me a check for that $13 after all now, doesn't it?)

So, severing that business relationship takes a load off of my mind. Nonetheless, there is still the matter of us consumers. How may we protect ourselves against such behavioral targeting?

Checking Google's FAQ, they recommend that you opt out of their spying with a cookie. Isn't that a clever idea? Use a cookie to ask not to get cookies?

Even this irony is not lost on Google. They know that users like to be able to clear out their cookies, and might find it counter-productive to clear out their anti-cookie cookie. So Google has developed a Firefox plugin to maintain their special cookie, even if you delete all the rest of your cookies.

Of course, this unprecedented insult to the dignity of internet users worldwide begs many questions:

Is their plugin secure, or will it mine my computer from an even more tender vantage point?

Would it be reasonable to trust Google to maintain this plugin indefinitely? What if it stops working — even by design. How would we even know?

Will you be forced to use a browser their plugin is compatible with before you can be protected from their snooping?

What if Google can use this one opt-out cookie to perform all of their tracking needs? All it has to be is an identifier keyed against the database in their servers, after all.

Should we trust the remedy of our oppression to our very oppressor?

Should a user's privacy and dignity be stripped away by default, and only protected voluntarily if we ask nicely enough and jump through some hoops?

I encourage my readers to tip Google's opt-out cup back into their laps. There must be one or many better ways for a user to protect their online privacy. I would like my readers to be able to read what I am saying without fear of being spied upon for example, since Blogger is hosted by Google.. but also because most free blogging platforms presently feature Google or DoubleClick advertisements.

So I will list the counter-options that I am aware of which users can use to defend themselves. I don't have much just now, but I encourage you to post comments (or email me at jesset@gmail.com) with better suggestions or clarifications, and I will update this article accordingly.

Firefox plugin Ad blocker, blocks most well-known advertising networks, including Google and DoubleClick, and also blocks the dreaded Google Analytics website tracking script.

Browser-agnostic proxy-filter Privoxy, you can run this from Windows or Unix based machines. Instruct your browser to use this proxy, and on non-SSL based connections it will actively scrub ad code, scripts, image bugs, and annoyances from web pages.. it also scrubs your outbound HTTP headers for popular personally-trackable data. Unfortunately, from it's vantage point as a proxy it cannot aid with SSL-based connections.

Come on guys, help me fill out this list!

So it comes down to us, we must arm ourselves in order to enjoy a relatively non-obtrusive stay on the interwebs. I have never used Ad Block before. I have a firefox bookmarklet that manually squashes visually annoying ads, but aside from that I have not been bothered and I have clicked on advertisements which I have found interesting. That was back when the web was stateless. Now however, it appears as though I'll have to take the step of saying goodbye to advertisements, and tell Google, and every other web-ad provider to take their revenue streams and shove them.

I am sorry, I truly am.. but when you exploit your position in the industry to grind the little guy like so much wheat, I simply cannot defend or support you any more. I will continue to bilk free services from you, Yar Har Fiddle Dee Dee, but I will actively do what I can to protect my privacy. I will junk your advertisements and I will encourage others to do so. I will take, and take pains not to give back. If this attitude is burdensome to you Google, then you ought to change your policies and apologize to your public.. bind yourself procedurally to be kept honest.. or else we will abide until the day that someone who can accomplish that will replace you.

Monkeys and typewriters

2008-12-27T14:13:00.000-08:00

If 10 monkeys assailed 10 typewriters for 10 minutes you would eventually get a realtime stream from 4chan /b/

This is the Freelancer's domain!

2008-10-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

Heed all ye who approacheth!

In the year of our lord 1992 I used Autocad r11 (yes there was an r11 :D) and mathematically prepared a blend of a sierpinski triangle with a penrose.. triangle.. and made the unholy figure you see illustrated here.

Then, combined with the zany text you see, I affixed this 4'x3' banner to my bedroom door. At the time, I was known by the pre-interweb moniker "The Freelancer" and I think some of our friends called ourselves "The Triad" so..

Anyway! That's a rundown of some of my crazy high school antics! :D The end

Media crashing into "now"

2008-08-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

The Evolution of Faye

I am a connoisseur of serial, archived media content.
For example, I download entire seasons of television programs from the interweb, and watch them when I want to.

One invariable side effect of this approach is your media crashing into "now". That is when your cozy backlog of new material to consume runs out, and you have to wait with every other schlep for the next episode to air.

Bit torrent is good and our friend, so as soon as there is an official airing anywhere in the world, I can has a copy. For example I can see Doctor Who months before it airs here in the states (I actually bought online and gave several of my friends important T-shirts months before the episode "Blink" aired, complete with weeping angels (the design is no longer available online, just text only or no text now!)

