Pandemic Dawn

Well, it has been a while since I have posted on here. Mostly because I worked my tail off for three months straight trying to get the new house ready for the family to move in. I have the house 90% complete. There are still things which need to be done before winter, and i am slowly getting them finished, but I have not been feeling well for the past month. After a few visits to the doctor, it would appear that I have IBS, more than likely brought on by the stress of moving and completing the house in a timely manner.

It is doing much better now, and I felt great yesterday, so I have plans on getting back to work.

During this down time, I have been looking at my various projects, and realized once again that I need to get them all in one place, which will make them easier to sell. As it is, I have things all over the internet. I have my books, 3DS Objects, schematics, SecondLife Items, eBay items, props and cosplay costumes, as well as other various things. So I am currently working on a website that will display everything I create for sale in one place.

I have obtained another web address, and will build the site there, placing a link on this site to make it easy to find.

It should only take me a few days to build the site.

I will keep everyone posted as it develops.

Well it has been a while since I last posted on the website…I have been very busy with so many projects and things that I could not avoid, I just have not had time to post.  But now the new year has past, the taxes are done, the church financial reports are finished, and I can finally play again!

I have started up my OpenSim server once more on my home network, and have begun designing and building a huge sim for the kids and I to play on together.  This also allows me unlimited space to design and build models for selling on Second Life’s Marketplace without interruption from users looking for freebies and spare linden’s.

The first time I set up the OpenSim server, I was running it on an Ubuntu OS with OK results.  My biggest issue was my lack of experience with the Ubuntu system, and the pain of having to constantly look for help with even the smallest of issues.

This time around, I decided to run the OpenSim server on a windows based system, and I am very pleased with the results.

The server is basically an old unused PC I had sitting around from a trade in about a year back from a couple I know from church.  I set up their new system for them, and they asked if I wanted the old one, to which I always say yes.  I’m very big on recycling electronics, even if just for non-functioning artwork.

The server is an old HP Pavillion a1106n, it contains an Intel Pentium4 3.0Ghz CPU with hyper-threading enabled, and 500MB RAM.  It has a 150Gb hard drive, with Windows XP installed.  XP is fully up to date, and I have Avast virus installed, the FREE home edition of course!

I had to install Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express, MYSQL Server 5.1, and MYSQL Tools.

Sounds like a lot, but it actually only took a few minutes to download and install.

I then installed the Diva r13981 distribution version of OpenSim, which saves you a lot of time setting up a server.

After installation, I ran OpenSim for the first time and set up my ROOT region, from which I would build the rest of my mega-region from.

I prefer to use a mega-region for many reasons, but there are a few drawbacks as well.  most of your commands have to be submitted through the control console to specific regions as opposed to using the Hippo or Meerkat viewer.  But it’s not difficult once you know the console commands and understand how to implement them.

I had already drew a rough design for the mega-region I wanted to build.  I was envisioning a 25 region mega-region with various landscapes and environments for different types of game play.  The original drawing included a countryside, fields, trails, a forrest (which was very fun populating with trees once I discovered the console commands to do so!), a slum area, suburb, upper-class area, desert, mountains, beach and islands.

I designed these with a gradual transition between each region, making it “feel” more like you were slowly passing from one area into another without a drastic and noticeable border between the regions.

Once I finished my drawing, I began writing the region.ini file for creating the mega-region.

A basic region.ini file contains the information OpenSim needs for creating and placing the land masses, called regions.  A basic region would appear as this;

[Wasteland Park]
RegionUUID = e3e47750-2978-11e0-91fa-0800200c9a66
Location = 1000,1001
InternalAddress = 0.0.0.0
InternalPort = 9001
AllowAlternatePorts = False
ExternalHostName = SYSTEMIP
MasterAvatarFirstName = Lunk
MasterAvatarLastName = Portal
MasterAvatarSandboxPassword = ad630

After adding all 25 regions to the region.ini, I ran Open Sim and started planning sculpting the land.  This is where I had a few problems, but I will explain more in the next post

Well my video equipment arrived a couple days ago, and I have had a chance to play around with it a little and check it out before posting.

I wanted to ensure that my love for HD and anything electronic would not cloud reason and reality about this product before I had a chance to actually use it.

