While I have no idea where your pants are. I’ve been doing other things! During the day I’m studying in an attempt to get into college, at night I just kick back and relax. Occasionaly (although more recently I’ve been logging in more often) I’ll login to SL, but I’ve been staying away from getting dedicated to any projects.

I’m trying to figure out a way to bring back the SL History Wiki to a non-sucky state. It got hacked apparently, then moved to http://slhistory.org and in an attempt to update it or something it turned out to not very be nice looking and we still can’t access the server. Sooooo, I’m trying to find a solution to this so it doesn’t die.

I’ve also cleaned out all of the spam comments on this blog, I think I may have accidently deleted a legit comment or two (sorry!). Trying out a plugin to fix that and also turned on more options so spam won’t show up right away (hopefully).

While I’d love to do the Open Source SL client thing, I don’t really have the dedication to do so right now and I figure I’ll wait until it’s easier to get compiled. Plus I bet someone will add what I want if I bother them enough!

SLChat is pretty much dead too. I suggest looking at SLeek instead!

The history museum, if someone wants to take the duty of updating that, we can discuss something, but I won’t be able to anymore sadly.

I’m still participating in SL Views via the ways I can, when I can.

So that’s the update for now! I’ll try and keep from going this long again from updating, but I’m really hoping more RL stuff keeps me from doing so (college! Or if I don’t get in, a job!).

If you’re not a bot and you’re reading this, thank you!

I’ve added this bug to the Jira, you can see it here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1493

Also there is now a video on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sTdXjplMGWg

I call it “The Jiggle Bug”.

What is it? The jiggle bug is a bug that causes your avatar to “jiggle” or “jitter” or “flinch” slightly (estimated 0.01 distance) up and down. Like your avatar has had too much coffee.

What causes it? I’ve found that it is caused by scripted attachments and only by certain script calls/events. It occurs when a link-message is received?/sent?, a touch event is triggered, and on the dataserver event (thusfar these are the three I’ve found, I think). It is most apparent when standing on an object, it does happen when your avatar is on the ground but for some reason its not as powerful? or something.

Who is effected? Most residents who wear a scripted attachment. After I noticed it on myself, I noticed it everywhere else. I’d say about 80% of the SL population unknowingly jiggles.

How did you (Oz Spade) notice it? Waaaayyy back around I’d say maybe 1.3 or 1.5 I noticed the world would every now and then jiggle, slightly. I think I found it while attempting to write a buddy-list type script with a constant dataserver call. I thought it was my video card or something, because the whole view would jiggle. No one else noticed it or saw it. After a while though, alt-zooming around, I noticed it wasn’t my camera, or the world, but my avatar. The world was jiggling because my camera (when not focused on anything else) was focused defaulty on my avatar, or rather “pinned” to my avatar, which was jiggling, hence the camera jiggled with it. Few others could see what I was talking about, because it’s such a very small “jitter” or “jiggle” or “flinch” that it could easily go unseen. I found that detaching everything fixed it, then tracking it down even more I found common causes.

How do people not notice it? I’m not sure, I suppose they could have such bad framerate that they don’t notice it. Or maybe some people just think its common, or they don’t notice it all together.

Is it reproducable? Yes. Easily. It takes a fine eye to see it, but its there, and I have five (or four) objects that reproduce it without fail. Others have reproduced it, with different video cards, different hardware, etc. so its not exclusive to any hard-ware set up, it is a SL specific problem.

Have you bug reported it? Yes. I think three times ever since I found it.

Why is it the most annoying bug? It’s been around for a long time now, about as long as Ghosting was before it got fixed and its just little enough to drive a guy nuts. It’s also caused by very common script events, which makes it annoying depending on what you want an attachment to do and if you also don’t want your avatar to jiggle, thus a problem results. It is also very easy to reproduce. And unbeknownst to most of the community a lot of people have it going on. In a crowd of people there are usualy 5 or 6 out of 10 people who have it. I believe a lot of Animation Overriders cause the bug.

