Appearence and RLV

Maggie and I spent this morning chasing shops. She looked for some nice dresses and lingerie, and then she found a new shop for male apparel, with shapes, skins, hairs and eyes. I have been looking for a good male skin for some time now, without much success. The skins in this new shop weren't 100% to my taste, but they were a lot better than the one I've been using before, and comparatively cheap, so I got one, and the shop owner who were there, was very helpful and even threw in hair and eyes for me, and eyes for Maggie as well, for free. I don't usually promote shops in this blog, but for this one, I'll make a well-deserved exception: Ernesto at Token City 178, 24, 24.

Later in the day, I ran into a girl who had some scripting problems. She was working on some RLV (Restrained Love Viewer, a system for people into dominant/submissive role-play, which permits others to take some control of your avatar) scripts, and I managed to help her out with it. She was very grateful, and gave me full perm versions of some simple scripts she made. I also helped her some with another, more advanced script, with menu control.

I never got around to scripting for RLV in Second Life, and not in Avination before neither. But now I discovered that it seems very simple, and later in the evening, when I met Maggie and told her, she wanted me to be able to lock my collar on her. I managed to modify one of the scripts I got from the girl so it worked with a decoration collar Maggie got from one of the shops in Sweet Hideout. She was very happy when I could lock it so she couldn't take it off, until she discovered the caveat that she needed to put in a lot of extra work in setting her inventory up so it worked when she was locked by RLV as well. She already have over 2000 items in her inventory, so she'll be busy for some time to come.

Economy:

2011-04-29: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-30 08:45 CET, 26,975 residents, 8,472 in 30d, 1,112 sims

Ballroom dancing

Maggie and I spent the morning just talking, like so often, but in the evening, we went ballroom dancing, me in my tuxedo, and she in a lovely gown. We tried two places, both empty except for us. One was really beautiful, but streamed a not very nice modern radiostation. The other was not as beautifully built, but had an amazing view out over some islands, and nice music. We danced and chatted about our plans to meet RL again later this year, before going back home and to bed, rather late.

Economy:

2011-04-28: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-29 05:55 CET, 26,871 residents, 8,545 in 30d, 1,113 sims

A lot of chatting

This morning, Maggie and me chatted for an hour about us and our relationship. I think it was good for both us and our relationship. We have grown very close to each other by now, especially after we met in real life. Afterwards, I needed to take care of a few things regarding the sims I have now adopted, so I was a bit late to real-life work.

This evening, Maggie introduced me to a griend she met and who wanted to know some things about Second Life. After that, Maggie and I went home and rode the train, while discussing future projects together in Avination. We ended up cuddling a while in bed before it was time for at least me to sleep.

Economy:

2011-04-27: sales +C$10

Avination stats:

2011-04-28 06:03 CET, 26,714 residents, 8,554 in 30d, 1,111 sims

Places saved

The last few days, I haven't been much in Avination, owing to real-life activities. Sunday, Maggie and I talked with two of the other leasers in Sweet Hideout though, Rosie and scorpio, and we were all as worried about what had happened to the owner trad. scorpio was even planning on leaving Sweet Hideout owing to the uncertainty. I wrote to Avination and explained the situation, requesting to be permitted to pay trad's tier for his two sims while he were away, and to have temporary manager permissions on them until he comes back.

This evening, when I checked the mail, I discovered a mail from Avination about the tier for Sweet Retreat being due 5 days ago already. Fortunately, the sim had not been erased, so I paid the tier immediately and hope the sim will remain online. I also know the tier for Sweet Hideout is due in less than a month now. That was all the information I got from Avination so far. Nothing about trad or the manager permissions.

At least it seems like we will be able to save the sims for the time being now. Sweet Hideout is home for Maggie and me, and also many of the other leasers really like the sims, some having their homes in Sweet Retreat, and not just for the low rent they need to pay.

After I were done with trad's business, sending an IM to him with information about the situation, Maggie and I took a look into Sweet Retreat. She hasn't dared go there for a long time, because she has crashed often there before. This time she survived both the visit and the two accompanying sim border crossings forth and back. We spent quite some time relaxing and chatting in the little nature paradise trad created there.

Economy:

2011-04-24: gift to Maggie -C$25

2011-04-25: sale +C$10

2011-04-26: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-25 10:02 CET, 26,347 residents, 8,626 in 30d, 1,110 sims

2011-04-26 05:41 CET, 26,461 residents, 8,608 in 30d, 1,110 sims

2011-04-27 04:54 CET, 26,597 residents, 8,586 in 30d, 1,115 sims

Places worth revisiting

This morning, Maggie and I re-visited the same place as we checked out the evening before, with a maze with Easter gifts in the center, and then we went to see an outdoor store selling rather simple but effectful waterfalls and other water things.

