Tentacolor » adventures

25Nov

Femme Noir

adventures, snapshots No Comments

Some recent posts by Botgirl Questi inspired me to get out my Femme Noir outfit: all-black skin and eyes, fullbright white hair (with signature rainbow strands, naturally) and wings.

Tags: flickr

24Nov

Serving simple HTML by LSL script

adventures, code, howto, tips 3 Comments

I’ve written an LSL script which “serves” custom-generated HTML via a neat trick I discovered. But don’t bust out the champagne just yet — this method is extremely limited, so I don’t expect this to revolutionize HUDs or anything like that. Still, it’s a fun curiosity.

The trick is this: If you use text of the form “data:text/html,[html code here]” as the web URL, Firefox (and maybe other browsers?) will render the HTML code as a web page. For example, visit data:text/html,<html><body><h1>Oh hai!</h1></body></html>, and Firefox will render the words “Oh hai!”. It’s not accessing a web page, and it’s not loading a local HTML file, it’s loading the HTML code from the pseudo-URL.

The same trick works in SL as well, by setting the parcel media URL to the “data:text/html” string. You can use an LSL script to generate the HTML code and set the parcel URL, or even set the URL for an individual avatar. The result is that your LSL script acts as a very simple web server!

However, as I mentioned, there are some serious limitations: SL won’t let you set the web URL to a string longer than 254 letters! That means you have to cram all the HTML code into that tiny string, which severely limits the complexity of the HTML you can display.

Another problem is that the method may not work for other web engines besides Firefox / Mozilla. Linden Lab is (or was recently) working on switching to WebKit, the engine used by Safari, for rendering HTML. That’s good news, since WebKit is some great software, but this little trick might stop working when they switch. So, I wouldn’t rely on it.

So, I don’t expect this method to be more than a silly toy for programmers to play around with. But it is that! And on the plus side, there are signs that we might get proper HTTP server functionality in LSL sometime in the future, which would be a great boon to many scripting industries in SL.

You can get a full-perm copy of the object and script in SL at my sandbox or copy the following code (below the fold, if you’re viewing this on my blog front page) into an LSL script in your own object (in which case you should apply the “*Default Media Texture” to your prim from the Library, or you won’t see anything). Continue reading »

30Aug

The Scripted Leading the Blind

adventures 8 Comments

I had the opportunity to attend a presentation today by Louise Later, who demonstrated two scripted objects, still in development, designed to help people with limited or no vision enjoy Second Life. Given that many sighted people find Second Life challenging to use, one can only imagine the unique difficulties of using it without visual feedback!

The objects — your choice of mobility cane or guide dog — use repurposed sensor and warp scripts to let users navigate and learn about their Second Life surroundings without any visual feedback. The sensor script can scan the surroundings for objects and avatars and output their names into your chat history, where EVA (an SL-specific screen reader) will then read them aloud to you, allowing you to hear a list of everything around you. The warp script can move you to an object or person, or move you through a series of locations (e.g. orientation displays). It can also continuously follow another avatar, perfect for getting a tour of the world from a sighted friend!

Louise told us that a core team of seven programmers, many of them blind* themselves, have developed the scripts, supported by Virtual Ability. They’re looking for additional help (especially more scripters) so if you’re interested in volunteering a bit of your time to a worthwhile and rather interesting cause, send an IM to Louise Later in SL!

* Update 2008-09-07: Louise informs me that only one programmer is totally blind, while she herself is legally blind. But, almost everyone in the group is disabled in some way.

The cane and guide dog objects are available for free at Wheelies. Virtual Ability runs Virtual Ability island, a beautiful tropical island sim with a thorough SL orientation tutorial (with both written signs and audio information!), and the famous Heron Sanctuary.

12Jul

July 17 @ 3PM: Presenting my UI Design

adventures, interface, projects No Comments

What: a presentation of my UI design contest entry.
When: Thursday, July 17 at 3PM SLT (PDT)
Where: Benjamin Linden’s office in SL

Grant Linden has invited me to present my UI design at the SL User Experience Office Hour (SLUXOH) this Thursday at 3PM SLT. Not being one to turn down an invitation from a Linden to show off my goods to the world, I’ll be explaining the design rationale, answering questions from the audience, and waving a laser pointer around and making spaceship sounds with my mouth while we wait for my slide images to rez. I can guarantee it will be a hoot and/or holler. BYOF (bring your own feedback).

By the way, if you’re into this sort of SLUXy stuff, I recommend subscribing to the SL-UX mailing list. There are a bunch of neat people who put forward interesting UI ideas and feedback at sporadic intervals… lots of good times to be had!

P.S. Does this make my butt look FIC?

25Jun

Octopus & Cuttlefish Sketch by Jun Kuroda

adventures, art No Comments

$Sketch of an octopus with tentacles in a heart shape and a thought bubble that says \"(heart shape) Jacek\"$

I commissioned this sketch from Jun Kuroda (SL name), aka rotemu on Plurk, starving artist extraordinaire. She also made a semi-nude of CodeBastard Redgrave and other cool commisioned sketches!