How to recreate it:

1. Create two cubes. Cube 1 should have a script in it with a timer that continously sends a link message every second. Cube 2 should have a script that has a link_message thingy in it. Link them together and wear.
2. Create a cube with a touch event in it. Attach. Click the cube repeaditly.
3. Create a cube that has a timer and every one second requests information using the dataserver call and event set. Attach.

I can drop a folder of the scripted objects that reproduce this bug on anyone that wants to see it in action.

Script Examples:

Jiggle Bug: HUD Tracker

Jiggle Bug: DataServer1

Jiggle Bug: DataServer2

Jiggle Bug: LinkMessage Prt 1

Jiggle Bug: LinkMessage Prt 2

Jiggle Bug: TouchStart

1) Clickable URLs - My biggest and longest continuous gripe in SL. All I want to do is be able to click a URL in chat history . The llOpenURL command does help, but built-in goodness is always needed!

2) Auto-Save Chat Logs - This is usualy a “hot topic” since some people worry of “being logged”, but really that can be done now-days, the most annoying thing however is when you talk to someone about something important then log off and realize you’ve forgotten a key point, this happens to me alot, I forget stuff. :/ The simplest form of this would automaticly save all chat (and IMs) to text files in a selected folder upon log out with the name of the text file being the date.

3) Contained Parcel Chat - Currently we can contain and keep out noises from our parcels, this is great, but what if we could also do the same thing to text? I found that this would be especialy useful when I had a parcel right next a telehub, so you’d be talking, sometimes about private things, and bam, someone would teleport in, sure you could go up in the air, but should that be the solution for everything? Go up? So the idea is that in the About Land window I could somehow set it so the parcel has “Contained Chat”, any thing typed inside the parcel can not be “heard”/”seen” outside, and vice versa. Like a sound booth, but for text. This would have alot of other useful applications.

4) Bolding For Lindens - An idea borrowed from ActiveWorlds in which “administrators” can turn their chat bold if needed. This helped alot in crowded text areas to keep up with what was going on. Something like this for Lindens would be nice for Town Hall’s and such.

5) Colorful Names - Preferential option, something similar in style to how some IRC clients will auto-assign colors to names based on uh, something. Also could potentialy take the color that is set in Preferences used for the particles when someone selects an object and apply that to the name. It helps at a glance to tell who is saying what by color. Only problem that arises with this is “omg stop using my color”, heheh. Can’t be any worse than “omg you’re wearing my dress”, right? Right.

6) Pie-Menu for Names in Chat History - Again borrowed from AW, right clicking a name in the Chat History would pop up a Pie-Menu as if you clicked on their avatar. Could make it handy for finding someone in a crowd easier and doing tasks on them. Such as someone spamming the chat or griefing or even just looking up a profile.

7) Chat Bubbles Redone - Thinking on chat bubbles, PDC Lounge (link is borken right now) had a neat take on this, where it was basicly like SL’s chat history, but would have a little arrow coming off of it pointing to the people in view. Not the best solution, but it could help, maybe.

And for now thats it! A lot of these could probably be solved by other solutions, but most of them would probably be more time consuming and advanced. These are sort of “quick” fixes. I recall also that Jabber was discussed as being used for SL’s chat, which would solve some of these problems as well.

Now I say “little” because I don’t know how difficult these things would actualy be to implement. To me they don’t seem like they’d be really huge, but I could be wrong. So onward!

1) Inventory, mainly in Object’s Content’s/Inventory. Currently to Reset or Recompile a script you can open the scripting window and do it that way, or Reset/Recompile all in selection via the Tools menu at the top. I was thinking it would be nice if you could Right-Click a Script and from the context menu that pops up Reset/Recompile the script (or multiple scripts if selected) from that menu.