I purchased a Toshiba Camileo x100.  it is a 16 Mega Pixel video camera, with full HD (High Definition) capabilities.  Which means I can film 1080p/i at 30fps/60fps at 1920 x 1080.

The great thing is, it also has 720p/i settings as well as smaller video settings.

There is a 3 inch touch screen LCD which is really nice.  I didn’t think I would care for touch screen, but it makes finding the settings you want a lot easier!

The camera features HDMI out, USB and standard RCA out, and it came with ALL THREE CABLES!  So there was nothing extra I had to purchase, nice!

Another neat feature was the 1 button Youtube upload.  You can connect the camera to your computer, press one button and it places your video on youtube for you!

Of course, this wouldn’t be very useful to most people who like to edit before uploading, but it is a neat feature if you take video you want to upload raw.

The camera also has video stabilization up to 1080p, which is great because after my research, I will not be filming anything in i (interloping).  I am going to stick with either the 720p @ 60fps, or the 1080p @ 30fps.

The camera also takes 16 Mega Pixel still shots!  Real nice…especially with the built in flash.

It has a 4GB internal memory, with an SD/SDHC card slot.

I purchased a 16GB chip which allows me 3.5-4.5 hours or HD recording, depending on whether it’s 720p or 1080p.

I love the 10x optical zoom, and have sworn off any digital zoom since it’s introduction, although this camera does have a 10x zoom on it as well.

It also has a stereo mic, which I’m not sure how that matters or makes a difference on a small camera.

Another cool feature is a full featured remote control, for everything on the camera, from filming to video playback.

A lot of software came with the camera as well, but you don’t have to install any of it if you are using a chip, and have a card reader.

All in all, it seems as great as I thought it was, and with my discount I received, the camera only set me back about $220, which is nothing in today’s market.

I will post some videos soon.

Well after recycling my laptop with the broken screen into a media center for the front room TV, I decided what it was missing was a remote control!

So I installed TightVNC, a FREE open source program for controlling another computer, on the laptop, and the viewer on my Pharos GPS535 PDA.

After a minute to install, and a minute to set up, I had full control of the Laptop media Center from my PDA!

Added bonus, it’s full color screen on the PDA offers an awesome view when working on the Laptop remotely!

A few years ago, I was at church and a friend of mine approached me and asked if I wanted her old Toshiba laptop because it wasn’t working and she was tired of fighting with it.

Of course, me being the Jawa that I am, never let good junk pass me up.  By the way, all junk is good junk in the hands of a Jawa.

So I got the laptop, and it was in great physical condition, with all the original case and everything.  So I was excited.

It wouldn’t boot up, and after testing, it appeared to be a bad hard drive.  So I jumped on eBay, and picked up another laptop hard drive, and it already had Windows Pro installed along with Microsoft Office XP, and I got it for about $20!  That includes shipping…

I installed the new hard drive, and everything ran great!

I then decided to mod the laptop…

You can see the Photo Album of that HERE…

It has worked great for me over the past couple years with no problem, until about 6 months ago.

The screen started acting funny, and it didn’t like the color black.  The more black that was on the screen, the more flicker it would get, and if there was a big portion of black, say 60% or more…good bye screen, it would turn pure white and wouldn’t come back unless I restarted the computer.

I finally got tired of this, and took the screen completely off yesterday.

Trying to decide if I wanted to actually pay for a new screen or not, I had a great idea.

I decided to turn the laptop into a media center on our TV in the front room!

So I connected a video/out from the laptop to the VCR inputs, so all we have to do to access the laptop on the TV screen is press the video button on the remote.

I then ran the headphone out to the VCR so we could hear whatever sounds the laptop is playing.

I installed an open source media center software called Media Portal, you can find them here.

The I took an external hard drive I had from a couple years back that was full of Clean Flicks movies (about 170 DVD’s worth)  some from Clean Flicks, and some from DVR off my TV, and attached that to the laptop.

I also connected the laptop wireless to our home network to access our pictures, music and internet.

So, now when I turn the laptop on, it starts the media center, and I can access all of our music, photo albums, internet, and movies on our front room TV.

Media Portal also allows you to customize the look, feel and operation of the software with mods, you can even connect to your incoming TV signal and DVR!

I like the cool local weather feature that allows me to see my local weather with one click.

My satellite does this as well, but operates a lot slower and takes longer than the laptop.

This is how I like to recycle!