Sim-on-a-stick, part 2: some virtual world basics

Highlighted today is a video, the first in a series of visits to virtual worlds.

The region being visited Terra Virtua in Kitely.  Kitely describes itself as "Virtual Worlds on Demand" and states "Each account includes one FREE virtual world." If you sign up at Kitely, you can either use their plugin (the Imprudence viewer) to access your world or launch the viewer of your choice independently of the website.  Kitely is based on OpenSim and they state in the FAQ that they

use a combination of standard OpenSim running in a ROBUST configuration, with our own proprietary OpenSim modules and web services.

Because the worlds are generated on demand, the user must wait for the world to be up and running.  This includes teleporting, which can cause awkward pauses, especially if your destination has particularly complex builds or many objects.

In "Virtual World Tours: Kitely" below, I'm offering basic terms used in virtual worlds and attempting to show what they mean.  There are sections showing building, primitive shapes  and terraforming.  I particularly wanted to show how avatars interact with the 3D environment.  Note that avatar Jamie walks into a structure and moves around in it.  If there were scripts in place, she could sit on the furniture and interact more fully with things.  This video is also available on YouTube in a larger format.

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Whew! Three working copies and a total restart later, the video is done.


-- Marge

Sim-on-a-stick, part 1: the basic idea

This information in an October 22nd article by James Au at New World Notes caught my attention the other day:

Last week I wrote about how Sim-on-a-Stick, a portable, offline version of OpenSim, was used to generate $300K in services for real world clients working on a contract for product placement in several dozen movie theaters. In Comments, Renee "Ener Hax" Miller, who led development on that project, explained why Sim-on-a-Stick (or SoaS) was better for this purpose (simulating these cinema spaces) than an online Second Life (or for that matter, I suppose an online OpenSim), for this application...

This is an interesting use for a virtual world instance and could be applicable for many businesses where a sale is dependent on visualizing a 3D space, such as architecture, real estate, interior design, and home renovation.

For better understanding, in the next few posts I will be discussing -- and showing -- how virtual worlds work and the language used when describing them.  We will be visiting some of the worlds, namely OSGrid, Kitely and Second Life.

Later, then.

-- Marge

Out filming (sort of)

I'm preparing a video to illustrate virtual world sims, prims, and how objects are built. It's not done yet.

In the meantime, take a break.

Heart Gardens in Second Life

-- Marge

I can do bad all by myself...

...is a movie written, produced, directed and acted in by Tyler Perry.  You may know him better as Madea, the pistol-packin' mama.  To me Perry is a perfect example of artist.  He took a difficult early life and transformed it into works that speak humanely (and with great humor) about this stew we live in.

From the article about him in Wikipedia --

Around 1990, he moved to Atlanta, where two years later I Know I've Been Changed was first performed at a community theater, financed by the $12,000 life savings of the 22-year-old Perry.[10] It included Christian themes of forgiveness, dignity and self-worth, while addressing issues such as child abuse and dysfunctional families. The musical initially received a "less than stellar" reception and was a financial failure. Perry persisted, and over the next six years he rewrote the musical repeatedly, though lackluster reviews continued. In 1998, at age 28, he succeeded in retooling of the play in Atlanta first at the House of Blues, then at the Fox Theatre. Perry continued to create new stage productions, touring with them on the so-called "chitlin' circuit" (now also known as the "urban theater circuit") and developing a large, devoted following among African-American audiences. In 2005, Forbes reported that he had sold "more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos of his shows and an estimated $20 million in merchandise" and that "the 300 live shows he produces each year are attended by an average of 35,000 people a week"

His website is nicely interactive and beautifully designed and there he invites visitors to interact with him.

Below are videos from some of his works (he's definitely prolific).

A trailer for "I Can Do Bad All By Myself:"

A second trailer, this one for "Madea's Witness Protection:"

A video from his scapbook of funny moments:

And a song by Gladys Knight from "I Can Do Bad...:"

Simply beautiful.

-- Marge

Electric Sheep

Back to evolving software and artificial life, this time it's electric sheep.  According to Wikipedia,

Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver.