2) Preferences -> General -> Show HUD in Snapshots. If selected HUDs would automaticly be hidden during a snapshot then show again emedietly after, if disabled HUDs would act as they do now. Why? I’m constantly taking snapshots, I have a HUD, I don’t want the HUD in the snapshot but I don’t always have time to go all the way up to View then all the way down to “Show HUDs” then take the snapshot. Sometimes you have one second for an awesome snapshot and you don’t want your HUD in there. Plus I also forget to manualy disable them for snapshots even when I do have time. This is somewhat solved in 1.11 and doesn’t apply so much anymore.
3) Preferences -> General -> Select Folder for Snapshots to save to for Snapshot To Disk. I’ve wanted this for a long long long time. It’s annoying to have to pick the same folder, every time, after startup. I’ve created a folder specificly for SL snapshots, so it’d be easier if SL just automaticly slapped them in there for me.

4) Being able to hide “Me” and “Home” map keys on World Map. This is just something that bugs me, you can hide every other map icon on the map, but not Home and not Me, why? It sucks for when you want to take a snapshot of the world map and theres your big ass home icon and me icon sitting there.

5) Cut in Inventory. We have Copy, we have Paste, why no Cut? Sure I can drag stuff around, but that goes alot slower than just using Cut would. Cut is a basic functionality of the whole kinda copy and paste system. Why are such basic things so hard to implement in SL?

6) Being able to set your landing point and teleport in point on your land is great. The problem is though, I have my teleport thing set to “none”, so no landing point and no free-range teleporting on my land, this is great, except it also applies to ME, the parcel owner. So constantly instead of being teleported to anywhere on my own parcel, I’m teleported to the edge of it, just as anyone else would be. It’d be nice if I could somehow say “Hey, I’m the owner, let me go wherever I want on my own land, but anyone else gets kicked to the edge.” Maybe a check box for “Don’t Apply To Owner”, or default behavior?

Thats it for now. I’ll probably have more at some point! I also have a growing list of Chat Features and changes that I’d like to see, I’ll post those soon.

—-

My first idea is to make more use of double clicking items in the Inventory.

Currently when you double click an object you get this window:

Now not only is that a bit confusing of a window, the options don’t look anything like the Edit window or Properties window, but it’s also pointless, we have the Properties window which looks better, has more in it and is fully functional. So I think this window really has no reason for existing.

So my idea is that instead of getting that ^ window when you double click an Object in your Inventory, you get the new “Object Contents” window that is in 1.9.1 which is a very nice simple interface with two buttons “Take to inventory” and “take and wear”. This window shows what’s inside the object, so you could easily see “Oh, theres two shoes in there.” and most people are familiar with double clicking things to open them. It would be natural if double clicking an object in your Inventory opened up the “Object Contents” window.

Another possible addition is to have it so you can mark an item unwearable. So thus people wouldn’t be able to wear the objects on their heads to begin with. I’m not compltely sure about this addenedom, but it’s just something else to consider that may prevent embarassing situations.

—-

Now for the Inventory improvements…

The first idea is to help give people a more visual clue that they have recieved an item. I think two things could be done:

1) When an inventory item is recieved the Inventory button on the toolbar blinks (like your IM button does) and/or maybe a “New Inventory” button appears for those who have the toolbar closed.

2) If the toolbar is visible, have an animated graphical cue such as this:

But animated, with the arrow or the inventory icon (this example uses a Object icon, but others would use Script icons, etc.) moving down towards the inventory. This would appear for a few seconds then go away or maybe appear once with the cube going towards the Inventory button then going away. The inspiration for this comes from how in WoW when you get a new item an icon of that item goes and shrinks to your Backpack thingy. A visual cue like this would help new residents to understand “Hey I got a new Object/Script/whatever”.

The second idea for inventory improvement is adding some color and other visual cues.

1) Object Permissions and “Worn” positions currently are white, the same color as the object name, now this presents a problem if I name an item “Oz Pants (no modify)” but it actualy is modify, the user has no idea looking at that item in their inventory if it really is no modify or not unless they look at the properties. Same applys if you name an item “Oz Pants (worn on Elbow)” or some such. So the idea is to have the permissions and “worn” text a different color than the item name, say have the item name white as it is now, but have the permissions/worn be “system green”, the color of system messages in the chat (or whatever you change them to in Preferences).

