My brother came over tonight. It’s hard to get him to come over since he is always busy on the weekends and in the evenings. He picked up an electronic lab kit that I had purchased for him last month. He expressed some interest in electronics a few months back and I thought that it would help keep him occopied if he was ever left with nothing to do. Actually, his computer got fried today, so I imagine that he has plenty of null time to take care of.
Archive for April, 2006
A brothers visit
Saturday, April 29th, 2006What is this world comming to?
Friday, April 28th, 2006
It’s amazing to think about all of my little accomplishments in this new world. The things I have built, the people I have met, the events I have attended. So much potential is here for this platform to become more then what it is. To think that all content within this world is made by players.
About two years ago, my mother in-law was astonished that my wife wanted to buy an in-world item on one of these online games for real money. It was a very rare axe that was hard for the best grand master blacksmiths to forge. On top of that, the price was a whopping $40 in US currency. “But it’s not real!”, she would say. I would check in from time to time and find that my wife was still hacking away with that axe from time to time that she had purchased.
Today, games have gone much further. In Second Life, You can build your own objects from scratch in-world and sell them at any price you see fit. You also retain rites on that item. In-game skill systems are a thing of the past, as now you apply your own real skills in 3D design, animation, interior decorating, fashion design, graphic design, programming, advertising & marketing, socializing, management, and more. The list just keeps going. These new games are bringing the real world inside of there own worlds.
The main incentive is that you can make real money. Anyone can cash-out any money that they have made in-world. For second life, the value of your in-game currency can change by the minute just like the real stock exchange. Other players make bids for how much they are willing to pay for in-game currency. You can also create sell orders that are limited so that you can sell them at a set price.
This tends to effect the in-world economy, as the US dollar value of items that you sell fluctuates. Something that is worth about a dollar today, and end up being worth only fifty cents with tomorrows rates.
Some of us residents have gotten around this by adjusting the prices of our in-world items according to the rate of the dollar against the inworld currency. When there is a problem, someone is always making something to help the players solve it.
Problemsolving is the really amazing part of these games. People who are not employed by the company are building the content of the game. Some of the content addresses problems. Find a need, and all you do from there is build something to answer that need. Then people buy it from you at your own set price.
There are thousands of people actually building content every day. The host of the world does not pay those people. In fact, those people pay the host for the privledge to show off there builds on there own rented out land. Every way that you look at it, it seems that the residents in this world are paying variouse amounts to do specific tasks or earn specific privledges.
It must be working, because the game that I’m playing, “Second Life”, has actually been around for over five years. Staff has grown quite a bit and there are usually over one thousand people in-world.
Still Dreaming
Thursday, April 27th, 2006I’m still having a lot of odd dreams and such. I just haven’t gotten around to posting them, or even recording them. I’m debating on getting a better recorder. The current one I have is full. It fills quickly, and the quality is bad. On top of that, it records in a format that is very low quality and requires a lot of changes before I can actually post it.
Many times, I’ll wake up and recall what my dreams were about and think about recording them. It’s just that the darn thing is full. On top of that, I’m a bit lazy when it comes to transferring them to my dreamy audio website. Even in my dreams, I dream about recording my dreams. How wierd is that?
So, I got a cheap digital voice recorder originally to try it out and see if I was interested in the idea. I’ve posted 70 dreams so far. Still, a really good voice recorder can get expensive, so I’m not looking for something professional. I just need something that stores more then this small 45 minute recorder that I have, and with better quality. It also needs to be easy to operate without looking at the buttons. Most of the time it is dark when I record my dreams. Hopefully I can find something that records directly to MP3 format, and can connect to a computer as a removable USB mass storage device rather then having to install extra software. I am so fed up with junk software for devices that should be able to be accessed directly.
Observing Behavior of Gerbils
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006A while back, Stewey and Ying figured out how to get out of there cage. My wife found Ying at the mercy of our youngest cat, Prince. It was a bit sad as I picked up the still warm body of Ying. I was hoping he was still alive, just looking for any sign of breathing. “He’s dead, Lewie”, she said, and I had to agree. She found Stewey downstairs without harm and I carried him in my shirt back to the cage. He was just too wound up and frightened that he would bite, wiggle, scratch anything to get away from anyone.
I’ve noticed some changes since then, now that Stewey doesn’t have his friend around anymore. He isn’t so active. He eats only small portions of food. He doesn’t try and bite me, and he doesn’t run from me. He is still active, but more well manored. He’s even changed his normal sleeping spot to the bottom of the cage.
Is he depressed? Was it that the pair of them encouraged hoarding food? Did they keep each other on there toes? I don’t know. I’m not a gerbil, and I can’t actually communicate with the little fellow to find out.
