Cafe Bucky

When I was starting to learn PHP and MySQL in 2001, I wanted to tackle a project that meant something to me; a non-trivial web application…

So, being a photographer and programmer with some time on my hands, I decided to write a photo database.

The first iteration of FlexiPhoto had a hard-wired interface.  I rewrote it to support multiple UIs and languages.  Sometime in 2004-2005, I rewrote it again as a PHP5 app.

In 2006, I got distracted by Second Life :)  It was like going down a rabbit hole.  I got good at scripting in LSL [1].  I shelved my web projects.  What a mistake!  Although I have learned a lot of web tech in the last 5 years, I had my attention split by learning a lot about Second Life.  It’s nice to be good at it, but it doesn’t pay!  And, damn, I could use some money about now …

So I am back on the case with FlexiPhoto.  I have a virtual Ubuntu machine running at Slicehost, which I’ll use for the public-facing Demo, Wiki, and Download site.  I’m in the midst of dusting off FP (switching database layer from DB to MDB2, for one thing), and expect to have it available within a week.  It’s going to look clunky and very pre-AJAX, but then, I am a big fan of iteration.

A fun side note about Linux and running virtual machines at home: I still have my old 1U rack server, which hosted FlexiPhoto and other sites back in the day.  The damn thing is loud! It’s running an old version of Debian.  My task today is to mirror my Slicehost OS at home.  I’ve installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) on my iMac, hosted via VirtualBox. That will give me synced development & public environments.  I also am able to dual boot my Samsung NC10 Netbook to Windows XP and Ubuntu.  I’ve got it covered, baby!

Geez, geeking out here big time.

Anyways, FlexiPhoto is a good portfolio piece of mine, and I am stoked to be working on it again.  It’s like an old friend :)

[1] …although, to this day, I really think Cory O should have finished LSL.  It even makes Tcl look good, and that’s saying a lot…

For many years, I didn’t believe in doing New Years Resolutions. I figured that it was a good idea to just resolve to change things as one went along. That’s still a good idea, but I do see the symbolism of the clean slate of a New Year.  Doubly so for a new decade.

And I also say Good Riddance to the decade of 2000-2009. There were lots of ups to it (I love you Kimmy, and you have filled our time together with so much love, energy, and grace — I want you in all of our decades to come :). There have also been way too many downs, and I’ve learned and just want to move on.

I’m blogging some of my resolutions, so that I put a little pressure on myself to get them done … I’m only listing things that I think I can really control. Stuff that involves other people or that gets a bit personal doesn’t get penned here.

Ze Resolutions

• Wake Up when the alarm goes off
  (hitting the snooze button on my iPod is way too convenient — I’m going to move it so that I have to get out of bed)
• Lose 20 pounds by June 1st
  (I refuse to go any bigger than 34×30 Levis 550’s — I am drawing my line in the sand!  task #1: buy a scale)
• Throw stuff out so that I dont need a storage area any longer

Tech & Creative Stuff

• Average one creative output per day (such as a picture, video, blog post, tweet)
• Make a list of all of the web sites I am registered with
  (and get rid of ones I am not likely to ever use again)
• Get daniel.org redone as a proper personal domain by February 1st (themed, pages for software and writings)
• actively use my lynda.com and safarionline.com accounts to keep learning (complete at least one video course per month, and read at least one tech book per month)
• Get slide scanner working and scan at least 50 slides per month
• learn final cut express and photoshop
• learn Ruby on Rails
• resurrect FlexiPhoto and implement ThereThen addresses so that photos can be aliased by time and location  — do this by March 1st.
• No more SL scripting unless there is a financial reason to do so
  (I feel like SL has been a huge detour — I am glad that I am very good LSL scripter and have done some innovative work, but I could have been using that time to do things that would have done more to pay the bills)

There are a ton of other things I could write as Resolutions, such as Get A Job or Travel To Europe, but anything that involves other people isn’t something I can completely control.   (I do think I will be working and traveling, but it’s not like 2000, where I had the resources to just grab tickets and friends and take off)

[update -- January 14, 2010]

So far, I am paying attention to some resolutions pretty well …

Kimmy – We’re not together any more.  I do wish her the best.

