Hi everyone,

I just got home from work, and wanted to get this out asap:

Without much fanfare, but this time with a little more advance notice, SpotOn announced to hold a discussion on “SpotON3D ‘s Patent Pending Plug-in: Is it a threat or a benefit?” tomorrow, Friday, August 19th at 5pm SLT on their expo in Second Life (at http://slurl.com/secondlife/SpotON3D%20Biz%20Solutions/128/126/53/). As this is on – somewhat – neutral grounds, and gives a little advance notice this time, I’ll definitely attend and will be setting up a stream to broadcast the event from in-world, as well as post a summary here afterwards.

Here’s our chance to ask all the things you didn’t get a chance to last time, to voice your concerns and generally have fun! I’ll prepare some signs and other goodies for those who want to come, so watch this space for updates.

Greetings,

V

Stream

[EDIT: I made some signs for this event, which can both be found on OSC and the SL marketplace (freebie). Also, you can hit me up at the event if you want a copy:]

[Edit August 19th 2011: I set up the stream, which can be accessed through the link in either the sidebar or above (the one that says "stream"), on in-world at either the TGIB standalone or the Bay City pub.]

(As already mentioned, I was in Frankfurt on 16th of July and talked a little about OpenSim. Here’s a video recording of the event:)

ich werde am 16.07.11 beim Monatstreffen des AUGE e.V. (Apple User Group Europe e.V.) im Bürgerhaus Bockenheim in Frankfurt am Main über OpenSim sprechen. Das Treffen ist im Clubraum 1 (3. Stock) und beginnt um 14:00 Uhr; ich selbst bin so ab 15:15 Uhr dran und wir reden dann ein bisschen über peer-to-peer, OpenSim zuhause, was man nettes damit anstellen kann und wo man noch nettere Sachen herkriegt. Der Vortrag ist auf deutsch, richtet sich hauptsächlich an OpenSim Anfänger, und schließt mit eventuellen Fragen aus dem Publikum ab.

Ich freu mich.

V

There was talk about having to “convince” content creators (a term I’m known to hate, by the way), talk about “protection”, about “trust”, about “central authorities” and, of course, about “thieves” and even “evil grid owners”. All of this might be somewhat interesting to businesspeople, but I’m doubtful it’s relevat to creators, and I’m certain it’s absolutely irrelevant to users. If there is anything to learn about users from the internet, then it is that we love to share what we have – especially if we just have to copy it. We love to share what we found, like, made, even bought. The biggest websites of the world revolve around amateurs sharing their stuff, be it their experiences, their knowledge, their creations, or just very mundane things like their friends and connections and whatever happened during their day.

No man is an island; it’s our nature to be public, to be visible, to show what we created, and share it with others. And most people do not create things for profit, they don’t need the money incentive to be creative, they’re doing it because they love what they do. So really, to anyone who likes to call themseves “content creators”: We might not need you as desparately as you need us, because there will always be other creators.

But another thing I’ve seen is that the image of the metaverse that’s being painted is very different from the metaverse that I know. The metaverse I know and experience every day is a place of hundreds – very possibly thousands – of little grids, hosted all over the world, by ordinary users, amateurs, people that just love to play with the software, and who love virtual worlds. It is a place where people are self-dependent, where anyone can, at the very least, host their own inventory and regions from home and still visit the marjority of all grids via the hypergrid. This is the world you want to regulate via a “central authority”? This is the world you want your “content” to be “protected” in? A world where every single user possibly has full control over all data in their database and can technically do whatever they want with it? Really, the metaverse is not just a conglomerate of a handful of grids with which you can form alliances and whose operators need to “convince” you or gain your “trust”. The metaverse is most of all a multitude of very adept, very powerful and very self-confident users.¹

This is why I started OpenSim Creations (OSC), as you might already have heard: To give the users a place to share their creations, to find new creations, and to form a community of the independent. Because I know there already is great stuff out there, I’ve seen it, and keep discovering new things every day. There is no lack, not of creativity, not of ability, and not of willingness to share. It’s just scattered all over the place.

So I just tweeted about it once and posted a little announcement in the HGAC google group, to have a few people take a look at it and tell me what they think. The response was overwhelming, and it helped me to adress some issues very early (thank you very much for everyone who pointed me to anything that’s confusing, broken or needs improvement). But most of all, it showed that there really is a lot of interest in that kind of system. So let me state here what it’s about.