Yet still, you feel so mortal waiting for the next episode!

I also read web comics. I have RSS for most of mine, so they are easy to keep track of.

But I began reading Questionable Content a couple of weeks back. I hit "first" and just read through from the beginning since it's a good serial, and I had no hope of properly understanding the backstory without.. well.. reading it.

But now, 10 days and 1213 episodes later. *bam!* it's now-time! whaaanh! I ran out of QC!

I suppose the consolation is now I can make use of JJ's RSS Feed now. No more guessing and searching for where I left off last ;)

How to port forward like a pimp daddy

2008-08-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

SSH can tunnel TCP ports for you. But what if you need to tunnel UDP as well? SSH doesn't speak UDP.

Oh. But netcat does. Also, netcat is awexome. Throw in a fifo and you'll be taking over the world in no time. Just ask Guillaume Cottenceau, he will show you how it's done, friend. :3

I had never used a fifo before; I wasn't even sure what they did. They sure seem nice! But notice the end of the article? After patting yourself on the back for making netcat and fifo's dance, you learn that socat laughs and does the job of both of them simultaneously. :)

to be strictly accurate, socat itself is capable of openssh encryption so....... if you work out another authentication method, socat could even replace the SSH client and server in this tunnel!!1!one

I, for one, welcome our new socket forwarding overlords. :D

The Device HAS been modified, yo!

2008-07-04T01:28:00.000-07:00

So some students from the Digipen Institute of Technology Had an idea for a game. Of course, it's an idea stolen from a book series I never wrote in high school -- specifically; what would happen if you could create planar portals in pairs (doorways if you will .. Monster's Inc did this too!) that both physically and visually linked two locations in regular space?

My treatise explored what such power would do to society (security, construction, travel, etc). Monster's Inc explored the concept as a doorway to alternate worlds (back and forth between Earth and Monstropolis). These folk weaponized their portals and built a couple of FPS: most notably "Portal" which twists and tortures the celebrated HL2 Source/Havok engine.

Critical reception was strong. The quirky game mechanic melded wonderfully with an OCD story line and cast of characters so short as to be virtually non-existant. Fans went wild (in spurts), sometimes fan game maps were made. Sometimes fanart. VGCats made a Comic Strip and an AMV based on the credits song "Still Alive". Penny Arcare envisioned an infinite slide using this tech. Randall Munroe gave villian GlaDOS a boyfriend.

A music group with no website who appropriately named themselves "Victims of Science" remixed sounds from the game and some of the dialog by GlaDOS and the turrets to make a song called "The Device has been Modified". It became popular enough to rival the following of the original end-credits song "Still Alive" by Jonny Coulton.

TDHBM is actually really fun to AudioSurf to as well. One day I found a video someone made of them playing AS to TDHBM. I felt like whipping that link out into chat today, so I did's a video search.

But I found this first.

Apparently this thecybercat dude is one of the best Portal players in the world, with record speed runs posted on Youtube.

Also, he can swing himself some visual effects. This is some kind of AMV he's got here.
But the link underneath that in Youtube says "Go check out my NEW version of this! It's way better" and then that leads you here:

...

er,

...

Sorry, this just makes me mentally blue screen and I can never remember what I just saw. But check out the Youtube comments on that sumbitch! The response is unanimous and uncontested (as of this blogposting); thecybercat now has an undead army at his command.

Now I'm wondering where you can get higher res versions of these videos for mah media center? :3

Cest amoure?

2008-04-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

They say that the internet is a place which enables stalkers to track down their prey. Some have cited Second Life as a venue which is often used to this purpose.

This is a short story about a pretty young lady caught up in just such a scenario. It's just that she's, you know, not precisely the one being followed ;)

Yay, Florida!

2008-04-15T04:32:00.000-07:00

Eric and Darla and I have all arrived safe in Boca Raton. Just keepin' y'all up to date! :)

- - Jesse/Happ

All Hail Windlight!

2008-04-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

Where did this picture come from you ask? Did I go crazy with the photoshopitude?
I did no such thing. This is a straight up screen shot of Second Life's new Release Candidate.

2-3 times better frame rate on client side effects (like tv screens, flexiprims, particles) water and sky effects, as you can see, look breathtaking. The sunset even casts a warm, orange glow upon my hat :D

For comparison, fellow Legendary Covenant member MikeR took a screenshot using the regular software of roughly the same scene:

I is are a creature of teh nite!

2008-03-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

Watch owt, I bite U!
Photo taken in Sammie's hip pad.