Waking up – Am doing much better at this!

Weight – have ordered a scale so that I know where I am at.  Lots of little tweaks, such as making 2 scrambled eggs instead of 3.

Creative output – yep!  Doing it.

Lynda.com and Safarionline – yep! Doing it.

Second Life – yep!  I have really pulled back and I dont script there any more.

The thought that sums up my mood lately is:

“I cant get the last few years back, but I can sure make the next few count.”

[update -- January 29, 2010]

Got a scale – doing daily weigh-ins, not gaining :)

Got a VPS (Virtual Private Server) via Slicehost.com and am configuring it

TravelTime is a Prim Animation Tool I have been writing in Second Life.  The gist of it is to be able to send a prim along a path, and have a lot of control over what happens at each point.  You can make a traveling slide show, or particle emitter, or even rez objects.  It’s pretty flexible.  See the video (I recommend full screen)   I’ll have more to say about TravelTime soon.

Hello There – I need to get working!

I’m starting to post my short blurb on Craigslist and elsewhere.

I realize there’s a ton of things I need to do to get my full online presence polished up (blog, web site, writing and code samples, etc).  I shall!

Anyways, this is my blurb:

——–

Resume: http://daniel.org/resume

my resume is a very interactive page, utilizing prototype.js — click on sections that highlight as you mouse around …

Some Keywords: PHP Perl MySQL Apache AJAX JavaScript Mac Linux LSL / OpenSim

Also: Energetic Experienced QA Writing Design Strategy Evaluation

Very experienced with web & app development (for 20+ years and I do what I love!).

I also have 3+ solid years in Second Life scripting (LSL) and building.

Goal: Web/LAMP and/or SL/Virtual World development, evaluation, prototyping. I have been happy freelancing for the last few years, but am open to a full time gig — depends on the individual situation.

LAMP & Mac. PHP/Perl/MySQL/JavaScript/JSON/Ajax/Prototype.js, YUI, etc.

I’ve done a lot with C++ in the past, and have touched on ActionScript 2.0.  I can dive back into C++/AS 3.0 with some time to refresh.  I would even dive back into Tcl if I couldn’t talk you out of it :)  I use techniques such as HTTPFox, Fiddler, and Firebug.

Web: I’ve worked on sites you’ve heard of, such as AOL.Com and Friendster.  I’ve worked with 10 mobile phones hanging off a Linux box to implement sending/receiving messages for a subscriber service.  I’ve done work with JackBe Presto to implement a mashup of search results (for a Wells Fargo proof of concept).

Second Life: You have seen my work with Interactive Objects — Contact Bucky Barkley in-world for more info.

I am also interested in coming up to speed in the areas of Augmented Reality (such as http://Layar.com ), iPhone SDK, and Google Wave.

I live in Petaluma CA, but may relocate. Commuting to SF is fine 3-4 days a week. I will consider concurrent part time or short term (2 weeks – month) projects. I am up for telecommuting + meetings almost anywhere.  Of particular interest is NYC and the UK.

[this is a sketch about how I see a couple of trends merging to the point where something very new is created]

We are going to hit a point of blurring.  It’ll be great …

I’ve paid attention to Virtual Reality (mostly in the form of SecondLife, but a little exposure to X3D as well) for a few years now, and am about to jump into Augmented Reality …

But I can look ahead and see what’s really going to happen in a few years.  We’re going to get a lot of mixed scenarios where it’s not so clear how to classify what happens on screen:

• Virtual Reality is about synthetic worlds, where content from the real world is brought in.   A couple of examples I have personally worked on would be: bringing photos and video into SecondLife  – sometimes static, sometimes live.  I also have personally worked on objects for Vivaty that bring audio, video, and images from Flickr into a Virtual Space.
• Augmented Reality is about the Real World (as in realtime video), with data from the internet and local storage dynamically overlaid.  The classic example is to take video with a smartphone, and dynamically overlay information for nearest subway stations. places to eat, and real estate listings.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can be seen as the flip side of each other.