Even in my dreams
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006Even in my dreams, my wife completes me. It’s the common sense things and assertiveness. I took her to the movies and it seemed that there were not enough seats. I just stood there confused. She brushed passed me and got some people to move there stuff out of some seats. The movie screen showed a game of baseball and the audience was pretty loud. I was doubting that our movie would come on at all. She would just tell me to wait until it was time. Exactly at ten of or according to the clock, the movie started and everyone got quiet.
Things are like that here. I’ll doubt little things, but she knows them better then I do. If we want something, she’ll make sure nothing gets in our way. It feels odd sometimes. Without her, I would probably avoid the things that I doubt.
Head aches, taxes, and little giants
Thursday, April 20th, 2006It’s been a while since I blogged. I tend to keep forgetting to do it. I just don’t surf the internet much since I started playing SecondLife. Anyhow, a few things have been going on.
Today, I had (still have) a migrain head ache and chills. I feel a bit weak all over. I may be comming down with something. Hopefully it passes quick. One item I noticed is that I didn’t get the flu this year. I get the flu every year and it is severe (way past Robotussin). I usually take about 2 weeks to get over it, and I still have symptoms for a few weeks after, but nothing major. This year I got myself a flu shot and boy, was it worth it. I had felt a little bad about someone not being able to get it who may have needed it more then I did, as flu shots are very limited. I just never realized how much that “I” needed it.
Tax Blowout
Tuesday was tax day. I had done my Federal taxes very, very early. I didn’t do state, though because I couldn’t afford it at the time of filing. The procrastinator that I am just kept putting it off. Between then and now, I had gotten a new hard drive and reinstalled my operating system. I tried to hook the other hard drive up and boot up my computer, but the power supply had died (another thing I have been putting off). I ran to two wallmarts, best buy, and comp usa. The thing is, it was after 9pm. Wall-mart doesn’t sell power supplies, and the other two stores were closed.
I was able to hook the hard drive up to a spare computer I had as a secondary drive. I had to take ownership of all the files since the file system was NTFS. Otherwise I couldn’t read the files. I found my tax file and was in luck. I didn’t know where my TaxCut disc was, so I ran over to the site and purchased both the federal and state versions. I was just hoping that it would be able to read my old file and as luck would have it, it did. Things were pretty simple from there and I got my state taxes filed a little after 11 pm.
The next day I upgraded my old power supply from 340 watts to 500 watts. I am hoping that the wattage is the main reason why my supply had burnt out. Around here, power supplies go up left and right. At least the hard disc’s don’t burn out like they used to on my older computers.
A little giant ladder
Easter had come this past weekend. I played a bit with my nephew and neice during there visit. We played hide and go seek, and just played a bit in the back yard. My mother in-law came over and helped me look at some ladders that I saw at SAM’s club. My eye was on a pretty tall one that would support 300 lbs. The problem was that it was a bit too large for the van. The step ladder next to it was just not high enough. She looked at a third ladder there that looked like the Giant Little Ladder.
This ladder folds and unfolds into 5 different positions including a step ladder and a 17 foot high ladder. I passed it over earlier that day due to the face that I couldn’t find its maximum load cappacity. She found it and it was also 300 lbs. The thing was very compact and fit rite in our shopping cart. I was debating on buying the original Giant Little Ladder earlier this year with my tax return, but it was expensive for how often I would use it (over $300). This little ladder was just over $100. Someone even stopped us in the store to ask where we found the ladder.
I was finally able to replace two flood lights on the highest part of the house. I am not a fan of heights. Perhaps it may be the part where you hit the ground that I may be afraid of. Anyhow, my hands were gripping that ladder so tight that it was hard to let go of one bar and grab the next. Meanwhile, I’m trying to hold a lightbulb in the other hand.
Warehouse Inventory
Sunday, April 9th, 2006I spent the entire day packaging up my old product line into special boxes in Second Life. These boxes let me know that the end-customer received the product that they purchased and allow me to send them future updates. Once that was done, I went through my inventory and found a lot of things I’ve made over the past few months and started packing them as well.
In order to allow me to setup vendors with categories, I’m going to use the JENC system that I purchased along wtih the JEVN networked vendors system. I setup a few servers to represent each category that JENC will point to. I need to make pictures for each category and I’ll be ready to go.
So this is what I have for sale now:
- Blue Frog
- Cartoon Halo
- Comment Box
- Digital Clock
- Falling Leaves
- Glass Computer Desk
- Bird Calls
- Message Board
- Large Message Board
- Lava Lamp
- Packaging Crate
- Sim Land Owner Scanner
- Street Light
- Track Lighting
- Water Spray
- Windsock
- Password Generator
- Sliding Door
- USA Timezone Clock
- Counter Bell
- Spinning Globe
- Druid Staff
- Dandelion Clocks
- Flashlight
- Jolly Roger
- Chest
- Bottled Message
I’m still a bit amazed at how much freedom you have to build things in the game and the ability to script them to interact with people and other objects. Once I’m done packaging, I’ll probably start building here and there again.
