2008.09.20 13:00 - Tech Talk

The guardian for this meeting was Storm Nordwind. The comments are Storm's.

Wol and Adelene were already at the pavilion as I walked in and sat down.

Adelene Dawner: hi Storm :)
Wol Euler: hi storm
Storm Nordwind: Hello both :)
Storm Nordwind: Please continue - don't let me disturb
Adelene Dawner: no worries, Storm, there wasn't much else to say anyway.

There was a little glowing red pyramid with us too. We launched straight into tech talk.

Storm Nordwind: OK Adelene. I see there's a prototype logger here, right Wol?
Wol Euler: yes, I moved it so that I can watch it over our shoulders while we talk. It still has memory troubles :-(
Wol Euler: i.e. running out of.
Storm Nordwind: Can it not email after every chat line?
Wol Euler: not reliably, no. The connection is throttled to 25 connections per 25 seconds per object. That might not be enough when somebody cracks a joke at a busy meeting.
Storm Nordwind: oh... that's new to me
Wol Euler: I've reduced the amount of memory it uses internally and removed a lot of debugging code
Adelene Dawner: per object, or per script, Wol?
Wol Euler: and reduced the buffer size too.
Wol Euler: per object, not even per prim. :-|
Storm Nordwind: So you have temporary buffer objects?
Adelene Dawner: mmm. I think you could still get a reliable multi-object system going, with some fancy syncing work.
Wol Euler: it already is multi-object in a way.
Wol Euler: storm. yes.
Storm Nordwind: Hi Pia
Wol Euler: the capture unit "listens" to us, and records our sentences in a string buffer <= 1500 chars long.
Wol Euler: when this is full, it gives the buffer to one of four child prims, transfer units.
Storm Nordwind nods
Wol Euler: they talk to the webserver. The reason there are four is to give it a reasonable chance of waiting for an answer before the next buffer must be sent.
Pia Iger listens.
Storm Nordwind: And I naively thought this would be the easy end!
Wol Euler: 1500 is a fairly save number, because a chat sentence can only be 1024 chars long. After that it gets truncated.
Wol Euler: the problem is that there is very poor and intermittent "garbage collection" done in LSL scripts.
Wol Euler: a piece of memory that is taken and used once, is gone forever until the script stops. Ideally this script will never stop.
Wol Euler: That's a problem.
Storm Nordwind: Oh!!!
Storm Nordwind: What resolution can you get the time stamping on the messages?
Wol Euler: as fine as SL ccan give them to us. Theoretically, in tenths of milliseconds.
Storm Nordwind: So if you had a whole set of objects that assign themselves one person to listen too, you could piece the whole conversation together easily in the server
Wol Euler: hmmmm.
Adelene Dawner: ooh, good idea Storm.
Wol Euler: risky. it would mean assigning a maximum number of participants.
Wol Euler: lol
Storm Nordwind: No. You spawn as you need
Adelene Dawner: Storm's *good*
Storm Nordwind: It's a classic UNIX way of dealing with it
Wol Euler: you're thinking of unix shells, right?
Storm Nordwind: hehe!
Wol Euler: yepo
Wol Euler: there are no threads in LSL, alas.
Adelene Dawner: spawn-as-needed works very well in SL, too.
Wol Euler: really?
Adelene Dawner: really really.
Wol Euler: do tell. please.
Wol Euler: (sorry about this, pia :-)
Adelene Dawner: Well, you make your listener. For personal preference, I'd probably have it follow the person and automatically derez if they go more than 10 or 15 meters from the center of the pavilion - easily done. Put it in a box, and script the box to watch for people -again, easily done - and then when it sees someone, have it rez out a listener and chat a message to the listener telling it who to follow.
Wol Euler: aaaaaaaaah
Adelene Dawner: I don't know about the sending-stuff-to-the-server end but it sounds like if you had a listener for each person that'd get a lot easier.
Wol Euler: hmmm
Wol Euler: that sounds good, yes. A builder's solution!
Storm Nordwind: This is pretty much as I was thinking Adelene. :)
Wol Euler <- non-builder
Adelene Dawner: it's possible that all the listen commands could cause some lag, but I suspect that with the right coding, it wouldn't be any worse than having one listener listening to everything that happens on open chat.
Wol Euler: if the listeners also listen on another channel,the main object could tell them to derezz when the session is closed.
Wol Euler: hmmm
Adelene Dawner: mmhmm ^.^
Wol Euler: eeeeenterestingk.
Storm Nordwind smiles
Storm Nordwind: "But not stoopidt"
Adelene Dawner: I've played with object inventory and rezzing and stuff, I can do that part if you want. ^.^
Wol Euler: exactly.
Wol Euler nods happily. Thanks Adelene, let's coordinate that after the meeting.
Adelene Dawner: ^.^
Storm Nordwind: I'm glad we talked about this! :)
Adelene Dawner: Yes, thank you Storm! I might've come up with that eventually, but it would've taken a while - I guess I need to start hanging out in the programming community sometimes :)
Wol Euler: me too.
Wol Euler: This is why I published the functional spec six weeks ago, I was hoping that people would read it and reply with better ideas.
Adelene Dawner scripts, and quite well sometimes, but there's a limit to what one brain can figure out all on its own. :)
Adelene Dawner: I completely missed that, Wol...
Storm Nordwind: I think this is an idea prompted by what was then a set of unknown technical limitations
Storm Nordwind: In other words, perhaps now is the first time we could have thought of it
Adelene Dawner: mm :)
Wol Euler: true enough, I had no idea of what this really involved, even having written the spec.
Storm Nordwind: The spec was truly excellent, but it could not have anticipated the SL problems
Wol Euler thinks. We could make the listeners look like a row of little bats hanging from the eaves :-)
Adelene Dawner: that'd be cute ^.^
Storm Nordwind laughs
Wol Euler: excellent, thank you both very much!
Storm Nordwind bows slightly
Storm Nordwind: I'm so pleased Adelene ran with it straight away too! :)
Adelene Dawner chuckles. :)
Storm Nordwind: Pia - perhaps we can turn to more conventional subjects now and include you!
Wol Euler: lol
Wol Euler cringes and smiles. Thank you for your patience.
Pia Iger is glad she does not have to figure those tech issues.
Adelene Dawner is glad of tech issues to figure out. Fun!
Wol Euler nods and grins.
Storm Nordwind has to figure out why Ulreung sim is so laggy

