Cafe Bucky

Am thrilled that Colin Powell endorsed Obama!

I would love to see Colin reprise his role as Secretary of State.

So I am in my fave chinese lunch spot, Jennie Lows, laughing to the point of tears at my David Sedaris book between bites of Mongolian Beef, trying not to spit up my Tsing Tao …

My cookie comes with the check.  For just once, I want to see “Today you do not have to pay!”.  Wouldn’t that be a hoot?  I would do a victory lap around the joint, waving my precious slip of paper like Mr. Bean with a First Class Ticket.  They’d give me a key to the city and a massage.

But my fortune was altogether different, and very, very, wrong …

“For better luck you have to wait till spring”

I blinked.  Wait, someone got paid to write that?

“For better luck you have to wait till spring”

It was real.  WTF! …  It’s not even October!  Maybe they meant when Spring comes in Australia, but I checked with my friends there and it’s still cold.

It couldn’t be serious, right?  Someone bored in Fortune Central?  Perhaps this could have been worse.  They may have had extensive editorial meetings on this one:

(boss) Jenkins!  What da ya got today!

(jenkins) Well…. How about “You may as well give up till the groundhog says so” ??

(boss) Ohhhh.. no we cant use that, we’d be liable if someone got upset and choked to death on their egg roll

(cathy interjects) How about: “Your blood will run cold till the leaves turn green” ??

(boss furrows brow) Noo.. too Gothic.  And the Red Cross wouldn’t like it either

(jenkins) “Oh! I know!  — “For better luck you have to wait till spring”

(all)  Oohhhhh yesssss!!

(peterman, the wise sage in the corner)  Yes!  It gives a ray of hope but does not really promise a thing!

(all) Ha ha ha ha!

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

If you have done downhill runs, you will know.  FF to 2:30 if you want to get to the run itself.

Closest I have come to this level (which is, not very!) is Mirror Lake, Yosemite.

This is the real deal — gives me the muscle memory twitches :)

Do not attempt!

Daniel

I am staying offline tomorrow, Saturday August 30th.

Why?

To switch gears a bit. Think of the last 20 years, and all of the change that has snuck up on us:

• cell phones
• blogs / facebook / myspace / linked in
• web
• twitter
• IMs
• email

It’s amazing when you think back to the 80’s.  In terms of communication, and the sense of being ‘always on’, they seem almost tranquil by compare…  It will be good to stop for a moment and reflect a bit.

So I will do my best to play hooky from the online world tomorrow.  One of the best parts is that I wont be checking online to see if anyone joins me.  It is a switch off day.  I’ll apologize on Sunday :)

Excellent interview with Mark Pesce, revolving around the effects of Hyperconnectivity (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WikiPedia, etc.)

Buckaroo is on Eduisland 4.

I am happy to say that my store, Buckaroo, is now open!  This is where I provide scripted objects for free (or for commercial purposes, 300L).  The primary idea is to get my stuff out there, so that my portfolio is known.  It is also a way of giving back, especially to the Info Island Archipelago.

The items at this moment are:

• WebMon  - browse and launch external web pages - menus or search
• VidMon   - per-person video - pick from menus or search
• Slider      - slideshow/texture viewer - give items and visit web sites on a per-texture basis
• SimpleSlider - slideshow/texture viewer - give notecard (more of a kiosk than Slider)
• VideoPoster  - per-person video, defined in description field of object - no menus
• LMGiver    - browse, launch, and get Landmarks - menus or search

There are a few things that will quickly follow that list (such as TPFromDescription).

Here is the SLurl to Buckaroo: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%204/43/177/26

Pricing and Perms

Items are Free for Personal, Educational, and Non-Profit use.

Items are 300L EACH for commercial (300L for each copy you make, or get direct from the store)

Items are mod and copy, but not transfer.  I dont want others reselling my work as their own.

Support

Support calls start at 500L if I come out (or at my discretion).  I strive to provide good documentation on my web site, and recommend checking out the great videos that Torley has done (see the Second Life Video Page).  I am open to custom work, at Rl rates.

Roadmap

I have a definite roadmap in mind.  The next steps are to round out the products with TPFromDescription, BuckyRadio, TPMap, GiveHints (a welcome mat that provides direction to whoever steps on it), and FlipSide (toggles between two images, for giving more info).

There will also be more consistency across the products, and more documentation (which will be moving to my main web site)

There are a lot of things I will be able to do to take advantage of the upcoming prim touch functions (which will allow scripters to detect WHERE on a prim a click occurred).

Of course, there are things beyond that such as swapping objects in one place (such as a collection of sliders), and integrating WebMon/LMGiver into one object that allows a user to search across different types of items.

And it’s rumored that I built a thing or two :)

I’ve done a demo implementation of Imagemaps for Second Life.  The upcoming release of the server side includes several new functions for handling touch events on a prim (the face and the coordinates!)

I will be writing documentation for this, but for now, pop this into a prim and look at the extensive comments near the top of the file.  The script should serve as pretty good example of how to use a list to represent clickable regions for an entire prim.

NOTE: You need to be running on the Beta Grid (Aditi) at this time to see this in action.

MultiFaceImagemap.lsl

(try this with a plain box prim.  Faces 1 and 2 have some actions bound to them)

More soon!