Note that electric sheep is a distributed computing project.  Other distributed projects include SETI@home, which searches for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence; Bitcoin, the most widely used alternative currency; and ClimatePrediction, a project to investigate and reduce uncertainties in climate modelling. In other words your computer becomes a member of a network for the purpose of extending the project's computational ability and/or information processing.

According to an article by Ryan Naraine in eWeek, Grid Computing Can Allow Security Threats, (2005).  (Sorry, it's a fairly old article, but the only one I could find that isn't a scientific paper and locked up tighter than ...)

Wait a minute.  The terminology has evolved: what we're looking at is cloud computing. And "cloud security"

is an evolving sub-domain of computer security, network security, and, more broadly, information security. --Wikipedia

Back to electric sheep.  There are many samples of what the screensavers look like at the electric sheep site and information about how to take part in the project.  Terms for using the application's output are on the remix and reuse page.  Here's a video showing electric sheep on an Ubuntu desktop, published at PinoyGeekdotOrg:

A note to the wise: don't install this application at work without checking with your network admin first.

-- Marge

Artificial life in virtual worlds

Interesting news from the Second Life front:  In an article titled "Student Creates Code Which Generates Second Life/OpenSim Avatars... Based on Simulated Genetics!" Wagner James Au reports on a project being developed by "the University of Western Sydney and the Federation of American Scientists." Here's the video that demonstrates the work:

Envirtech is the group doing this work and they call the project Artificial Life Lab. For background, see the Wikipedia article on artificial life (aka Alife); note that the article directs you to the talk page -- there are a number of "challenges" to the article.

Knowing that MIT has been working with artificial intelligence for a long time, on a hunch I looked to see what might be going on with respect to virtual worlds and found this page on Digital Humanities and this quote mid-page:

It used to be that we in English departments were fond of saying there was nothing outside of the text. Increasingly, though, texts take the form of worlds as much as words. Worlds are emerging as the consummate genre of the new century, whether it’s the virtual worlds of Second Life or World of Warcraft or the more specialized venues seen in high-end simulation and visualization environments. Virtual worlds will be to the new century what cinema was to the last one and the novel to the century before that.

As an aside, I also found the article "‘Artificial leaf’ moves closer to reality" at the MIT site.  It fits in with the artificial photosynthesis article of a few days ago.

I love it when things mesh together.


-- Marge

YAHOO! Friday

In 2012 YAHOO! News had a comics and editorial cartoons page that listed many favorites. It's gone now, but the cartoonists and their magic remain. Here's a small selection of four:

Frank and Ernest:

Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller:

Over the Hedge:

Strange Brew by John Deering:

And that's a wrap.

-- Marge

Aarghhh! printers

Any printer eventually turns out to be my nemesis.  Especially any one I own now.  I finally got the right drivers installed, the correct IP address, and the printer printing.

This is how I feel about it.

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But it's still not right, probably getting too old (in digital equipment years).  *sigh* -- Marge

What's happening in artificial photosynthesis

Enough of politics...how about a little science for today?

With the promise of gas prices rising again and a depletable supply of oil, the time to start developing alternate sources of energy is long past. One promising field is artificial photosynthesis.  The sun pumps out an amazing amount of energy, but solar panels can only capture about 30% of it, although they're getting better all the time.

While the main purpose of natural photosynthesis is to nourish the plant (and, in the larger scale of nature, cleanses the air), the purposes of artificial photosynthesis are different, more specific to whether the output is carbon or oxygen. These purposes include splitting water to produce hydrogen for fuel cells and carbon fixation for biofuels.

The article "How Artificial Photosynthesis Works" from How Stuff works by Julia Layton explains the process. There is now a Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), established in 2010 as a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub. An article, dated April of 2012, at Science Daily reports "Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough: Fast Molecular Catalyzer."

Details of the photosynthesic process are amazingly complex, so I opted for a much-simplified diagram from Estrella Mountain Community College's page on photosynthesis.

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I've long thought that artificial photosynthesis would lend itself to developing a battery.  Apparently so do two chemists at the University of Texas -- Christopher Bielawski and Jonathan Sessler. Their work is detailed in the article, dated September 2010, "Electron Switch Between Molecules Points Way to New High-Powered Organic Batteries."