You start with the synthetic, and bring in the real / web.  Or … you start with the real, and you bring in the web / synthetic.

For the time being, the worlds are largely going to stay that way.  It takes a lot of processing power and a lot of code that doesnt readily exist at the moment to put the two modes together.

But I can see it — think the present boundaries are going to just stay put? :)

Blended Reality will give the ability to flow seamlessly between real video with synthetic overlays, to the scenario of completely immersive environments, back to straight live video.

Scenario: I walk to Central Park and pull out a decent sized tablet (jam 4 iphones together — That’s a good screen size to envision).  I see live video, and overlays of points of interest.  I may pick a point of interest (let’s say it’s winter, so we pick the ice rink).  I get a feed in-scene of the latest photos / writeups of the ice rink, and I can segue into a virtual world recreation of it.  I meet with friends who may be elsewhere, but who are enjoying the get-together in the virtual sense.  From their point of view, perhaps they see live video of what’s happening at the ice rink.  Maybe their friends in real life have a clickable visual tag floating on them from the viewer point of view (if the RL friends choose to make their location info available to some of their contacts)  Perhaps some of the video comes from my tablet! The gist of this is, mixing modes based on location…

I’m just doing the flat-screen writeup of this for the time being.  It’s enough of a start to envision stepping into and out of virtual and augmented spaces, whether on the go with some tablet, or behind a desk.  Think not so much of overlapping hard window definitions, but of smooth transitions from between flat / augmented / virtual areas of the screen.

As I said, this is just a sketch — thoughts that have occurred to me in the last day.  The basic idea is that I dont see the hard boundaries of Virtual and Augmented Realities staying put.  They are going to blur and meet in the middle ;)

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do, gig-wise.  For way too long, I’d been waiting for Second Life and OpenSim to pop up on the radar as a marketable skill.  I’m good at it, but hell, the average salary for SL gigs is way down there [1]

There is a lot out there in the Tech Landscape that thrills me:

Google Wave, Augmented Reality, and the iPhone (in addition to the Web 2.0 LAMP/AJAX stuff I love doing)

I am waiting for my developer login for Google Wave.  Visualize Email that turns into an IM, which flows into a collaborative document, with full playback of who edited what.  That’s an icebergian tip …

Or you can look at some pretty pictures and get an idea …

I also found it instructive to watch the video on how Wave handles Concurrent Editing.

One imagines Wave dovetailing with projects in SL, Augmented Reality, and all manner of mobile devices.

As for AR (Augmented Reality), three examples everyone should check would be:

• Layar, worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser
• The Acrossair bit on the BBC
• The biz card demo

Oh, and the ARToolkit running on the iPhone …

Speaking of the iPhone, I have downloaded the SDK and have signed up as a developer.  Objective C hits me as a kinder, gentler take on C++ and Java.  I am digging it so far.

None of this should be taken as a sign I am leaving Web Development.  Far from it!  I am just looking at the likely directions that spring from it, where I think there will be a lot of interest and opportunity.

[1] I  have recent info from Susan, who heard it firsthand from someone presenting from Marketing Truths at SLCC

I recently marked 3 years in SecondLife, and have also been spending time using OpenSim.  I think OpenSim is the virtual world equivalent of Apache, and I think it’s going to catch on in a big way …

Backing up a bit …

So, OpenSim could be seen as an Open Source implementation of SecondLife.  But It’s more than that.  It is a platform for creating your own virtual worlds.  It’s a 3D environment where the users create content, can meet each other, and interact in real time from anywhere in the world.

Oh oh .. blank stares …  Some from tech people in the audience who think they are all done learning ;)

I recently had three encounters with a couple of friends and a recruiter, and each had the same sort of skeptical look or response to the idea of SecondLife and Virtual Worlds.  Pretty much 3 in 24 hours …

If SecondLife is off the radar for many in the tech world, OpenSim is farther still.