In the evening, we ended up at the same places, simply because I logged off there. But it was a beautiful place well worth visiting, and we also met one of the owners, a woman who was very nice and gave us some extra freebies. After that, we visited a couple of other sims, chasing a special shop that had been moved very recently. Maggie also handed me a freebie gift she found for me, and I paid for one of her purchases that was much for my sake. Finally, I set out a train on trad's railroad, and we took a calm private ride while discussing our future plans in Avination and some other things.

I've stopped setting out trains regularly on the railroad now, until I know if they add to the lag and problems in the sim. I submitted two support tickets about it, which may hopefully make it possible to pinpoint the causes of the sim problems, even if it's not the trains causing them. Crash stack traces from the scripts that I provided may give the Avination managers a hint of what's the root of the problem and how it could hopefully be solved.

Economy:

2011-04-23: donation? +C$20, concert donations -C$200

Avination stats:

2011-04-24 10:17 CET, 26,203 residents, 8,636 in 30d, 1,117 sims

Sim hopping and concert

This morning, Maggie and I met rather shortly, spending the time chatting about various things. In the evening, we went sim hopping, exploring some sims of interest. Unfortunately, she crashed a lot, but it at least helped some when she set down her graphics from high to medium. Later in the evening, we went to a concert, with a really good singer, singing lot of old goodies from Elvis, Gershwin, Louis Armstrong and others. After that we looked at a few more sims before going home and to bed.

Our friend and landlord trad is still missing, and has not been seen in Second Life neither. I'm really worried about what has happened to him now. I don't know when his next sim tier is due, but if he isn't there to pay it then, one day the sims will suddenly just go poof and disappear.

Economy:

2011-04-22: Zyngo +C$20

Avination stats:

2011-04-23 08:50 CET, 26,080 residents, 8,611 in 30d, 1,118 sims

Zyngo and sim roulette

This morning, Maggie and I spent in bed in Avination, chatting and snuggling some. In the evening, we first played some Zyngo and then played some sim roulette, jumping to more or less random sims. We found one strictly ordered German sim with casino, mall and houses for rent in very strict and perfect squares, one sim which seemed to be the playground under construction of some more or less crazy scripter, and of course a few casino sims, empty but surprisingly nicely designed. We finally got stuck talking about our real-life meeting and out friend trad, who hasn't logged in to neither Second Life nor Avination for a long time now, until it became so late we found it best to return home and go to bed.

During the day, I also submitted a couple of support tickets about the problem with the railroad. I think those may be symptoms of an underlying problem that could and should be solved, not just for the railroad's sake.

Economy:

2011-04-21: easter maze quiz +C$28, clothes -C$10

Avination stats:

2011-04-22 06:00 CET, 25,947 residents, 8,629 in 30d, 1,119 sims

Mazes and kink clubs

This morning, Maggie and I visited a maze full of Easter gifts, and managed to collect quite a few items and C$ in the trivia quiz inside the maze.

This evening, we visited a kink club, had a nice time using their dance balls, checked out their beach and gallery. We also met the owner, and Maggie invited one of our friends, Rosie, to join us chatting there for a while. On the way home, we visited Rosie's store, and bought some of her clothes creations, which were on sale for just C$10 each, which was a very good price.

Our friend trad is still missing, the trains were off-line this evening, so I reset them, and Sweet Hideout was lagged before we left for the kink club but better when we returned. I asked the owner of the kink club, whose sim is rather heavily loaded, how often he needs to restart it. He said once every 10-14 days, while Sweet Hideout needs restarting every second day or so, despite being much less loaded. Something obviously isn't right.

Economy:

2011-04-20: hair for Maggie -C$649

Avination stats:

2011-04-21 05:56 CET, 25,819 residents, 8,727 in 30d, 1,127 sims

New hair for Maggie

This morning, the trains on trad's railroad were still running, and Maggie and I spent the morning chatting. In the evening, the trains were again offline, so I set them out again. trad's neighbouring sim, Sweet Retreat didn't rezz and couldn't be teleported into, so I submitted a support ticket to have it restarted.

Maggie and I went to a kind of show case, and looked around. We found some good things, but most of them at prices that we both thought were too high for the quality offered. I gave Maggie money to buy a "fat pack" of hair in many different colors that she liked though. I looked for skins for myself, but found nothing to my liking, even if Maggie liked one of the skins I tried. She also found a very nice dress as a gift, but had a lot of problems crashing tonight. When we returned home, I crashed badly when trying to cross the sim border between Sweet Hideout and the restarted Sweet Retreat forth and back.

Economy:

2011-04-19: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-20 05:43 CET, 25,667 residents, 8,761 in 30d, 1,118 sims

Re-visiting old sims

This morning, Maggie and I spent talking mostly, while I again set the off-line trains up and we took a test ride on one of them. In the evening, the trains were gone again, so I set them up, and then Maggie and I visited some old sims we visited before, checking up on news, and then peeked into a new shop with skins. Not much for me though, and as usual the assortment for females was a lot better.