Note: this post was updated in May, 2016. And there's a lot more information on this topic out there.

-- Marge

Citizens United is not the same as citizens united

In my email this morning there was a call to action from Change.org to sign the following petition to the US Supreme Court and Federal Elections Commission:

Disqualify Mitt Romney from running for President and file felony charges.

Research shows that it's a super PAC that's funneling the money to Romney's campaign.  In fact, super PACs came into being following the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which

held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

However, Romney's campaign may have overstepped the line when accepting a donation from a foreign-owned corporation as reported in the article by Michael Beckel at the Center for Public Integrity, "Huge Donation To Romney SuperPAC From Foreign Firm Raises 'Red Flags'."  For more on super PACs and their effects, take a look at this article by Mike Lux of Democracy Partners, "The Hidden Effects of Citizens United and Super PACs." (Note that Mike is CEO of "Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a political consulting firm founded in 1999, focused on strategic political consulting for non-profits, labor unions, PACs and progressive donors.")

This is what PACs and superPACs mean to most of us (from Dave Granlund):

At the Center for Public Integrity site, you can check the sources of funding to super PACs. At OpenSecrets is a list of super PACs, both conservative and liberal, and data on recipients, donors, expenditures, and more.

More sunshine is always good.

-- Marge

Defending democracy

When America was just getting started and settlers were moving into the new territories it was necessary to fight (yes, bear arms) to defend home and family.  It's time to do that again, this time to defend democracy.  To do this we must arm ourselves to vote and vote well. To do that we need good, impartial information. 

Instead of just calling Washington a black hole and broken, let's start watching what's going on there and maybe say something when things are going awry.  Roll Call, is a newspaper published in Washington, D.C. that

reports news of legislative and political maneuverings on Capitol Hill, as well as political coverage of congressional elections across the country. (Wikipedia/Roll Call)

There are sites that welcome your input on political issues, such as Americans for Democratic Action.  And new sites that support defending democracy are starting up, such as Votizen (renamed Brigade),  Memeorandum, and Nationbuilder, as reported in an article by Josh Constantine in TechCrunch.

One alternative is to stand by and watch the candidates make fools of themselves, as shown in this cartoon by Dana Summers, editorial cartoonist for the Orlando Sentinel:

Considering all the political vitriol exchanged in the last few years, and other evidence of a fragmented society, my best solution is to begin rebuilding the real America.  Good luck trying to find any usable information (read not partisan) on the topic online.  The closest I could come was this article by Sabrina Stevens at AlterNet.  The concept of building a village isn't new, but becoming more and more important.

Guess it's time to get out of my chair, go offline (gasp!), and reinvest in the "real world."

-- Marge

Internet health

Seems to me it would be helpful to share some links and information about the internet and internet health, since many of us use it daily and some rely on it for their livelihood.  Unless you work for or connect to the internet via a Tier 1 network/company, you probably pay an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to connect.

There are sites you can check when your internet service slows down, such as Internet Health Report, a breakdown of mobile and internet service by company (note that Level3 is a company as well);  Internet Traffic Report, a well-established and world-wide monitoring service.

Many ISP's offer web pages that perform a speed test; note that these tests only work for connections between you and your provider.  Some ISP's offer a page that reports the status of their network. Another thing that affects your experience of the internet is how fast pages load.  This is mostly a function of your browser. Clearing the cache and recent history will often fix slowdowns.

Graphics that show internet backbone congestion are also available, but limited.  The Akamai Technologies site offers a suite of visualization tools online.  Akamai accounts for 15-30 percent of the global web traffic.  For truly inclusive real time internet usage in a visual format, you may have to develop a viewer.  CAIDA (Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) is a good resource for information.  The problem appears to be that each company owns its part of the internet and doesn't want to share.

Companies own the undersea cables that connect distant areas as well.  For an idea of how countries/areas are connected, take a look at this map by Nicolas Rapp.

Hmmm, if so much of the internet is owned by private companies, maybe we do need to assure that the internet is kept free. BTW, wikipedia's annual campaign for donations is on; give 'em five.

-- Marge