Most of all, OSC is not my site. I maintain it, I keep it running, provide the software, and the webspace, but it’s your site for your creations as much as mine for mine. Anyone is invited to join, anyone can post any OpenSim related creation instantly (as long as they have the legal rights to do so), there’s no approval process and no loops to jump through. I would like to encourage people to use creative commons for their creations, but the site allows for any kind of license. Also, since the creations for OpenSim are so diverse, it allows for any kind of upload as well, from single textures to whole OAR files. How you post your creations, what kind of info you provide, how many pictures you post, everything is up to you. I don’t want to regulate something that doesn’t call for regulation, so I’d like to keep it as open as possible.

Also, I’ve been copying all my creations over there by now, and OSC will be the place where I will post new creations from now on (in fact, I’ve already done so); TGIB will still continue, of course, and I’ll still write about OpenSim and Second Life related things here, and post tutorials, but everyone who just visits this site for the creations will be better off at OSC. On top of that, I’ve found a lot of other people’s creations that are CC licensed, and will post them there as well, whenever I find the time, and of course, members have already started posting their own creations, so it’s working just the way I intended.

I don’t know if OSC will become the “central marketplace” for OpenSim; I very much doubt that. If all fails, it will still serve as a better organized place for my own creations, so there’s nothing to lose for me. But I believe we can make a difference to the Second Life mindset of protectionism and fear.

So, this might as well be my “official” announcement: Let’s come over to OSC, and share our amazing stuff. You’d be surprised how many of us there are.

V

1. Just like the internet as a whole. I really don’t know why the abilities and powers of the users are so severely underestimated all the times.

I’m very excited to announce the upcoming events this weekend. First, we have the HGAC meeting at 22:00 UTC, where we will start exploring HG 1.5 i6 compatible grids. To attend, you will need to have an account on a grid that’s compatible to HG 1.5 i6 (labeled “Veritas” on the Hypergates Network); optionally, you can create an account on Neo Cortex’ HBase42 or on TGIB itself.

We will meet on a region labeled HGAC on the TGIB standalone. The hypergrid adress is tgib.co.uk:9070:hgac – the region is located at coordinates 7000,7000 to have both the upper and middle hypergrid within teleport range. The first 30 minutes of the meeting will, as usual, be dedicated to introductions and casual conversation.

After that, we will make our first visit, and the destination will be…

Condensation Land

Condensation Land is a mini-grid / standalone at the hypergrid adress condensationland.com:9000, created by Zonja Capalini. It is also one of the oldest grids around, and for me, personally, both Zonja’s blog entries about her departure from SL and arrival in OpenSim, and the example she set with Condensation, have been incredibly helpful when I first started in OpenSim myself.

To use her own words:

* The prehistory of Condensation Land in SL and the starting reactins to the Openspace fiasco are described in my article ” ‘We believe this is fair”, or how to make business customers and creative residents equally angry”: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/we-believe-this-is-fair/

* In “The Openspace fiasco: six months later”, I describe the migration from SL to Opensim via Openlife: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/the-openspace-fiasco-six-months-later/

* You can find a relatively recent report about Condensation Land (Aug 2010) in “Condensation Land: A status report): http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/condensation-land-a-status-report/

Regarding the content you can find in Condensation Land:

* Most of the Condensation Land region exist as a perfect duplicate in Opensim and SL (but of course the islands have slowly diverged over time). This includes my home (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/2203370073/) and Arrabal Tango Club http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/2797909994/

* There’s a club in the center of the Condensation Land region that I donated with a CC license and can be downloaded here: http://www.rexxed.com/2009/06/condensation-land-club/ . This seems to have been downloaded by many people, and, as a curiosity, you can find a photo of my club in Pathfinder’s famous article about Opensim-in-a-USB-key: http://becunningandfulloftricks.com/2010/10/07/a-virtual-world-in-my-hands-running-opensim-and-imprudence-on-a-usb-key/

* There’s a 2889-prim linked rotating glowing Klein bottle (a mathematical object) in the center of the Condensation Land region, described in “2889: Working with very large linksets in Opensim”: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/2889-working-with-very-large-linksets-in-opensim/ . An OAR with the Klein bottle and the scripts can be downloaded here: http://www.rexxed.com/2009/07/klein-bottle/

* In the SE part of the Condensation Land region there’s a permanent art exhibition featuring SL and Opensim artists and myself, described in “Mirror Worlds: a hypergridded eternal art exhib”: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/mirror-worlds-a-hypergridded-eternal-art-exhib/ . The exhibition has a Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1209062@N25/ , and can be seen here http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/4002577934/in/set-72157605194470169/ , here http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/4288689334/in/set-72157605194470169/ and also partially here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/4014559606/in/set-72157605194470169/

* In the SE part of the Condensation South region you can find a wonderful building called “Eastern Gasworks”, donated by Breen Whitman: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/4248221483/

* Omurtag Milev kindly contributed three incredible islands, too full of wonders and details to describe, to the Condensation Land archipielago, called “Temple”, “AngelicoMiguelis” and “Conceptior”, described in “Three islands by Omurtag Milev”: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/three-islands-by-omurtag-milev-2/

There’s much more stuff in the islands, but I think I covered the most important aspects.