Alright, so here's a run down of my adventures thus far in Second Life. Why? Well, real life is less interesting to blog about.

First of all, I've put away my orange bugs bunny shirt. Now I is a Vampire Bat! My wings are awexome. Semi translucent. they flap realistically while I fly: especially in complicated maneuvers. My Bat avatar has more features, knobs, and dials to play with than a new car! I can hang from stuff, and as an added bonus, if you mess with me I BITE YOU wif my HOLLOW FANGS! >:[''' *chomp*

I got this getup in Luskwood. I'm really having difficulty locating a comparable area to hang out. 90% of Second Life is myspace-3d, and then there are areas like Avilion Mists that while finely crafted, have such atrociously high prim counts that even my burly laptop grinds to a halt.

I hung around for a group shot. Codex is the gator, far right. Samara is the fairy sandwiched by rabbits on the right. Angelus is the shadowy ball of fluff, claws, and tobacco on the left. The ginger rabbit flirting w/ the camera is Ashton and the narcoleptic giraffe is nighteyes.

I hung around while they were having some group photos taken, so you can see that here. The exercise was described as being like herding cats. And then inevitably Starlight (a cat, not pictured) came wandering in and had the hardest time facing to camera.

I heard a photographer for National Geographic one time describe the process of acclimating wildlife to your presence. He was photographing meerkats, which are notoriously shy creatures. So he would set up his camera equipment, and sit for hours, half the time not even taking pictures: just going through the motions of his daily routine so that the subjects would come to understand that he is not a threat, and he could document their doings uncolored by his proximity.

So, while I only know a handful of the folks who flow through here now, one day everyone will be used to the vampire bat ninja in their midst and I can walk in greeted by "norm" soundclips.

Unusual Precipitation: Griefer attack in Nova Albion. I am hanging from the gang plank, RL compadre Kuro is editing appearance at the end of the plank. LisaHot Juan seen center in pirate garb prepares a proportional response.

Meercats are shy because if they don't keep their guard up, you might eat them. That obviously is no danger in second life, so.. why would anyone here be defensive, or difficult to befriend?

The answer is: Griefers. Wired Magazine ran an oddly troll-feeding article about them last month. Griefers are simply immature pranksters who only feel important when they can successfully frustrate other people. Wired's outlandish article suggests that they keep virtual autocracies in check, and that they are well organized. Neither of these claims are true. They simply spend all of their time flitting from one virtual area to another letting off bomb scripts. Even if the area only has a handful of people in it talking about the weather.

Wired makes them out to be the Socrates Gadfly. Anyone who would actually research their behavior can see it's the same activity as defiling a public restroom. I fear their motives are also congruent.

Duck Pond '08!
Ashton, pictured with me agrees the place could use a "feed ducks" animation.

Luckily, griefers can be avoided. Lusk is an area I am told has some hefty security measures in place (though I have not felt them, so whatever they are don't seem to generate false positives), and I have not seen a griefer attack in this area.

It is also a collection of well developed sims (aka "simulators", as individual server machines tend to specific hectares of virtual land). Most other areas have a small gathering place to host many avatars, and tons of wasted land without. This being because the load of all the avatar connections and the prims needed to decorate their surroundings often draws all the power of a machine that tends a rather large geographic area.

In Luskwood the design appears to be more broadly maintained. If you leave the main social area, you are greeted with 2 sims worth of entertaining environment. On a recent journey I found a duck pond (pictured), mocked up RF and server rack mount network operation centers, general store, gazebo, playground, RC race track, well stocked pub, lighthouse, art centers, endless walkways between intricate treehouses, and the incomplete workings of a 2005 series TARDIS.

All of these places are abandoned relics from as long ago as 2003. But I wasn't alone for all of my travels, as a friend spotted me wandering around the grounds and came to join my expedition.

So there you have it. The Second Life universe appears to be obtaining a critical mass sufficient to make it interesting enough to outweigh all of it's current shortcomings (griefers, closed-source architecture and all) that I may continue to visit often.

If you stop by, look me up. My gamertag is Happ MacDonald.

As discussed with Namowal..

2008-03-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

As discussed with Namowal, I decided to try the "draw an illustration about a song while the song is playing" routine.

My first suggestion in the game was to pick a song coming up on the radio, you'd have no preconception or preperation, making it more impromptu.

I tried that: but I kept getting crappy songs and had to wait through them. :(

So I gave up and just pulled an mp3 of mine. :)

The other suggestion we were discussing was to not name the song when we show the picture, see if people can guess the song. So I'll do that.

This is pencil on paper, colors inverted and levels adjusted in photoshop.