Tech talk over, we noticed we were sitting rather officiously.

Wol Euler: pia, come sit by us. This feels like an interview with you over there.
Pia Iger: it's a good practice, to be interviewed:)
Storm Nordwind: "So - what do you want to be doing in 5 years time?" ;)
Wol Euler shivers.
Storm Nordwind: hehe
Adelene Dawner: ...yanno, this is going to be weird if we all wind up sitting in a pile like this at the meetup. Ann does not *do* personal closeness like this.
Storm Nordwind runs training courses on interviewing at work
Adelene Dawner is Ann in RL and is equally comfortable referring to each av in third-person. ^.^
Pia Iger: I'll make a note on that, Storm.
Wol Euler smiles.

Guardianfest was around the corner...

Wol Euler: are you all going to Princeton? (envious)
Storm Nordwind: Not I sadly
Storm Nordwind: The US will not let me in till I have my fiancee visa
Wol Euler: hmm
Pia Iger: not even visitor visa?
Storm Nordwind: Not now they know I will be marrying a US citizen. I might just stay and do it after all, naughty me
Wol Euler: o.O
Wol Euler: 'course you could fly to Mexico and walk in...
Pia Iger: many way :)
Storm Nordwind: No - I want to stay. So I'll play by their rules
Adelene Dawner: They do get pretty grumpy when you don't, yes.
Storm Nordwind chuckles sadly
Storm Nordwind: yes
Wol Euler: we don't want to hear about yo ending up in Guantanamo.
Storm Nordwind: Not sure they have second life there
Wol Euler: exctly!

And I was not the only one whose travel options were limited at the moment.

