Sometimes I feel strange

Don’t ask me how this happened. I’m currently wearing an “abstract avatar” and this probably messed up the underlying avatar shape. You can see my breasts, a ear and a eyebrow.

Artificial Intelligence: a Bartender

This bartender robot is based on a Artificial Intelligence system. It / he answers to some questions and it can hold simple conversations. See also Chatbot: Artificial Intelligence for Avatars.

Notha (191, 147, 276)

Blogged with Flock,  then edited in the WP interface ;P

Skyline

I was 54000 meters high today. Nothing if compared to 250000 and climbing at which is right now Jacobus Nihilist…

Nice skyline, though.

Melting pixels

Tweaking Client / Rendering / Types settings in the Second Life client may lead to some strange, melting effects
Make the Client / Server menu appear (CTRL+ALT+D or CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+D), then play with Client / Rendering / Types settings.

Video quality is a bit better if you download the file (I’m not sure this works; you can download the video from here, though).

Made in Second Life using the Linux client and Xvidcap (Please, Linden Labs, give your linux users machinima capability! we need video recording -and playing- support!) 
Music editing with Avidemux and Audacity.

Soundtrack is a cut-up of M.I.A / XEROX SOUNDSYSTEM – “HOMBRE (XEROX RE-TUG)”

No Vivox for me

Vivox’s mission is delivering voice communications to Massive Multi-player Online Gaming. In these days, they are giving away one million free phone minutes and conference-call enabling “microphones” to SL players. This should enable SL users to call for free real (i.e., cell and land-line) phones. You should also be able to do five-way conference calls with other residents.

There are some issues, though:
Gamasutra reports this is going to work with North America only (official confirm here);
They choose to launch their product on October, Wednesday 4, 9-12 AM, when unfortunately Second Life was (is) down for update;
The Vivox phone launch is going to start in a few hours, but their main location is hardly reachable because of banned parcels all around it (update: they set up another place);
No Vivox client for you Mac and Linux users (one would think that multi-platform is a important issue if you’re making communication tools), however they say there could be an open-source client…soon or later;
At the moment, no way to register in their forums for me (I get this error: “Ran into problems sending Mail. Response: 550 5.7.1 … Relaying denied”).

Older news: Secret Lair article, Second Life educator mailing list April and May archives.

Terror will rain down upon the unfit gods (was: Replicating self-replication)

Terror will rain down upon the unfit gods and the flock that they govern, from now until the End of Days.

I think another attack is going on. I started getting dozens of object offerings, then I got logged out.

Grid is closed now. I’m in world, attack still going on.

GUI messages are reporting these information about people giving objects (actually, these may not link to the authors of the attack): Taury Barbee, Kacey Raabe, ares Hoggard, lessthan Abel, elleair Plasma, Thomas Goodfellow; and here are a couple of names of objects: 9830113.000000, 9486346.000000

Objects say and shout: Terror will rain down upon the unfit gods and the flock that they govern, from now until the End of Days.

Chatbot: Artificial Intelligence for Avatars

From  the SL Chatbot Introduction

Chatbot is based on the A.L.I.C.E. foundations AIML, and is designed to carry on relatively intricate conversations with humans. The Chatbot program is hosted on the free Pandorabots website. Metaverse Technology primary contribution is a Second Life interface that utilizes the LLHttpRequest functionality to instantiate a Chatbot in the Second Life Metaverse.

You can contact the creators Navillus Batra or Anthony Reisman in world, or check out Beta, a demo chatbot.

The SL Chatbot is a great item to experiment with on Second Life. It is fun to have around, and if it ever gets on your nerves, you can always shut him down. Put him in a magic hat and make it a magic talking hat. Turn your amazing vehicle into an amazing vehicle with a attitude that can talk back.

One of the great things about your clubs or stores in Second Life is that they are always open, but you can’t always be there. So add a SL Chatbot, use our straightforward customization process, and have it create that welcome feeling for whom ever might come your way.

A HUD for sim tagging and rating

Excerpts from “If one likes sim X, one may also like sim Y…” by Ordinal Malaprop.
“…I did, however, become interested in the idea of sim tagging, and so I thought about a system which would allow for this. I came up with a simple HUD device with four buttons. One gives the user an informative notecard; one sends the user to the web page listing the tagged results (more on that in a moment); but the most important ones are marked Vote and Clear. The idea is that the wearer clicks Vote if they like a sim they are in for whatever reason”
(…)
“…If you would like to participate in this it would make me extremely happy. The system requires a large number of contributors. You don’t need to spend ages marking every sim that you like and keep the HUD on all the time – if you only visit some of your favourites and vote for them now, then forget about the whole thing, that would still be terrific. And if you do obtain one of the objects, do consider giving it to any friends of yours who might also be interested – it is free to copy and transfer.

The HUD is available from:

• SLExchange;
• SLBoutique;
• or the free dispenser in my shop in Caledon.”

Komuso Tokugawa in concert

Komuso Tokugawa in concert.
c/o Art on the Floor, 3000 AD, 2006.09.30