2009.09.04 01:00 - Flowers and boxes

Wol Euler was guardian and commenter for this session.

 

I sat alone for half an hour listening to birdsong and tweaking the Autologging scripts, until Fael logged in. We talked about commerce and geekery.

 

Fael Illyar: Hi Wol :)

Wol Euler: hello fael

Fael Illyar: crashed in a tp... that's been a while :)

Wol Euler: heh, I wondered what happened

Fael Illyar: I joined DSN as desiger now.

Wol Euler: cool.

Fael Illyar: stayed up way to late to get everything ready that it'd go out this morning :)

Wol Euler: :)

Wol Euler: ah, but it'll be worth it when the hordes start hammering at your doors.

Wol Euler: brb, more coffee

Fael Illyar: yes, hopefully it is hordes :)

Fael Illyar: 370 packages of the gift got sent out this morning :)

Wol Euler: were those individual requests?

Fael Illyar: do you know how DSN works?

Wol Euler: nope :)

Fael Illyar: well, basically, there are designers (283 for the moment) and subscribers (9248 for the moment)

Fael Illyar: I'm now included in both counts :P

Wol Euler: :)

Fael Illyar: designers set up dropboxes with a free gift in them and set it up to send on a certain channel. There are 9 channels.

Fael Illyar: subscribers join what channels they want and receive at most one gift per channel every morning

Wol Euler: interesting.

Fael Illyar: no doubles

Fael Illyar: so, basically, I subscribed :)

Fael Illyar: the starter kit for designer cost me 390L

Wol Euler: oh, I expected that to be far higher.

Fael Illyar: Yes, I was O.O at it being so cheap

Wol Euler: do you get the list of 370 names? (I expect not)

Fael Illyar: I do, I can even put my own script in the dropbox to get link messages with keys of those getting sent the gifts

Wol Euler: so you could watch for them and greet them specially as they entered your store...

Fael Illyar: the package also comes with a scanner object that they apparently use to get statistics on how many have entered your store.

Fael Illyar: but this is wider advertising than I've easily reached with any other method :)

Wol Euler nods

Fael Illyar: brilliant idea all in all :)

Wol Euler: mmhmm

Wol Euler: now just wait for the visitors to overrun you.

Fael Illyar: Yeah :P

--BELL--

Fael Illyar: I put out the pink hairflower as a gift in accessories channel :)

Wol Euler grins

Fael Illyar: they also wanted a picture to show for if they happen to blog my gift. I made this

Wol Euler: good, nice colour matching :)

Fael Illyar: all the same color, really :P

Wol Euler: that#s what I meant :)

Fael Illyar: except hair, black :)

Fael Illyar: the aspect in that is 4:3 but I sized it as they suggested :P

Wol Euler: if you should remake it, that is a change I'd recommend. Fix the layer with your body, it is stretched horizontally

Fael Illyar: it will show 320x240 on their blog (the notecard said to blame lindens)

Wol Euler: but that's not obvious at first glance

Fael Illyar: layer?

Wol Euler: well, I'm assuming you made it in Photoshop :)

Fael Illyar: gimp

Wol Euler: force of habit

Fael Illyar: + inkscape

Wol Euler: but gimp has layering?

Wol Euler: you didn't put the text and image and soft corner framing all on the same set of pixels?

Fael Illyar: oh right, the streching, is intentional

Wol Euler: ok

Fael Illyar: it'll end up scaled to 320x240

Wol Euler: aaaaah, gotcha.

Wol Euler: ok ;)

Wol Euler: one day SL will grow up and be able to handle non-square images

Fael Illyar: it got a hazy horizontal thing from somewhere I'm not sure of but I thought it looks nice so I left it.

Wol Euler: mmhmm, a good effect.

Fael Illyar: perhaps something with inkscape and gimp's lanczos resizing filter combined do

Fael Illyar: I can't see it in the not resized image

Wol Euler: oh, how odd.

Fael Illyar: oh, propably also since it was scaled to different aspect ratio

Wol Euler: brb

Fael Illyar: yes... cubic scaling algorithm doesn't do it

Wol Euler: hmmmmm

Wol Euler: sounds like a bug, IMHO

Fael Illyar: well, the lanczos filter works hard to keep details and to not blur the image...

Fael Illyar: for aspect ratio keeping scales, it's quite good.

Fael Illyar: the image looks as sharp as before scaling

Fael Illyar: got to remember this quirk though :)

Wol Euler: mmhmm

Fael Illyar: I'll set up another dropbox with my pink tattoo today I think. Just, the texture needs fixing.

Wol Euler: can you join as many channels as you want? (as designer)

Fael Illyar: all 9 if you wish

Wol Euler: $$$?

Fael Illyar: but there are rules on what you can put in them.

Fael Illyar: so far only the starter kit cost

 

--BELL--

 

Fael Illyar: oh, I might write a notecard with the link message protocol for changing colors and give you the script and notecard :)

Fael Illyar: then we can have recording status shown with color :)

Wol Euler: ah

Wol Euler: I had had a different idea, actually: make the flower purly decorative, with a long slow colour change

Wol Euler: like from pink to royal blue in 40 minutes

Wol Euler: (next colour chosen randomly)

Fael Illyar: well, that'd work

Fael Illyar: although I do like the idea of color showing what it's doing :P

Wol Euler nods.

Wol Euler: but if people ignore the word "recording", they might also not remember what the colour means.

Fael Illyar: not saying remove the word :)

Wol Euler: nor I, I'm talking about distraction and inattention and human nature ;)

Fael Illyar: Well, the primary reason I wanted it to change color according to mode is that it'd be something people can wonder about and then perhaps "get it" one day :P

Wol Euler: ah

Fael Illyar: and then go "oh my god, that's neat!" ... or not :)

Wol Euler: fair enough :)

Fael Illyar: plus, for someone who knows the colors, it's obvious without even focusing your eyes if the recording is still on

Wol Euler smiles

Wol Euler: btw, http://wondermark.com/549/

Fael Illyar: Haha, yes :)

Wol Euler: not that I have ever done anything like that, oh no.

Fael Illyar: only applies in optimizing for just yourself :P

Wol Euler: right.

Wol Euler: but I do hate having to backtrack.

Fael Illyar smiles.

Fael Illyar: and also, if the problem he was solving is solvable, it won't be just one time thing :P

Wol Euler: heheheheh

Wol Euler: long-term optimization

Fael Illyar: yep :)

Fael Illyar: for something you'll do hundreds of times, it's worth it :)

Wol Euler laughs

Wol Euler: speaking of things one does hundreds of times, I shall have to leave for work :-/

Fael Illyar: Ah, ok, have fun :)

Wol Euler: not likely, but WTH.

Fael Illyar: who cares, have fun anyway ;)

Wol Euler: nice to see you, Fael. I hope that the subscribers turn up in droves.

Wol Euler: bfn

Fael Illyar: see you later :)

Fael Illyar: me too, thank you :)