2) New items should have more of a visual cue, currently after I login the only way I have knowing if an item is new or not is either remembering the last thing at the top of my inventory window (if I have sort by date selected) or by checking my Chat History, what if I crash before checking my history? etc. So the idea is to provide a different icon for New items as well as highlight them in different colors so you can tell at a glance what items are new in your inventory and what is not. This also helps if you do not have Sort By Date selected. An item would become unnew (the icon would go away, the text would be unhighlighted) when you interact with it, i.e. move it, double click it (maybe just click it), rez it, etc. as soon as you interact with it, it is no longer marked as new.
I’ve made a photoshop of what these suggestions combined could look like:

—-

Some of the features you’d be able to turn off in Preferences, such as the animated graphic pointing to your inventory, or maybe even turn off “Show New Items” in the Inventory -> File menu options. So people who don’t like the graphics or animations can simply turn them off. However the Double-Click and the Permission/Worn color changes (and maybe the New item text highlighting) should not be able to be turned off.

Let me know what you think of these ideas.

I see it [the “Impeach Bush” signs] as a form of spam. There comes a point when theres so much stuff in your visual view that it becomes spam.

Amazingly LL’s policy is far behind from the advance technology they may make. LL fails to see it as spam, because it’s a new type of spam that has previously not been defined because there was no situation in which to give rise to it. Until now of course, with SL enabling people to “spam” the landscape, creating “Landscape Spam”.

The same problem occurs with For Sale signs. Think of SL like a webpage, with the content of builds being the webpage and the signs being pop-ups. Except in SL it’s worse because theres nothing to even block the spam.

Landscape spam will continue to be a problem and probably get even worse until LL actualy does something about it… if they ever do.

Interface.

Problem: Default interface color sucks. It does, it’s grey, that’s gloomy and gives an overal… dark… feeling of SL. I’m sure a dark grey background is great for people used to console windows and sports cars, but SL is neither. While it may look great as a style, when dealing with SL daily that color scheme can get to people on a subconscious level, and if you don’t believe that, then go and look up the huge pile of research on color and what it does to the mind that has been built up over the years.

Solution: Torley had some great ideas on recoloring the interface, unfortunately my efforts went… well… I didn’t do it, I’ve no excuse other than I’ve not felt like messing with it, sorry Torley. But yes, the overall fix would be to lighten the interface. A nice white or light grey background or maybe even some pasdel(sp) color (Ewww, I know, right? But Google uses pasdels and no one bitches about that, and if they do they should shut up.). What colors are pleasent on the mind? (well, most minds) Shades of non-intensive blues, earthy greens, light pinks (think salmon), these are non-threatening colors. What colors to avoid? Red (causes people to become intense and arguementive), black, bright deep yellow (double-yellow lines on the road kinda yellow), those are colors that generaly have a negative effect. Oh and actualy expanding on the skinning capabilities we never got would be great for added value.

Building.

Problem: The building gap. Users having to open the Edit menu and dealing with a complicated interface (even without the “More >>” expanded, it’s still pretty complicated and could be better) just to move a peice of furniture. Arrows and axieeee(sp), red green blue, grids, and all that fun stuff. The Edit menu is… uh… “ok” for dedicated builders… I want to say great, but honestly they could be better for builders too… anyway… for users who just want to move a peice of furniture or a lamp or an item, it’s more than they need to deal with (and more than what alot of people want to deal with).

Solution: There are two good examples I can give on how to simplify these things. One is the There.com model, where your avatar “picks up” the item it wishes to move, and using “the force” the item will move with the avatar as the user moves the avatar to move the item, think of it like the Crane Game with the claw and all that, but with avatars and much easier. The problem with the There.com model is.. it seems like alot of movement for results that seems so small. Like, say I want to rotate a lamp, so my avatar picks it up and I have to rotate my avatar around in a circle and place the lamp back down in the same spot… I think, unless they changed it or I missed something. It leads you into awkward movements and the camera angle on it can be hard to get a barring on where exactly this lamp is going.