Namowal said you could leave clues in the picture. I tried, but I think you'll find all my clues are visually indecipherable. ;)

Let's see if this is guessable? (or just horrible?)

Thanks guys :)

Second Life Second Chance

2008-03-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

My friend Wynnter is left of center, hybrid of red dress and nuclear rave sticks. I am china hat and bugs bunny Tshirt, right of center.

So since I have my new laptop now, which is tres fast and has marvelous 3d capabilities, I decided to log my old character Happ MacDonald back on to SL and see how things were going.

Apparently much better than when I left.

Population is up. Lag is down. I still crash every hour or so, but it's gotten worthwhile enough to log back on.

The best part is: Textures and world will load in no more than 60 seconds or so now! That's less warming up than my car needs in the morning.

The other best part is: Voice chat!

Apparently not many people have microphones. Of those that do, not many are brave enough to use them. So if you can speak with ease into the mic, you suddenly become one of the top 2% coolest people in the room. Since most rooms have less than 50 people, you're essentially running the show.

Easy, hunh? ;)

Get chatting with folks who also use voice chat (even if they only hear you and type back) and the experience becomes much more immersive. No more typing, reading subtitles, and navigating all at the same time. You're just .. there. Maxin' and relaxin'.

Today I showed up in a treehouse containing dancing furries. (Lufia? Luftballoons? What was the place called..) They were playing Radio Nigel (sweet!). I join in, a friend of mine from last night follows me in, and the floodgates just open up. I've attached a pic of what things got to. Apparently I was the only one rendering at upwards of 6 FPS, but it was fun. :)

For Sally Cruikshank: Revised Bot Code ideas

2008-03-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

Trackback from Sally Cruikshank: Bot Code (for Jesse) or anyone else who likes code

Aside from length, I trackback this because I can go to "Edit Html" and use <pre> tags to keep my code indentation intact from here. :)

So anyways, for Sally, I recommend a code approach like this if you are up to it.

This code is Javascript mind you; you can copy it and save it as an html file and test that in your browser if you'd like to make sure it works.

I am pretty confident it will become working Actionscript 3 if you only sprinkle in the right :type specifiers (the hard part 4me), replace "alert" with "trace", and remove the <script></script> tags. (oh yeah, and I use "prompt" near the end so.. hard code something? ;)

As this grows, you'll want to keep the Corpus in one or more seperate .as files I think, just to make life easier. But there should be no trouble compiling them straight in with the actionscript.

Ok: so this code is helpful because:
• It keeps the Pattern labels (ALICE/AIML calls them "categories") together with the regex patterns and together with the answer collections.
• It lets you easily use groups matched from the regex in the answer strings: just call upon $1, $2 etc
• If you want to call upon the entire match, $& might work (Perl told me it would lol) but if not you can just put () around the whole pattern. :)
• Finally, maybe best of all, it allows you to — at your own discretion — mix live functions with string answers in the corpus. So your bot can call out to a search engine, or obtain the time, or play chess.

There are some other ideas that could expand the mental powers further, but this should help get the osprey in the air. :)

GL Sally


<script>

// Other AI projects call "the list of facts known by the bot" a "corpus" of knowledge.
var corpus = {
  // These labels like "rg0" (or whatever are arbitrary. Just don't let them overlap.
  // Down the road this should ease in any design decisions where "ASK-AGE" might need to defer response to "ASK-IMPOLITE-QUESTION"
  'rg0': {
    'regexp': /goomba/i,
    'answers': ["goomba is nice","GOOMBA?","goomba-never"]
  },
  // Should I be asking Whinsey about Goombas?? She plays Mario Bro now?

  'rg1': {
    'regexp': /It is/i,
    'answers': ["It certainly is","is what?"]
  },
  
  'rg2': {
    'regexp': /clean/i,
    'answers': ["It's clean already","how clean","cleaner than dirt","like, Mr. Clean?"]
  },
  // Inspired by "clean your room" I am surmising?
  
  'name': {
    'regexp': /My name is (.*[a-z])/i,
    'answers': ["Pleased to meet you, $1", "$1 is such a nice name!"]
  },
  // Regular expression memory demonstrated here
  
  'pickanumber': {
    'regexp': /Pick a number between (\d+) and (\d+)/i,
    'answers': [
      "Sorry, had a fly in my ear. Between what and what now?",
      function(result) {
        var a = parseInt(result[1]);
        var b = parseInt(result[2]);
        var m = Math.floor(Math.random() * (b-a))+a;
        
        return("I choose "+ m);
      }
    ]
  },
  // Function call outs demonstrated here. As well as sass.
  // Javascript "anonymous functions" are endlessly entertaining to play with I think. :)
  
  'default': {
    'regexp': /./,
    'answers': ["Whatchu talkin bout, willis?", "[insert cheezy pickup line here]"]
  }
  // I'm using a regexp to include a customizable default reply into the corpus.
}

// I challenge you to answer my question...
function challenge(testline)
{
  var i;
  // for(x in y)  is a great construct for iterating over a hash structure. It's like your for(i=0; i<answers.length; i++)
  // except who needs to use meaningless numbers for labels?
  // Although I don't know if Actionscript randomizes the order for hashes. Some languages do, some don't. 
  // if that happens to you I'll write up a fix.
  
