Waka Technologies

I learned a new attribute of the llParseString2List function today (the hard way):

When you use multiple separators, the order that the separators are listed in is important. If you want to parse a list of values like:

Squeebee Wakawaka, You User, My Friend

And also accomodate:

Squeebee Wakawaka,You User,My Friend

You need to add both “,” and “, ” as separators. The catch is that If you list “,” first and “, ” second then the elements will have a leading space in the list, ruining checks further in the code. By reversing the order the system first strips “, ” from the string, cleaning out leading spaces.

Of course, this still gets tripped up with multiple spaces after the comma, but we need to balance simplicity with handling edge cases.

I’ve finished another article, this one on bringing an animated GIF into SL and showing it as an animated texture on a prim.

http://www.wakatech.com/articles/lsl-scripting-basics/bringing-an-animated-gif-into-second-life/

Enjoy!

I’ve added a new article on configuring scripts using notecards:

http://www.wakatech.com/articles/lsl-scripting-basics/configuring-lsl-scripts-using-a-notecard/ 

Hope you like it!

I use Dreamhost for my streaming video and quite like it. I’ll be writing up a guide to streaming with Dreamhost soon, but in the meantime I thought I would mention you can use the promo code SLSTREAMING to save the activation fee when signing up.

This Dreamhost promo code represents a $50 savings, or equal to the cost of the setup fee when you are a monthly user.

Enjoy!

The WakaTech Tube-O-Rama is a fully automated system for bringing YouTube videos into Second Life automatically.

Users activate the Tube-O-Rama panels by paying a nominal fee (to cover server processor and storage costs), provide a YouTube URL, and the system does the rest. After a short delay while the video processes, it is then viewable in Second Life!

See the beta at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Gazers/199/8/22

Hope you like it, please IM me any comments and suggestions!

Well, it turns out that Linden Labs has banned gambling for lindens or real-world value items in SL. What is a casino owner to do?

Simple, just do what the Yakuza do.

In Japan, gambling for money is illegal, so while you buy Pachinko balls for money, you can’t cash them in for money after. Instead you take your winnings to the counter and get… a pen, a stuffed bunny, etc.

Pretty lame right? Well, almost. The thing is, just out the door and down the alley from your local Pachinko parlour is an unremarkable small window. Take your cheezy item to said window and lo and behold, the guy on the other side pays you way more than market value for it.

The pachinko place is doing nothing wrong, they only allow you to gamble for items of no real worth. The guy at the window is doing nothing wrong, who says he can’t overspend when buying his favorite trinkets for obscene amounts?

And the authorities, they don’t really care since the law was imposed by American invasion forces and wasn’t their idea in the first place. Sound familiar?

Perhaps you saw this on the official Linden blog, but if not:

Wow, Just wow.

High Quality Version

Somehow I made the list of “residents … helping to ensure that this is the best version yet” in the Help > About Second Life… window of the SL viewer.

I’m not sure exactly how I made the list (I assume from the Theater), but I’m honored to be on it.

When developing using states, don’t forget that the state_exit event can be used to perform cleanup instead of repeating cleanup tasks at each exit point from the state.

You can uses the state_exit to clear timers, shut off listens, reset globals, etc. While much of this cleans itself during the state change, things like timers persist through state changes and since you never know when something could change in the underlying LSL (perhaps listens will eventually survive state changes), it’s better to do proper cleanup yourself.

I’m sure this is obvious to most, but be careful when creating sensors. I found myself sitting around in my theater today getting dialogs from the other side of the island warning me to not abuse a sandbox.

And yes, plural dialogs, so the other lesson is to make sure if you are going to sensor on a timer and address those you detect, you need to be sure to keep a cache of those you have already addressed in a list.

I’ll have to whip up a sample application some time that performs sandbox greetings. My approach would be to use the llGetParcelPrimOwners() function to get a list of everyone with a prim in the sandbox, then check them against a cache. If someone is not in the cache, send them the Sandbox welcome and add them to the cache.