Reading Radar

I’ve followed Eshi Otawara on Twitter for awhile, not really paying her tweets any more attention than any other person I don’t know real well, which means I scan twitter and occasionally read a tweet of hers here and there. I had a vague sense of who she was knowing she produces works of art in SL and also is friends or acquaintances with Crap Mariner.

This past week or so I noticed her tweeting about her immigration status and possibly being deported and never found out any more about her case until today. Knowing about the podcast, she contacted me to see if maybe I could put the word out to listeners about the Immigrant’s list, especially in the next few days as that’s when her situation is taking place. I told her I doubted I’d have a podcast ready in that period of time (you people know me, need I say more), but I said I’d blog it, and also I plan to follow up later in a podcast.

I encourage you to go and read her story, and decide for yourselves how you feel about this issue and whether or not you want to support initiatives like the immigrant’s list. One thing I can say about the US government’s handling of immigration for sure, and that is that it’s not always those who deserve to be deported who are. Nor is it always those who “deserve” (wow, that sounds harsh) to stay who are allowed to. And in terms of getting things done in a timely manner, forget it. It’s the worst. I imagine post 9/11 it’s a lot worse than ever.

I know from having lived outside the US for several years of my own life that other countries certainly don’t hesitate to boot you out when your time is deemed over, so in that regard, we aren’t unique, but again, the way we handle immigration and deportation often leaves a huge amount to be desired. Sometimes shipping people out by letter of law from a slow, onerous government agency is not conducive to anyone’s best interests.

What can I say? It’s fun being a spider monkey!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0enBoRZbF-0&hl=en]

Exploring Bay City the other night, we came across a guy named Marcelles Dreamscape. I don’t know if he’s related to Nika or not, but his companion had the same last name. But who cares about her, check out this guy’s ‘fro. I LIKE it!!

I really should have asked where he found that. I just know Keeme would want one.

I’ve personally owned computers since 1984. Before that, I used computers owned by family members. I’ve built my own computers, many of them over the years, set up small networks, installed operating systems from all three major camps (MS, Apple, various Linux distros). I’ve written web applications and done programming of all kinds to some extent. I work with unix systems all day at work, configuring them, installing updates, debugging them. Etc, etc. I’m not saying this to brag, or show how much I know. I really don’t. The more I know, the more I know I need to know. But I’m not a total rube when it comes to technology, even though there’s lots of people with more in-depth knowledge than mine in any given specific area.

So, I have to wonder… how does the neophyte or the non-technician deal with some of the issues that have been roadblocking me lately? Yesterday was one such frustrating day. And then it was capped off with another bummer on top of it all. Here comes a long, lengthy diatribe, so if you have something better to do, now’s the time.

You might recall my various trials with SL over the months. Awhile back, I bought a Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo with Nvida 8600M GT graphics. At the time, SL would leak memory until it locked up the entire machine on that particular computer. LL admitted there was some OpenGL issue. It appeared to be Apple’s fault. I couldn’t use that computer and I took it back within a week of buying it. Later, the problem appeared to go away with a combination of a Leopard graphics update and something LL did differently in the (then seperate WL build) windlight client. As a result, once the Penryn Macbook Pros came out early this year, I bought one. It has the Nvidia 8600M GT graphics, but it runs. For the most part. Sigh… I do get LONG beachball (application freezes) with it while running any version of the SL client. And 1.20 RC1, 3, and 4 will lock my computer solid within minutes of logging in. Every time. I’m using 1.20 RC2 right now so that I can use my spacenavigator, and praying that LL figures out why that one doesn’t do that except very rarely, and the other ones do. Every @#$@#%@# time. Did I mention every @#$@#$ time?? Anyway, using SL is an exercise in frustration because of the beachballs. Even simple conversations are frustrating. I’ve been saying “bye” to people before and I can’t respond and they are like “ok, well, bye.”

Then yesterday, I uploaded a video to Blip.tv. The video quality beats YouTube hands down, and they don’t have the length restrictions. Well… that’s great, I can embed it in the Podcast Island blog, but not my own blog (this one). Why? Different versions of wordpress, and .. while Wordpress allows embedding the code for the youtube videos, it does not for the Blip.tv videos in current revisions. Okkkkaaay. So off to youtube. But wait.. It’s too long. Now granted, this particular video is on the SLPN In Your Face video podcast feed, but still. I wanted to get it out there to anyone reading the blog. Answer: No, Radar. You can’t. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t embedding until I dug through Blip.tv’s FAQ and read “Wordpress hates us.”