Condensation Land has a blog, http://blog.condensationland.com/ , mainly used to inform of technical issues and version upgrades.

Condensation Land has a Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1002355@N24/

I have uploaded many more machinimas in Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, and many of them feature Condensation Land.

I maintain the two blogs (my personal one and the mini-world blog) and I’m the administrator of the Opensim installation. Condensation is a work of love, serves no other purpose than to showcase beautiful things, it resides in a home machine, and its only recurring cost is the (expensive) SDSL line, which is around € 200/month (and my work, but I do that more than willingly in my spare time). We host islands created by myself, Omurtag Milev, Shoshisn Shilova and Mikil Tiki; many people have contributed to the Mirror Worlds exhibition; Arrabal was created by Favio Piek and inspired by Ludmilla Writer; Eastern Gasworks was created by Breen Whitman.

In case of a crash or disconnect, I propose we stay in touch via IRC at irc.freenode.net #hgac; I’ll try to monitor the performance of the sim and hope that everything will go well.

Straight after the meeting, at 23:15 UTC, I will hold my second class for the Content Cooperative about creating and modifying skins for OpenSim / Second Life. We will use Eloh Eliot’s freely available skin templates and have a look at how we can modify them with graphic applications. The only requirement for this class is an application which can open and modify Photoshop .psd files; a free and cross-platform program for this is Gimp.

The class will be held at the TGIB classroom, which is accessible from HG 1.0 at tgib.co.uk:9069:classroom; for those who attended the HGAC meeting and don’t want to relog in a different account, the classroom can also be accessed from HG 1.5 i6 at tgib.co.uk:9070:classroom, and for people wanting to attend from OSGrid compatible regions, there’s a third classroom available at tgib.co.uk:9710:classroom. (All classrooms are connected via IRC, so local chat can be heard across both hypergrid versions.)

Godspeed, and see you on Sunday,

V

As part of our TGIB classes, we’ll be holding a workshop on terrain creation and terraforming on next Sunday, 27th of February, at 23:15 UTC (3:15 PM SLT). This event is part of the “How To” Series of the Content Cooperative, which graciously invited me to hold it, along with another class on skins on the 27th or March (separate announcement coming).

We will look at how to create .raw files for use with OpenSim or SL, using Terragen to create and edit them, and Bailiwick for conversion (both are free). Optionally, we can discuss how to edit .raw files in Photoshop. The class is pretty open to individual questions and interests.

The event will take place on our own standalone, where I set up a region for classes, aptly called “classroom”. It is accessible from Hypergrid 1.0 regions at tgib.co.uk:9069:classroom, Hypergrid 1.5 i6 regions at tgib.co.uk:9070:classroom and OSGrid compatible regions at tgib.co.uk:9710:classroom; local chat will be transferred between the hypergrid versions. The class will be held as an audio stream, and recorded and published afterwards here, in case you can’t make it.

You will need:

• Terragen Classic
• Bailiwick
• (if on a Mac: Bootcamp)
• A viewer or client capable of playing streaming audio.

See you next Sunday.

V

our mission in year two of TGIB is community. To this end, we’ve already introduced several means to stay in touch and connected. I have to admit, the website is getting quite complex with all the different things added to it, and new users might probably feel quite lost among the many possibilities. Also, most people might not browse through all the categories to see what there is.

Therefor, we’ve mostly stayed in touch via the comments on the blog here. While this is a great way to give feedback to the specific blogpost, I found there is some need for a more unspecified way of questions and answers, where you can ask simple things like “what is this hypergrid thing”, “why can’t I change my shape” or “how do I make a sculpted axolotl”. And while we already have some Q&A plugin installed on the blog, this is somewhat hidden and does not include the community too well. In short, it calls for a forum.

And to my surprise, there was no general OpenSim forum yet. Sure, several grids have forums, some covering Open Simulator to a wider extent, but there was no independent, “hypergridded” OpenSim community forum around. And so I created one.

The Architects Of Sleep¹ was our inworld group for a long time, and I have several fond memories of it. The way I imagined it, we are all constructing the metaverse together, each of us their own architects of this country of dreams and imagination. I think the title befits everyone of us.