If you want to commission a sketch to call your own, check out her Livejournal page or IM her (Jun Kuroda) in-world. They’re awesome, not at all expensive, and you’ll be helping out a really cool artist! ^_^

Tags: cuddlefish, cuttlefish, Jun Kuroda, octopus, sketch

24Jun

My adventure at Kids5B

adventures, snapshots No Comments

Check out the full set, and check out the Kids5B event!

Tags: flickr

04Jan

Ogle My Avatar [Updated]

adventures, passions, projects 1 Comment

Attention, readers: I’m looking for an enterprising geek to OGLE my avatar — that is, to capture the 3D mesh of my avatar shape.

I will pay L$ or USD$ for a mesh capture of my avatar. I have the following modest requirements:

The final result must be in Wavefront OBJ format.
Will pay extra if it has UV texture coordinates intact.
Attachments and skin textures not needed.

If you can do this for me, please leave a comment, IM in-world (Jacek Antonelli), or email (jacek.antonelli ~ gmail.com).

[Update: The ever-cutetastic Patchouli Woollahra very kindly OGLE'd my avatar. Thanks, Patchi!]

31Dec

SL in 2007, a retrospective in lists

adventures, musings No Comments

Let’s have some lists. Everybody loves lists!

Awesome news from LL:

3. Sculpty prims. Everyone celebrates with new fruit, genitals, and fruit-shaped genitals.
2. Open sourcing of the client. 2007 starts off with a bang. Nicholaz consistently kicks ass throughout the year.
1. Windlight Firstlook. Ooh, so smexy. *licks*

Lame news from LL:

3. Exit Cory Linden, stage left. Second Life’s already-shakey backend tech hangs in the balance.
2. Gamblers and ageplayers begone! Linden Lab clamps down on sinners, but hides true motives (which are probably more about business than morality). Residents asked to spy on and report their neighbors.
1. Age-verification and new login system. Your RL personal information and SL login details put at risk by ill-conceived, shoddily-implemented systems. Linden Lab shrugs and says, “Quit worrying so much.”

Personal events of note:

4. 2007 is the year of the chibi! (I made a handful in 2006, but their popularity rose dramatically this year.)
3. Sold out adorable cartoon character, opened my own SL store. My days as shrewd business mogul start. (Yeah, right.)
2. Submitted a dozen patches to the viewer client, most of them UI-related.
1. Drifted away from some old friends, bumped into some new ones.

17Dec

Project: Animation Export from Blender (update)

adventures, passions, projects No Comments

Back in May of this year, I posted about my work on a script to export animations from Blender to SL-compatible BVH files. Well, as you can see from the comparison screenshot below (click to enlarge), I’ve made a lot of progress since then.

(Mind you there’s some difference between the camera angle in the two shots, and possibly some slight mis-rotation of the hands from SL’s rather zealous animation ‘optimizing’ algorithm.)

Some difficulties I’ve encountered:

As mentioned in my earlier post, the axes of rotation for the bones in the SL skeleton differ from the Blender skeleton. That is, in the Blender skeleton, the Y axis always points along the length of the bone. In the SL skeleton, it varies between bones.
Furthermore, the order of rotation for the Euler angles varies from bone to bone in the SL skeleton. I have had to employ code to convert from one order to another to correct for this. It seems to have done the trick.
SL has a bug which duplicates the first frame of an animation. (VWR-3783)
Using IK on the Blender skeleton, especially in the legs, tends to cause jittering in the SL skeleton — that is, wobbly knees and ankles. My best guess at the moment as to the cause of this is SL’s insistence on converting all joint angles to integer degrees. Subtlety, be banished!
Certain rotations result in a significant difference in the appearance of the animation. I’m pinning the blame for this one on Gimbal Lock. That’s right, I’m looking at you, Mr. Lock.

Nevertheless, my animation exporter script is a very significant step up from Qavimator: smooth blending between keyframes (controlled by my most-beloved Bézier curves); custom rigs for different types of animations; inverse kinematics to provide that extra stick in the feet; layering and blending single actions to create longer animations; and all the rest.

And as it happens, I’m currently in a trial period as animator for one ChronoForge 4D, a manufacturer and purveyor of sharp, pointy things with which to poke and jab at other similarly-minded avatars. So next time you stab someone through the heart and then kick their body to the ground (in SL), you might say a little thanks to the kindly, peace-loving artist who made it all possible.

10Dec

Cuddlefish Junction - New Store! Opens 12/15!

adventures, store 1 Comment

Cuddlefish Junction. Lovingly Twisted

After much ribbing and prodding by my friends, I have yielded to their demands and decided to open up a store in SL.

Cuddlefish Junction will be opening for business Saturday, December 15 at 8PM SLT! I will cut the metaphorical ribbon and set everything for sale at that time. And then there will much dancing, laughter, and merriment until everybody gets tired and goes home! Yay!

I’ll post more pictures, SLURLs, and other awesomness as we approach that date.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: chibi, cuddlefish

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