The other example is Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS. In it, you have a house and items, now say I want to move a couch, I put my character infront of the couch and using the d(irectional)-pad I move forward and my character “pushes” the couch, or I can move backward and my character will “pull” the couch, or I can press left and my character will rotate the couch left. This is a little more intuitive than the There.com model because we all know how to push and pull things. However the shortcoming of this is that if I want to move the couch to the Left, I have to let go of the couch then run around to it’s side, then push it to the left from the side. While that isn’t horrible it is an extra movement that could perhaps be done without.

While the AC model works great for furniture, if you want to move or rotate a lamp, thats a bit harder, or impossible all together. Both methods also deal with collision differently. There.com will have the objects go over other objects automaticly, so if you step too much forward, instead of the table being next to the couch, it may be on top of it. AC on the other hand, blocks any further movement, push the table next to the couch, and try to push it anymore forward, it won’t budge.

SL could benefit with a combination of the two… It’s four in the morning and I’m going to take a wild shot at a method that could be used, so if theres any obvious flaws I miss, go easy on me. Say you click, or right click, an object and select from the pie menu or whatever a “Move This…” option, (doing so shifts your camera to focus on the object, you get a UI overlay somewhere unobtrusive in a corner or something with camera buttons to zoom out a bit more, move the camera to the left, right, pivot down, etc, with arrows symbolizing the movement ?), your movement keys now control where the object goes, left right back forward up down, we have all those already, they just now lock to the object, you would also have a UI somewhere that also moves the object if mouse clicking is preferred (like the camera controls), a “Place Here…” button at the top or somewhere visible but not blocking the view would unlock the keys (and return the camera to it’s previous view ?). Rotation could be done perhaps with the usual CTRL things toggling from direction controls to rotation controls, a UI for this could also exist.

Now, problems that arise, how to handle movement of the object. The movement would have to be very fluid and allow for the finest type of inching. What I mean is… more like There.com’s and less like SL’s sometimes-horrible grid snapping. Perhaps toggling the measurement scale with a keypress, say, with just pressing a key once, an object will move, half an inch, however press Shift-Movementkeys and it moves an inch at a time. The longer the user holds down the key, the further the measurement should be, i.e. if I hold down the arrow key for three seconds, the object should move something like 12 inches, if I hold down the arrow key with shift pressed for three seconds, move the object like 3 feet, if I tap the arrow key, move it half an inch, etc. Associating the length of a keypress with the distance you wish the object to go seems intuitive to me.

Snap-to-object could be handy. Say I want a table next to a couch, simply enter into the moving mode, tap the arrow a key a few times and my table snaps into place, along the floor and along the couch, with the table snapping to the nearest objects it collided with. I use collided in a kind of “entered bounding box” type way, not in a physical type way. The problem comes when you have complicated shapes I guess, I honestly can’t give a solution for that as it goes into realms unknown to me. But the simple idea behind the snap-to-object is that when two objects “collide” they find each others edge and line up against it directly, like magnets. The problem is if I want one object in another for some crazy reason. The best way to do this then would be to someway toggle the snapping through keypress or UI cue, but at the same time you don’t want too many toggles because then it becomes complicated. You could say that in this Move mode, objects should not intersect, but should always instead snap when you “collide” two together (and unsnap as soon as you move it appart), and that to have one object in another, you have to use Edit mode. This would be fine with me.
The goal of this isn’t to replace the Edit menu, or Edit Mode, or our current building system. But rather to provide a simpler interface for those who don’t want to deal with all the crazy numbers and vectors and rotations and just want to move their damn table.

Chatting.

Problem: “Who the hell is talking?!”. As SL becomes faster and can handle larger and larger crowds a problem arises of telling who says what. Even in small groups of Four it can be easy to lose track (if they’re new people you aren’t aquinted with). The chat bubbles we have in SL suck and conversation groups like There.com wouldn’t work and suck for large groups (by large I mean Town Hall size). Name tags become messy jumbles, and they distract from the viewpoint and the chat window as Ventrella has pointed out, at the bottom of the screen, also takes you away from your landscape.