Now for the fun one. Awhile back, I bought a Time Capsule. In theory, wow. This thing is amazing. And maybe even in practice, maybe I got a Lemon. But I’ve been reading of other people having the same issues. What happens is that I’ll be cruising along, and suddenly wireless connectivity breaks. At times, I’ve had to hard reset the Time Capsule to factory settings and re-configure it all over again. Then it will work for a week or two. Well, last night it stopped handling all networking whatsoever. Even wired. It would work for a few minutes, then.. nothing. I’d start losing things - skype, web, then SL would die. Fortunately I have an Airport Express plugged in which is giving me internet connectivity until I get this fixed. But it’s frustrating - I just bought this $500 (it has the 1 gig drive in it) pile of crap not that long ago. And when it works, it’s magic. When it doesn’t work, I’m driven to throwing electronic devices out my window.

On top of it all, I’m kind of at a crossroads with my podcast. I don’t know what direction to go. I do know that they are too long and too infrequent. I don’t want EVERY show to be “hi, okay, feedback, ok, interview, ok, i have no time to talk” or the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER. That’s why I went a different direction this time. I also went that way because I want people to think about technology. Who controls it? Who gets controlled by it? Who understands it? Etc, etc. It’s not all fun and games, right?

Anyway, if you have any thoughts on the direction I should go, what works, what doesn’t, anything encouraging, whatever. Above all, right now I need honest, direct feedback. Pretend I’m your brother or your favorite dog and you’re leveling with me on something I’m doing. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings or being all polite. I don’t need that, or want that. Just level with me on what the podcast does or doesn’t do for you, and what it should or should not do. It’s all up for grabs. Nothing in the podcast is sacred, and anything can be tossed if it’s not of value.

And please understand if I don’t say a lot in response to you in-world until I get through some of these frustrations. I’m probably trying to curtail the swear words flowing through my brain from making it out into public communication.

Ok, I lied… it’s not that tiny but it is attached to Tiny House on Podcaster Island. I decided to add a deck there where people could hang out, watch video podcasts, listen to music, dance if they feel like it, sit in the pool, and generally have something to do while they wait for the next beachball to come along (Mac owners know what I mean). Note: this is a work in progress.

There’s an upper deck area that I want to make into kind of a DJ platform.

It has a pool on the opposite end of the deck.

It’s pretty much going to be bigger than Tiny House.

There should always be a couple friends hanging around to talk to.

It’s obviously not done yet and I’m debating making it fixed, or rezzable as needed. Either way, adding that to the playground toys in the NW corner of the plot, there should be something to keep wanderers interested for a second or two.

In the last post, I detailed my issues with both 1.19.1.4 and 1.20.. and the issue of 1.20 locking up the Mac really sucks, because this awesome little device needs 1.20 to work. This thing rocks.. I used it for a few minutes this afternoon before 1.20 locked up my Mac again, switching between flycam and avatar movement modes, and enjoying it. And I have to say.. if you’ve never used flycam, wow. The camera go go anywhere without having to alt-click to make something your focal point first. Just use the spacenavigator (or joystick if you wanna go back to 2d movements on a 3d canvas) to move the camera anywhere you want. It’s amazing.

So, in theory, someday they’ll resolve this issue, and then my video recording explorations in SL will be even easier and more fun than ever. In the meantime, I opened a jira issue report on 1.20 for doing mean things to the Mac. If you have similar issues, please vote on it. Let them know you’d like it fixed.

I have a confession. I’ve never really settled for second rate computers. I used to build my own PC’s, and prior to that I upgraded regularly. Now that I have all Macs, I upgrade fairly regularly now too. My primary computer is a Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz (Penryn) with 4 GB of RAM and Nvidia 8600M GT with 512 MB of VRAM. I have a quad-core Mac Pro with 2 2.66 GHz dual core Xeon processors, 4 GB of RAM, and ATI X1900 graphics with 512 MB of VRAM. These machines are not slouches. They may not have the best graphics cards available at any price, but they should be able to handle Second Life without complaining too much. And they do.. kind of. But in some ways it’s getting more painful instead of less painful.