Maggie had severe problems, with "inconsistent attachment state" preventing her from teleporting, and after we fixed that, she kept crashing a lot. I'm beginning to get tired with these recurring problems, because the performance don't seem to be improving much with time, as one could expect in a new virtual world, if the problems were just "child diseases". I'm more and more nearing the conclusion that the pre-beta server OpenSimulator software that Avination is run on simply isn't fit enough even for medium-scale production attempts like Avination yet.

Economy:

2011-04-18: gift -C$50

Avination stats:

2011-04-19 06:04 CET, 25,546 residents, 8,836 in 30d, 1,121 sims

More railroad and geishas

This morning, Maggie and I spent the time mostly talking. We mainly discussed our relationship, which has changed to the better after our real-life time together. But I also worry more and more about our disappeared landlord and friend trad.

This evening, I came late owing to real-life duties, and found the trains of the railroad gone again, the last of them slowly drifting away as a ghost into the void next to the sim. I launched new trains, and will see how long they will survive. Maggie and I found time to visit a sim she had visited before and found some nice things in. The sim is one in a little cluster, Japan-themed, and with a Second Life-style railroad under construction. Seeing the problems with my own simple railroad, I must admit I'm a bit hesitant how the far more advanced Second Life one will survive in the pretty shaky Avination environment.

Maggie found some freebie geisha dances and dance kimonos, and I thought they were so nice, I wanted to encourage the creator by buying some of his non-freebie stuff as well. It turned out both Maggie and me liked the same kimono, so I gave her money to buy it. She also had found some freebie Japanese skins in the same sim, and she looked really nice as a geisha dancer. But then the time was late, so it was time to return back home and to bed. The trains were at least still running when we came back, so we'll see how long they last this time.

Economy:

2011-04-17: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-18 05:58 CET, 25,423 residents, 8,864 in 30d, 1,106 sims

Back from vacation

I've been away from Avination for a whole week now, meeting Maggie real-life for the first time, and when I got home from that, I had other real-life interference. Maggie got her computer back while I visited her, and we've spent what time we could together in Avination this weekend, chatting and building. Maggie rented another shop for us, in a mall with a bit more traffic than trad's, but I still like trad's sim better.

trad seems to have gone missing for an entire week now, since I left, without any notice. Today our home sim Sweet Hideout bogged down, and I requested a restart for it, which was effectuated and seems to have solved the problems for now. The railway trains don't seem to survive sim crashes and restarts, but go off-line or at least missing then. I'm getting worried about trad, if something happened to him, or if the problems with the railroad when the sim messes up have made him leave. I tried IMing him today, and hope I will have some response soon.

Economy:

2011-04-09: rent -C$70, upload -C$10

2011-04-12: sales +C$30

2011-04-15: sales +C$20

2011-04-16: exchange +C$4000, rent -C$410

Avination stats:

2011-04-10 05:01 CET, 24,304 residents, 9,079 in 30d, 1,144 sims

2011-04-11 09:26 CET, 24,452 residents, 9,034 in 30d, 1,147 sims

2011-04-12 08:02 CET, 24,608 residents, 8,993 in 30d, 1,150 sims

2011-04-13 08:58 CET, 24,761 residents, 8,983 in 30d, 1,153 sims

2011-04-14 10:26 CET, 24,920 residents, 8,947 in 30d, 1,161 sims

2011-04-15 09:14 CET, 25,047 residents, 8,935 in 30d, 1,144 sims

2011-04-16 08:41 CET, 25,144 residents, 8,902 in 30d, 1,132 sims

2011-04-17 08:43 CET, 25,281 residents, 8,893 in 30d, 1,095 sims

More railroading and politics

It seems trad's railroad is attracting some attention, and I'm happy for that. Today I spent some time creating steam engines to run his track, since his own trams were offline, possibly owing to a sim crash or restart earlier. Even if the engines were of simple design, I'm still rather satisfied with them.

The departure of two major creators and merchants from Avination cause a bit of a stir on the avination blog. I don't know what's behind the exit, but I got the feeling it wasn't handled all that gracefully by Avination management.

What is more disturbing to me is the very vocal and fanatic advocates of Avination that basically keep saying that all who aren't as fanatic about Avination as they are don't have the right spirit and should leave. With the Emerald and RedZone debacles in Second Life in fresh memory, with fanatic supporters of actual real-life criminals running wild, I'd say that kind of "hallelujah" fanatics probably do more to scare people off than detractors and even major players leaving Avination. Some people just refuse to see that Avination isn't all that great yet, even if it has the potential to become so. To keep saying that Avination is great just simply doesn't make it any more so. Recognizing, discussing and working on the problems is a far better way to improve Avination, even if some seem to think that's just bashing Avination unjustly.