Solution: Ok, so I can’t come up with an idea to get rid of the whole chat history thing and in fact my solution to the problem incorporates it. So, what if (how all science starts: what if) when someone spoke, there was a highlight around them, like when you’re sellecting an object, it may last for a certain ammount of time, or it may last untill someone else says something. With the highlight around their avatar, their text is also highlighted in the Chat History to differentiate it from anyone elses. If the person is not in your view, say, behind you, an arrow of the same highlight color with their name above it appears at a side of your screen that they are closest too, if you left click the arrow, the camera will pan around (maintaining the zoom level you currently have, not zooming in closer or out farther) so that the person is within your view, and then the person is highlighted as normal… if you RIGHT click the arrow, the arrow simply goes away, either way their text in the Chat History is highlighted correctly. If the person flys away, or logs out or dissapears, the arrow fades away. The arrow may also fade away on a time limit, and if you have previously right-clicked the arrow (showing that you don’t really care for the person?), the arrow will fade away slightly faster than it normaly would. Short review before going on: The camera sticks, it doesn’t move unless the user cues it too (by clicking an arrow if the person is out of view), the person who typed the last message, their avatar is highlighted along with their text in the Chat History, this is so that you can instantly see in a crowd of people (or even with just a few new friends) who said what, kinda like the old chat particles but more involved.

Now, moving forward with this and incorporating the Chat History more so its not just a text box (which it feels like right now, with no “special features” not even freaking url linking). Lets say you miss something in a conversation, so you scroll through the chat history, you see someone said something, someone you don’t know and you want to see who it is. You see their name in the Chat History, but you want to see their avatar, so while in Chat History you click (or right click) their name, it instantly highlights their text and their avatar (if they’re still around). This way if you missed something in a meeting, you can click the chat and see who said what not just by names in the Chat History, but by visualy connecting the name with the avatar.

A step further slightly in a different direction. Currently, you can have an over-the-shoulder camera view focused on the person who last spoke by hitting Tab (as long as you aren’t sitting, stupid bugs). I personaly like this feature, while it is not good for huge groups, it’s nice for private conversations. I’d like to take my above mentioned, and apply it in the same way this tab works, but have it do it automaticly. So instead of me having to hit tab each time I want to focus on the last person that spoke, the camera does it automaticly, while highlighting them and their chat (untill I hit Tab again, then it stops auto-focusing, but continues highlighting).

Bonus Feature: With the above all layed out, I’d like to steal a feature from AW 4.1, that feature of “Scenes”, but more specificly, scene cameras. You may say “But we can already control cameras!”, true, but stay with me. I want to be able to have it so that when someone enters a “scene”, the camera can be shifted to a specific location. I could create this Scene by putting a giant box in a room, when someone enters the box (via VolumeDetect perhaps?), they then become part of the scene, as does their camera. This could give way to games like Resident Evil, where your camera may shift to the corner of a room you just entered. Or you could make “Chat Conversations” like from There.com with specialized camera views. Or when giving a speech the camera in a hall could be focused on a certain person, or could give a view of the audience over the speakers back. Anyone who enters the scene would be put into that same camera view. Sure they could Alt-Zoom out of it, but the effect would be great for certain aspects. The reason I incluede this is because of two scenarios, the above mentioned speech, or say Town Hall/Community Round Table, where everyone is gathered, to give people a starting point of the best overall view of everyone who is talking, with SL auto-highlighting those who are speaking would be a much better experience than what we currently have. The other scenario is say, a friends hang out, a run down old bar with a squeaky cieling fan, you enter the room and your camera shifts to the back wall, you have perfect sight of everyone in the bar from here, anyone who talks, from your best friend to a stranger in the corner (of the room and of your camera) is highlighted and it’s easy to tell who is talking.

Things like this could possibly make it easier to socialize in an otherwise chaotic enviornment. Not anything that GRABS the camera and SHOVES it in someones face, but just things that suttly point out whats going on, helpfull hints like gleems of a hidden key in a room of an adventure game. You want the user to have some visual cue as to who is saying what, where things are coming from, because currently with the Chat History all we have is the typing animation/sound, which can be overridden or hard to see (and the chat bubbles are crap, I’m sorry, but they are), or the Tab which only works well in small groupings (or not at all if you’re sitting!). The Chat Particles we used to have helped in this respect, but they were kinda cheesy and bad looking (which is why I guess they were taken out), the highlighting may be too, but there needs to be some visual cue, especialy in large crowds.