People who don’t have Macs don’t know what we mean when we say “I was having a beachball” (some people call it a pinwheel). It means the App or sometimes the Finder is doing something that causes it to become temporarily non-responsive. It’s kind of like the windows hourglass or the Vista “ring”. I think I got that right - I’ve hardly ever used Vista, so any mistakes there are unintentional. Please no angry emails about how little I know about Vista - I already know how little I know, and I don’t care. Write your own blog post. Anyway.. when you beachball in SL, a lot of fun things can happen. If you are flying, you might wind up at the sim edge, underwater, up at 4000 m, or any combination thereof, when you return from your little vacation. The other night, Chug and I went to Harmony Island for a Jaycatt and Frogg event, and I wound up walking off the venue and into someone’s house. I “came to” in their kitchen. I have no clue how I got in - maybe they have phantom walls? I don’t know.

Here’s me flying along as normal over Podcaster Island…

Here’s me beachballing, sure to wind up at the sim edge or crashing into something when I return to normalcy (NOTE: beachball enlarged for dramatic effect - too bad it’s not spinning like the real thing, eh?)…

During these beachballs, the whole SL UI freezes - the image stops still, you can’t type any chat, nothing updates in the SL window until it’s done. This makes doing anything, including sitting and talking to someone, a real bitch. Forget about flying or driving. And currently, I’m getting these in 1.19.1.4 every 2 - 5 minutes, for sometimes up to a minute long.

Ok, so I was hoping 1.20.0 might bring some relief. And sure enough, I don’t have the beachballs. And it’s compatible with the 3dconnexion SpaceNavigator, which should be arriving this morning, which will make machinima and building better than ever. Only one problem. 1.20.0 locks up my Mac. The whole thing. The Finder becomes non-responsive. I can’t switch to other programs, shut down, restart… nothing. All I can do is press the power button until the puter shuts down. Unix systems don’t like that - actually no modern OS does. They page stuff off or leave it in memory and commit it to disk later. It’s not wise to shut down like that a lot. Plus, even if it was the best thing you could do for your computer, it makes that version of SL even more useless on the Mac than the beachballing one.

When I first got into SL, it was my low end Mac holding me back. I had a mini with integrated graphics. Yuck. Never, never, NEVER run any computer with integrated graphics if you want to have even a passable SL experience. Seriously. I got killed in katana fights every time. I guess 3 fps vs someone getting 24 fps or more is not gonna win. But now… Now SL is holding me back. Or Apple’s OpenGL drivers for Nvidia. Or both. Granted, when Apple first started using the Nvidia 8600M GT in the Macbook Pro laptops, it was worse. The thing would just lose memory until the whole computer locked up - at least now I can run 1.19.1.4 and just deal with the beachballs. 1.20.0 gets kind of “memory laneish” but it’s not due to any memory leaks or anything like it used to be. Something else is going on.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, except to say, it sucks being on any of my high-end Macs and being in SL these days. It’s just NOT a good experience. And I really don’t know if I have high hopes for any fixes anytime soon, without some other new problem being introduced. I really don’t. So for now, I’ll avoid driving, flying, any activity that requires the ability to avoid beachballs for long periods of time. Wait, that includes conversations… ok, umm. It was nice talking to you…

SL is like RL, people with no creativity or talent try to make money off the backs of those who do. And I don’t just mean lawyers, marketers, and Web 2.0 types either. Watch this video on Stuart Warf’s blog about the Scapoli Mall in SL. And don’t hesitate to let the vendors there know what you think.

http://psichonico.com/warf/2008/02/09/scapoli-mall/

Chug and I were standing around plotting some PI event or other when she took to jumping on the furniture. SL punished her by breaking her legs. Normally, I’m not one for needless physical suffering, but she did bring it on herself, and besides, she staged a miraculous recovery thanks to a wheelchair she found in her inventory.

I’ve seen the “stiff leg” syndrome with “beachball” freezes and of course crashes… and when someone logs off and their av sticks around for a few seconds, you can push them around all stiff-legged, but this is the first time I’ve seen it on an avatar that’s not planning on going “bye bye” intentionally or otherwise. SL just keeps coming up with new ways to prove that 1’s and 0’s can be funneled in the wrong direction with some careful planning.

I guess “SL” stands for “Stiff Leg”..

Look! Something floating around in front of Rob’s place. What is it? First three people who can guess what this is and what it does, I’ll buy them each their own copy in SL and have it sent to them. You’ll find out what this is by looking around on the west side of podcast island (the north-most of the two islands).

Email me (radar.masukami at the gmail.com thingy) or IM me, or comment here with the right answer to claim your prize. Mmmmmkay? The only rule is that anyone who already has one or knows is kindly requested to .. umm… just shush, ok? And no, I won’t buy you another one.