So let’s meander along.  I’ll explain.  I’m good at this.  I’ve been on the web since 1993, and in Virtual Worlds (VW) for three years.  Relax, this will be fun. Get your popcorn.  Keep your frikken butter off my sofa! Sheesh… some people …

In 1993 and 1994, the web was still way off the radar screen for most people.  I was at Autodesk, and I can say most managers there Simply Did Not Get The Web.  I went on to AOL to work on AOL.Com.  I made and lost a fortune, but that is not today’s topic.

So I am used to the blank stare thing.  Y’all will get the Virtual World thing… eventually.

Enter SecondLife and OpenSim.  SecondLife is a great VW platform.  It’s controlled by one company, and the server side of it is proprietary.  A few of the strong points of SecondLife are:

• immersive 3D environment
• user created content
• an economy
• great place to have meetings and trainings
• it is what you make of it
• strong creative and educational community

The client side of SecondLife is a viewer you run on your computer that gets you into the immersive 3D environment …

… and it so happens that the viewer (and its derivatives) work fine with OpenSim servers.

.. Where can an OpenSim server run?  On your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine.  Yes, you can have a self-contained virtual world on your laptop.  This is fine for some.  They’ll run a server, tell their friends how to connect, and that’s that.  Just like a private web site but in 3D.

Where it gets really interesting is to survey the publicly available grids out there (collections of one or more OpenSim instances), and to realize that companies and organizations can have their own private ones.

1994.  Apache.  Web.
2009.  OpenSim. Virtual World.

I’ve thrashed through some of the basics.  You can go to SecondLife.com and Opensimulator.org sites to get more background.

OpenSim is becoming to Virtual Worlds what Apache has been to the web.  It’s Open Source, there are brilliant people from all over the world contributing to it (echoing the development model of Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, and some other high profile successes).

And we are at 1994 all over again.  OpenSim is at version 0.6.4, which means it is 64% of the way towards implementing the functionality found in the SecondLife server.  It looks as if it could reach 100% parity by the end of 2009.  There are already many organizations getting real results from their initial explorations (such as IBM), conducting meetings and trainings, or using a virtual space as a museum (ReactionGrid.com is recreating the 1939 Worlds Fair).

Do you think I mention meetings and trainings too easily?  Would I really do that?  Of course not.  Amada Linden did a good writeup entitled “Working in the Virtual World“.  Amanda says:

“I believe that the only good alternative to virtual meetings is a face-to-face meeting. It would be a hard to argue the teleconference calls or WebEx can create as immersive an experience”

If you want to drill deeper, see Caleb Booker’s post: Why Webcams Fail

I had known about OpenSim last year, but dismissed it as too early.  The wake up call for me was an article “OpenSimulator: The Choice for 2010” by Gwyneth Llewelyn.  She analyzed the state of OpenSim very well, but more importantly, she has a great handle on what it is going to take to succeed as a VW platform.  It got me thinking, and together with my partner Kim, we started checking it out.

Without going into 20 reasons why we personally love it, I will just paint with some broad strokes:

• SecondLife provides a great reference example
• the OpenSim developers are very capable, and there are organizations such as IBM committing real resources to the effort
• the developers of OpenSim do not feel constrained by the Linden Lab efforts
• there have already been very real advances in the OpenSim platform that cant be found in SecondLife, such as scripting at the region level, integration with skype, dynamic text on prims, arbitrary images on prims from URLs, and HyperGrid (teleport from one grid to another)

In a nutshell, OpenSim is evolving into the sort of effort we have previously seen with Linux and Apache.  A very real community is forming, and there’s even some tutorial material out there …

It’s 1994 all over again, and it makes me smile.

I am declaring a little holiday:  Offline Day

On Saturday, August 30, I am going to pretend it is the 1970’s — at least for the online aspect.

• not going to twitter
• or go on Second Life
• or use the web, or blog
• or check my email
• or use my cell phone (or anyone else’s, if I can help it :)

I just want to have a day of being able to turn it all off.  Believe me, I am a total online mammal, so this is not as easy as it sounds.  This will be a day of being out and enjoying, and thinking back to a much simpler time, before we had all this tech.

And Sunday?  Well, that is the day to apologize to everyone for not being online Saturday!

Anyone with me?  (I’ll do it anyway :)