Pia Iger: one of my friend's 5 year dream was crashed recently. She is so furious, at the end of herself.
Wol Euler: sorry to hear it, what happened?
Pia Iger: that is one thing of having too much hope on one dream.
Storm Nordwind: Is she furious with herself for pinning her hopes on the thing that let her down?
Pia Iger: She was hoping to get a job in NYC. but recently it did not turn true.
Pia Iger: no, she is furious that the things did not turn out as she wished.
Storm Nordwind: Were you able to console her?
Pia Iger: the issue is now she is making a risky move. She want to come here without a job. At this time, NYC economy is really bad. not a calm choice.
Storm Nordwind nods
Pia Iger: she could not see there is other choice too. Seems she just want to get a job here. Hang on one tree.
Storm Nordwind: Hmm
Wol Euler: so NY is more important than the job she wanted?
Wol Euler: she wante the city, not a job?
Pia Iger: I think she wants the city. but she is not in US yet.
Storm Nordwind: Then how would she come without the job? What country is she in?
Pia Iger: Asian country. (the language Fael speaks too, hint)
Wol Euler grins
Storm Nordwind smiles
Pia Iger: The issue is she wants to get her goal so badly, she could not step back and think calmly.
Wol Euler: mmhmm
Storm Nordwind: I see. Now personally, I am able to be detached from that sort of thing. That is because of my religious background. But I wonder if PaB can help with removing attachment like that. Has anybody here tried?
Wol Euler: the general calmness that (I find) arises from meditation might enable looking more objectively
Storm Nordwind: Yes I wondered
Storm Nordwind: For me it would difficult to separate out the PaB effect and the Buddhist effect. That's why I was asking of others.
Adelene Dawner: It's hard to separate anything from anything, Storm. :)
Storm Nordwind: Haha very true!
Pia Iger: I am learning to stay comfortable with "wobbly".
Storm Nordwind remembers :)
Storm Nordwind: By the way, Pia, are you happy with my including that bit about your friend in the chat log? I can omit it if you wish.
Pia Iger: it's fine. no name mentioned.
Storm Nordwind nods and smiles
Pia Iger: I can also see this example of our society encouraging reach-out, achieving, motivation, this sort of thing.
Pia Iger: which makes people hard to accept set-backs.
Storm Nordwind: Perhaps people look for happiness in the wrong places. They are encouraged to look harder in those places with the achievement society, but you can't find what's not there, no matter how hard you look!
Adelene Dawner: ^.^
Wol Euler nods
Storm Nordwind thinks "especially in NYC!" ;)
Pia Iger: nods.

We were joined for the end of our discussion by someone brand new to Second Life.

Pia Iger: Hi, Suki
sukianne Quan: hello may i join you
Pia Iger: yes. please take a seat.
Wol Euler: hello sukianne, welcome
Storm Nordwind: Hello sukianne
Pia Iger: Suki is born today.
sukianne Quan: hello
Wol Euler: oh! welcome to second life!
Storm Nordwind: This is your first day, or have you been on Second Life before with different avatars?
Pia Iger: right click on a cushion, select "sit", Suki.
sukianne Quan: thank you
Storm Nordwind: Cool
Pia Iger: there you go.
Wol Euler smiles
Storm Nordwind: You're welcome to stay. These meetings here happens every 6 hours sukianne
sukianne Quan: ok cool
Pia Iger: I gave a notecard about our meetings to Suki.
Storm Nordwind: Thank you Pia
Wol Euler: (could you give me one please? I'll make a dispenser)
sukianne Quan: what do you do here
Storm Nordwind: We talk about our experiences with the Play as Being project
Storm Nordwind: That's explained on the website
Pia Iger: Wol, I did not put full Surl on it yet.
Storm Nordwind: The meetings here get recorded and we put the chatlogs on the website too sukianne
Pia Iger: you can revise it when put into dispenser.
Wol Euler: ty
Wol Euler: will do.
Storm Nordwind: I need to ask your permission, sukianne, about whether we can mention your name too, and publish what you say
sukianne Quan: wow!
Storm Nordwind: You can say no if you wish!
Storm Nordwind: I'll just edit it out :)
sukianne Quan: no please just getting the hang of things sounds cool
Storm Nordwind nods
Storm Nordwind: Thank you
Storm Nordwind: This meeting started one hour ago. It's kind of drawing to a close now. But there'll be another in 5 hours! :)
Pia Iger: which time zone are you in, Suki?
sukianne Quan: I'm not sure what London is
Storm Nordwind: Same as me in Glasgow
Storm Nordwind: These meetings are at 3 and 9 o'clock
Storm Nordwind: am and pm
Jobe Nurmi gave you Awning stripes.
sukianne Quan: cool
Storm Nordwind: The time at the top right of your screen is Californian time. Often know as Second Life Time of SLT
Storm Nordwind: These meetings start at 1,7,1,7 SLT but we are 8 hours ahead of that
Wol Euler: ... for another X weeks, until winter time
Wol Euler curses the roundness of the world and its timezones.
Pia Iger: it's fun:-)
Wol Euler: well, yes, that too :-)
Pia Iger: I will go for a walk in RL. see you all later.
Adelene Dawner: cya Pia
Wol Euler: bye pia, enjoy your saturday
Storm Nordwind: Bye Pia
sukianne Quan: bye and thank you for your time
Wol Euler: bye sukianne, take care. And enjoy your second life.
Wol Euler: If you have any questions, just ask. Most people are very helpful.
Storm Nordwind: Well I will be disappearing too now
Storm Nordwind: I'll leave you to tech talk!
sukianne Quan: goodbye
Storm Nordwind: bye sukianne
Adelene Dawner: ^.^ cya Storm, Suki.
Wol Euler smiles. bye storm, sleep well.
Storm Nordwind: Namaste