And thats all for now, I really need to get to bed.

Not only is transfering accounts without consent against the TOS, it also leaves open the personal information of the person selling the account.

While LL does not openly discuss any action they are taking for violations, there is often evidence when they do take action, such as an entry in the police blotter, people complaining on forums, in blogs, etc.. Of which none of these have shown up, which leads me to believe that LL is ignoring this issue all together.

All people, no matter who they are, or what they do, should be held accountable against the same TOS and should recieve the same punishment as anyone else. I do not think LL would allow any other person to get by with such violations.

This matter shouldn’t be ignored.

3.5 Unique Accounts; No Transfer. When an account is created the address on the account must match the address or other unique identifier on the credit card or other payment or identification method. You may register multiple accounts per credit card or other payment method but will only receive one trial period for the card or other payment method in any 3-month period and each additional account on one credit card or payment method will begin its billing when the account is created. You may not transfer your Account to any third party without the prior written consent of Linden.

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

My reasons for this, is that I have a server (well actualy Baba’s server that he’s very kindly letting me have an account on), so I might as well use it, rather than Blogger. Not that I don’t like Blogger… I do… but using Word Press on a server I have more control over… makes me feel, well in control. Plus this way I don’t have any somewhat annoying blogger bar at the top.

I may tweak things a bit more on the layout I have on the Word Press now, I overall like the layout (I found it Here) but I’m not too sure about stuff like the logo/banner and/or some colors here or there. So if you see any weirdness going on that doesn’t go away, poke me, because I may have fcskd something up.

The case for this is one of popular spots that were rather far from a telehub, the biggest being Club Elite, which was the first really big-boom in clubbing. Club Elite was two sims away from a telehub, yet remained popular all through-out it’s existence in Federal. Now this was facilitated partially by people offering teleports to their friends (a point for P2PT?), but in large part people were more than willing to fly from the telehub to the club.

Now a few telehubs in the beginning were placed strategically by LL before any resident malls sprouted up around telehubs. Those in the city of Nova Albion and that of one in Uhh… Clyde? Or Slate? In which a telehub was surrounded by an island of shops. Now both of these seemed to end up as “failed” projects, the city’s being plagued (and to this day still are) lag and the island of shops and land rentals being… I’m not sure what happened there, but it didn’t become all that popular. A telehub was added to Luna only after the fact of complaints of people of the annoyance of flying to it.

Anyway. The example to the contrary of this is the club in Da Boom (the edge?), which is directly near a telehub and seems to be quite popular, however this club only became so *after* Club Elite’s demise.

Telehubs for a long time were not of any real urban development use, the same random assortment found everywhere on the grid littered around them as well. However it seems only after “Land Barony” became popular that so did telehub land, with it’s high prices and “easy access”, leading to the now “urban development” (which honestly can you call clubs and malls and tringo parlors Urban? I think it more of commercial Prospecting) we have.
So did the telehubs create these patterns, or did those selling land?

I think it’s kind of a moot point anyway… People use the telehubs to get to places they like, places they like are now near telehubs for convenience, if the places they like move, so will the people (in theory). These places themselves will become new “hubs”. In a way, LL has already created zoning that will last for quite some time, as clubs/malls/whatever will not move for some time (unless everyone ditches out of malls to be in one centralized location like the olden days).

This may or may not be a good thing for people in general. In my eyes, Telehubs didn’t really make any difference in where commercial buildings go, there were still clubs here and there, still tringo next door, still a mall in your back yard, just somewhat less of them.

Anyway, overall I think that the popularity of “Urban Development” around telehubs didn’t come from the telehubs themselves, but from those selling the land around them, or at least the hype these land sellers created for such land. After all, if a place is worth going to, people will get there somehow, no matter how far away it is from a telehub. A telehub does not guarantee success of business, nor does being far away guarantee failure, what matters most is what keeps people going there.