And so, I invite you all to join us at TAOS. We can talk about anything OpenSim related there, and those of you who don’t have the means to do so on their own webspace can upload and share their creations, if they wish. I am hoping this can grow into a helpful resource for both creations and support, and will help many more people to find their way around OpenSim. Either way it will turn out, you’re Taotics now.

Godspeed,

V

1. not related to the book of the same title

Want to model for TGIB? Want to show what you did with our creations? Want to share where you found things made by us? Well, now you can!

Following El’s Flickr Venture, we created a flickr group for TGIB creations. Posting snapshots to this group will show them in a slideshow at the according creation, if you used the correct tag along with it, so visitors to this blog can see the different appliances of what we make and share.

- Okay, how do I join?

You will need a flickr account first. When logged in to flickr, go to the TGIB flickr group site and click on “Join this group”.

- What rules are there?

We ask for every contribution to the group to be licensed under a creative commons license so people can freely share them.

- How do I use creative commons for my flickr snapshots?

Click on an image you uploaded, and on the “edit” link behind the copyright notice under the heading Owner Settings (on the bottom right). Chose a license that suits you.

-  How can I add an image to the group?

Upload a snapshot of one of our creations and add the correct tag in the tag box under the description of the snapshot. You can see the tags you need to use under the entry of the according creation on this blog. Then click on “Organize & Create” and on the “Groups” Tag there. Drag the image/s you want to add to the TGIB group. Optionally, tell us in the description where you took it.

- Where will the images show?

Every creation on this blog will have a slideshow displaying the snapshots added under the creation’s tag from the TGIB group pool on rotation. In addition, the newest additions to the group pool are displayed above and in the sidebar.

- I added a picture, but it doesn’t show in the creation / the stream!

Give it a while. The streams are cached, and cache needs some time to refresh. After 24-48 hours, your pictures will show up.

[Note: As of now there are no snapshots showing up in the group pool, since both our accounts haven't been flagged as "safe" by flickr staff. However, we'll add group functionality to the creations in the following days.

EDIT 31st of January 2011: Stream works now.
EDIT 1st of February 2011: Updated all creations to point at the TGIB flickr group and specified tags, added a no-panic section in the FAQ above and put the group rotation in the sidebar.]

So, I’m planning on doing some in-world classes on different topics. Basically, I could do classes on anything I created or discuss on this website¹. However, I don’t want to plan too much in advance, and rather let you, the attendees, decide what we’re going to do these classes on, or even where we’re doing these classes. So, for the topic of this article: If you would like me to hold, or attend one of our classes, please leave me a comment on what you would like a class about, where you would like to attend it at, and whether you would like to have it in voice (audio stream) or text. If you’d rather want to contact me privately, please use our contact form.

Again, I’d be more than happy to do classes on your grid/campus/region/whatever, even in Second Life, if there’s a number of people there interested in that. I just ask for your understanding that I can’t give individual (one-on-one) lessons.

1. including sex in opensim, if that’s required

today, I need your advice. I am currently working on a tutorial region that is supposed to give new users an introduction to OpenSim. It is aimed at people who are completely new to the software (hence haven’t been in Second Life either) and thus don’t know how to operate anything in it; when I have finished the region, it will, of course, be published as everything else here under creative commons cc-by 3.0 unported, so anyone can use it on their own installations as some kind of introductory place for new users.

I have already made up my own mind about that, of course. I created a page in our Wiki with a mindmap about the region, and the different stations and topics that are there to be taught, including some of the texts that would explain it. The region itself is designed to be a path through a landscape, where landmarks along the way teach the basic features; starting with movement, and moving on to other topics. The path is linear, there are no crossroads or anything, thus leading the user fast through the neccessary facts; however, if users stray from the path and delve into the surrounding forests, they might find additional (optional) tutorials on topics that might not be neccessary for starters, but still be interesting.¹ All of the tutorials are presented as notecards, and written as if someone went through the same experience before them, and left the notes on their way.²

I’ve been a SL mentor in the past, and obviously wrote several tutorials on OpenSim here, but still the topic is still very complicated. I know some of our readers are teachers by profession, and might therefor give some professional advice; still, I am mostly interested in your personal opinions and experiences. Thus, I would like to hear from you:

How did you learn about OpenSim / Second Life? How did you learn how to use the viewer software? How did you find your way around inworld? What would you have liked / preferred / wished you would have known back then? What do you think needs to be included in an introduction to OpenSim, what do you think would confuse newbies and would better be left out?

1. The whole concept has been inspired by the exceptional game The Path by Tale of Tales.
2. If you would like to see the current state of the region, visit The Grey Inn Between via hypergrid, then jump to the region “The Path” on the same sim.