  // So here, "i" iterates through every string label, like "rg0" or "pickanumber". i is a string.
  for(i in corpus)
  {
    // if the regexp for the corpus line we are studying matches, we'll invoke "respond" and return..
    // so we don't check any other options after that.
    if(testline.search(corpus[i]['regexp'])>=0)
    {
      return(respond(testline, corpus[i], i));
    }
  }
  // In case the corpus somehow lacks a customizable default reply, I've got a hardcoded one here.
  return("Wow, I didn't see that coming!");
}

// respond gets called with the testline, the corpus segment matched, and the label for that segment.
function respond(testline, category, label)
{
  // Your random code almost exactly... not bad to factor out into a helper function if you use it twice.
  // you know, like I did in this example! (lazy++ ;)
  var m = Math.floor(Math.random() * category.answers.length);
  
  // So we choose an answer.. which is either a string or an anonymous function.
  var ans = category.answers[m];
  
  // We prep "tmp" as a result set for our match itself.
  var tmp = testline.match(category.regexp);

  if(typeof(ans)=='string')
  
  // If ans is a string, we do something exciting. We match our regex against tmp[0],
  // replacing it with ans, and return the result! tmp[0] is identical to testline
  // except it lines up with our regexp so the regexp does not need ^ or $
  // in order for the replacement to be complete.
  // This is the magic engine that allows the $1..$9 tricks (and others) to work
  // at no extra cost.
  { return(tmp[0].replace(category.regexp, ans)); }

  // ans isn't a string? Hmm. Must be a function then.
  // Call the function, pass in the results of the match as the only argument.
  // Whatever the function returns becomes our answer.
  else { return(ans(tmp)); }
}

var testline = prompt("String?", "");

alert(challenge(testline));

</script>

International Understanding

2008-03-19T00:23:00.001-07:00

I think it's cool for people who don't speak English that we provide instructions for the bacon dispensers in public washrooms.

But what to do when you are at home and feel that sudden pull towards our favorite form of cholesterol? It can be daunting, I know, so we have dug up this handy Flow Chart.

Enjoy!

Quasi .. stopped smoking?

2008-03-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

Trackback to Sally Cruikshank: MAGIC CLAMS

There's been a debate going on as to Quasi being in any newer Sally Cruikshank films.
I don't know if fate wants to bring him back, but trying to recreate the voice sounded fun.

So I tracked down the crazy ol' duck, he had this to say over the phone. Though, it sure sounds like he's given up smoking? oy gevalt!

All in all the excersize was straightforward, I just took the best sounding take from 3 tries. I also spliced together pretty much all of his original dialog as reference. He has a grand total of like 40 seconds of voice time between Quackadero and Psychic.

So that's that, I feel better now. :)

Nina Conti, psychotic ventrilloquist

2008-03-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

She's gorgeous, talented, jet black hair, velvety British accent, great teeth! (you know, bonus points since she's British to begin with ;)

But it all goes to hell once she pulls out her Monkey.

And some more schizophrenic fun straight from the Royal Albert Hall:

Funny Ventriloquist - For more of the funniest videos, click here

A day in the life of a turret

2008-03-15T18:47:00.001-07:00

My pal Vince said he'd stop by the blog, and I know he tried playing Portals recently.

So this blog post happened. :)

No gnus

2008-03-15T03:09:00.001-07:00

See? Now I have time to write, there's just no subject matter. :)

I've been watching Seasons 1 and 2 of The West Wing, Webformix got the Grey Butte transmitters fixed which should make some customers happy, er.. I can't even find a third boring piece to round out this paragraph.

Film at eleven! :)

Bring Sally Up

2008-03-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

or, "Automobile Lemmings"

Found on kotaku.

So what happens when a gamer, and professional video editor decides to collect one thousand replays on a single track of a next-gen race game .. and superimpose them all into a music video?

You get this force of nature:

P.S.: If the title of this post sounds as though it is directed at you, Know that this is the case for approximately 40% of this blog's current audience. ;)

P.P.S.: The 80's are back, baybay!