Economy:

2011-04-08: sales +C$40

Avination stats:

2011-04-09 06:57 CET, 24,161 residents, 9,108 in 30d, 1,141 sims

Tracks and trad

It seems like my little railroad script really means a lot to my landlord trad. He's all excited about the possibilities it opens up, and I'm very happy both for his sake and for my own, since it most probably means he will stay in Avination, and Maggie and me won't lose our lovely home. He even said he'll stay for as long as Avination remains and land prices don't go up too much, and he's labelled his first generation of trams with Maggie's and my logo, and called them Magnuzmobiles. I won't hold him to none of that though, but am just happy if he's found enough new joy in Avination to hang on and give it a chance for at least a few more months, as our original agreement was.

Economy:

2011-04-07: sales +C$10, upload -C$10

Avination stats:

2011-04-08 06:46 CET, 23,997 residents, 9,176 in 30d, 1,139 sims

Trading with trad

Yesterday my landlord trad had another fit over the technical problems in Avination, and I can't blame him. One of his sim had been gone for an entire day, at it took some time for support to bring it back online. Also, for several days, he's been walking around invisible, save for his hair, some clothing prims and boots. He was so pissed off he was about to leave it all again.

We had a long chat, and I found out another of his frustrations was he had ideas he didn't have the pieces or know-how to pull off. One of them was building a railroad. The way he described it, I realized I had basically built something like that long ago in Second Life. So, we made a little deal: I help him get his railroad running, and he hangs on for a few months longer in Avination to see if things improve.

This evening, I delivered. It was really just a simple "vehicle" to demonstrate, but it did follow the monorail track trad built around the entire sim, you could ride it, and the tool I developed for making the configurable path for it made it take about 20 minutes to get it running on the track, once I started building the path. trad said he was happy about it, and I promised to help him out to make it fit his needs fully, since this is still just a generic path follower, with a few configurable extras.

I'm glad if my little 6 hour hack can save the sim Maggie and I have come to love as our home, at least for a while longer. trad has really created something special there, and it would be so sad if he just tore it down. He told me a couple of major creators, Redgrave and Mimi's Choice, have left Avination now, and I see stagnation in both sims and visitors from the stats I compile myself as well. I'm not sure if Avination will make it, because for every day that goes without much improvement, I doubt it more and more, but I still want to give it the chance.

Economy:

2011-04-05: -

2011-04-06: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-06 04:42 CET, 23,694 residents, 9,281 in 30d, 1,148 sims

2011-04-07 06:25 CET, 23,846 residents, 9,208 in 30d, 1,140 sims

Overdoing things

Yeah, I know, you should do things right from the beginning instead of correcting them afterwards. I did not do that with my scripting project. The last few days I've spent a lot of time refactoring and straightening code out without really adding much functionality. But if this project becomes long-lived, I guess I'll be grateful for the effort when I need to modify things a couple of years from now. If not this particular project makes it, I can still re-use a lot of code and ideas from it in other projects I am thinking about.

Oh, and still no word about Maggie's computer. I really miss her now. If nothing else I would like her to help me test and try out my little scripting project.

Economy:

2011-04-04: -

Avination stats:

2011-04-05 07:03 CET, 23,555 residents, 9,382 in 30d, 1,142 sims

Scripting documentation

This morning, I never entered Avination, and this evening, I spent with renaming some variables in the scripting project to make configuration more intuitive than with the old variable names, and then documenting the configuration properly.

Economy:

2011-04-03: sales +C$10, upload -C$10, donation -C$20

Avination stats:

2011-04-04 19:21 CET, 23,483 residents, 9,451 in 30d, 1,146 sims

Scripting configuration

Today, I spent most of my time online breaking out all configurations, text and variables in my scripting project so they can be configured from a notecard. That means one can revamp the device totally, e.g. make other language versions of it, without having to mess with the scripts themselves. Of course I introduced a few bugs, but surprisingly few, and I think I got them all worked out now.

Even if it feels good with making fast progress on the scripting, I miss Maggie to distract me from it. I really hope she will have her computer back in the beginning of this week.

Economy:

2011-04-02: ad board rent -C$40

Avination stats:

2011-04-03 07:20 CET, 23,293 residents, 9,481 in 30d, 1,146 sims

More script refactoring

Since I can't do anything fun with Maggie, I spent a little time Friday improving my scripting project, and much of the time today with fixing a bug and making a major refactoring of the data structures in it. Apart from that, I checked up on a few sims, made a few new friends and renewed an ad board Maggie signed us up for a month back.

Economy:

2011-03-31: -

2011-04-01: sales +C$10

Avination stats:

2011-04-01 05:25 CET, 22,950 residents, 9,571 in 30d, 1,132 sims

2011-04-02 05:17 CET, 23,104 residents, 9,499 in 30d, 1,145 sims