Outstanding Employee Award
Saturday, April 8th, 2006Today we had a brown bag presentation during lunch and we all got to dig into a few variations of pizzas. It’s been a while since we had either. Towards the end, the head guy at the office presented me with an award from our division in CSC.
I’ve gotten awards from the company before, but this one is pretty high. The process of how people are selected was explained and somehow this sets my elegibility to get a higher award accross the whole company.
When worlds collide
Friday, April 7th, 2006I suspect the next big thing down the road of websites will be virtual environments. VRML took a nosedive a long time ago and these java applets are not anything to brag about. Many gaming worlds are actually becomming successful on there own. You have Ultima Online, Final Fantasy, Everquest, World of WarCraft, The Sims Online, Starwars Galaxies, Second Life, Project Entropia, and the list just goes on. All these are self contained worlds that have proven that they can sustain the support of operation and profit. They are “virtual worlds”. They just are not VRML.I suspect that in the not too distant future, we will begin to see worlds open up to each other. They may not be the existing worlds we play in today, but other worlds later may do this. In this mannor, you can travel from one online gaming environment to another.
In some ways, these worlds are already loosly coupled. My wife and I use a server to do voice chat with other friends of ours. I mainly play a game called SecondLife while I’m in chat. My wife goes back and forth between World of WarCraft and SecondLife with a few of the people on the chat. Although these are different accounts she logs in with back and forth, it is this one voice chat server that ties the two worlds together and lets her and her friends stay in touch.
The steps will be small like this in the beginning. But eventually, you may have game servers exposing API’s to get data about characters, transfer gold and products, or get some statistics about the server itself. Later on, you’ll probably start hearing about companies going into a joint venture to allow accounts from one world be valid for another to login.
The real tricky part is avatars. These are the characters that represent you. How would you transfer an avatar from one world to another? And how would you keep the avatar from not fitting in with that worlds environment and storyline? Inventory and Guilds are an additional worry.
The easiest way to solve these problems is to just ignore what you have an build a new framework for the world with these goals in mind. The primary objective would be to have a standard and open API that other worlds outside of your world can adapt to easily. If you have an open API, then you may worry about competition, but just remember that anyone leaving your world for another can come back just as quick without having to install another piece of software.
Let’s look at web servers for a moment. I manage a web server and I can choose if I allow just anyone on the internet in, or if I make them validate with a username and password. Some companies have even gone so far as to let you validate accounts against there own membership database (Such as Microsoft Passport). So security shouldn’t be too much of a problem since it’s already been done over. You can deny characters from certain worlds if you don’t like those worlds. In summary, I’m thinking that if an API is open enough, you can let people come and go with or without authentication just like we do with websites today.
Inventory is another matter. Where does it exist? How do you let someone create an object in your world that is originally from another. Each piece of inventory has to point to what world it originally came from and where that data is. It’s almost like a whole web address.
Anyhow, I think games are going to merge together. This is where the ideas of “Virtual Reality” will start to become real. Of course, the futures virtual reality is not going to be anything like what we used to imagine it as. Don’t expect to put on any funy helmets any time soon.
Diversification
Wednesday, April 5th, 2006Recently I put a large amount of my land up for sale in SecondLife. I had a giant magical playground hovering 700 meters above the world in Higgins. I was down to just one object left to find after deleting everything else. I looked everywhere until I spotted it. It was a carving on a tree I had made that said “Dedric Loves Korii”. Korii is my wifes name in the game.
So lately I have been building new things. I’ve decided to use smaller pieces of land, and dedicate them to specific purposes. One parcel is used for my main store. It is designed simple with lots of curves and open space. I’m setting up my vendors there to show only one item each rather then using the large 16 item vendors.
Behind the store is my warehouse. The warehouse may move to another sim someday, but I didn’t want to risk having the asset id’s change and having to update many other vendors I own around the world. To be extra cautiouse, I attached the servers to my avatar and walked to another part of the sim where my warehouse was being built. The purpose of the warehouse is mainly for my serves. The servers are responsible for delivering products, communicating with networked vendors, and integrating with a few websites that I sell products from as well. I am also going to use the parcel to work on small objects for now.
Last is my hideaway. I specifically looked for a spot that had a beach and was next to a road. It is more of something that is estetically pleasing to the mind, body and soul. I’ll have to build out a little dock and put up a little cozy home to rest in and invite guests to.
Last night I sold 4096 square meters of land at 7 L$ per sq. m. The conversion rate with lindens for US$ rite now (295 L$ /$1.00 US) sets that to just under $100 US. My neighbor purchased the land from me so she could double the size of her own property. I’m almost close to tiering down. If I can sell the mountain, or some land around it, then I could get my monthly payments down from $75 US to $40 US. Hopefully it happends before Sunday, otherwise next months payment will still be $75.
