T.I.A

Funny how I have lived in Africa all my life, and yet I had no clue what Leonardo DiCaprio was talking about when he used this supposedly well known phrase in Blood Diamond. Ironically enough, I see it is now gaining some popularity in local online forums. Trust the Americans to give us a new phrase to describe ourselves.

SL Africa

Anyway, Africa is actually the theme of this post. A recent initiative by a social development company based in Cape Town called Uthango was recently brought to my attention by one of my newsfeeds. They aim to use Second Life as one of many modern tools to effect change in Africa. One of the parts of this initiative is a sim in Second Life called SL Africa that will be (duh) African themed and provide real information and a real insight into life in Africa in a new and interesting way. I had an interesting chat to Uthango's Dorette Steenkamp (Alanagh Recreant in SL) about the project yesterday, and she started to show me around but I had to cut the visit short due to other commitments. I have been wondering about how I can get involved in something altruistic, and when I first read about SL Africa last week I thought I had to at least investigate. We'll see if there's some way I can constructively contribute. I was actually saying my goodbyes when Eskom rudely interrupted with a power cut in our area, which brings me to another TIA item..

Power spin

If you search for "load shedding" in Wikipedia, you are redirected to a topic on "Rolling blackout". That is an indication of Eskom's fundamental approach to the current power supply crisis in the country: deceit, and yes I said crisis. When there are parts of Gauteng that are seeing three 'load shedding' sessions of at least two hours in a single day, there are problems (sorry, no links, this is pure hearsay from Radio 702).

The thing is, we get it. Most reasonable South Africans understand there is a problem and that they need to modify their use of electricity.  We understand that it's unavoidable that they will be affected at some stage, and while it's inconvenient we understand that we have to deal with it. Of course it would be a hell of a lot easier to help Eskom if they could help us just a teeny bit.

They have a load shedding schedule on their website, but it is entirely useless as actual blackouts often have nothing to do with the projected timetable. How many South Africans have access to the internet anyway? How many businesses can be reasonably expected to make use of a system like that-even if it was accurate? Eskom needs to do two things here. First and foremost, plan and get an accurate and honest schedule sorted out. Second, make it publicly available in media that are accessible to most people, and here are just a few off the top of my head:

• Newspapers, provide them with a daily schedule which their readers can reference.
• Radio, with the same schedule radio stations could provide timeous warnings 15-30 minutes before blackouts are scheduled to occur.
• Cellphones, recent estimates put our cellphone using population at more than half our overall population! Give users a tollfree number to call or an SMS notification service to subscribe to that will send them advance warning of power cuts in their area.
• Television, we already have a power supply status indicator on public TV, why not extend that to include notification of areas that can expect powercuts in the next half hour or so.

None of these are complex systems, many are already in use for commercial purposes-so why not for something this essential to keeping homes and businesses prepared to deal with this situation?

Rant: Out of context reporting

Browsing my RSS feeds earlier this morning, I saw a Joystiq item on an African Women's Blog that has taken offence to recently released footage of Resident Evil 4. I am by no means surprised and had predicted to my colleagues (and fellow gamers) that this title would cause some kind of 'racist' outcry. It got us onto the topic of how non-gaming media seems unable to get away from reporting on gaming and other technology related news without taking context into account.

Games, social websites and virtual worlds often require a significant investment of time to be able to fully understand the context of their characters and functionality. In the above example, one would have to play Resident Evil 5 to understand the context for these enemies, which happen to be black-they are diseased zombies, the need to shoot them has nothing to do with their race. It would appear however, that mainstream publications do not consider this legwork as necessary as if they were reporting on a political story, a new (physical) social spot or even a movie. A reporter that made unsubstantiated claims about a neighborhood coffee shop harboring rabid pedophiles would be brought to task, why is the same standard not held to when reporting about 'virtual' activities? By contrast, when reporting on the likes of supposed terrorist training camps in Second Life or the rise of a 'new' kind of bully online it would appear that any sort of real journalistic investigation is an optional extra.

Second Life has been the target of many such articles, ranging from exaggerated claims of the business potential of the platform, to numerous sexual scandals. The most recent trend in misguided reporting about the platform (note: not game) is that of it having been over-hyped and now being on the verge of collapse. The irony of this is that this supposed hype was all generated by the same publications now predicting Second Life's doom. Of course in terms of subscriber numbers and concurrent users, it is healthier than ever. Reading through any of these articles quickly reveals that -at best- the author has signed into second life and spent a few minutes wandering around the welcome area and does not really comprehend what the virtual world is about or it's potential.

As someone that thrives on technology, I tire of seeing otherwise respectable publications (both on- and offline) degraded to the level of a common tabloid whenever they report on technology. Is it really that difficult to find a staff member that is knowledgeable about technology? Are freelance technology writers that know their stuff really that few and far between? Or does the problem lie higher up the chain, with editors that honestly don't believe editorial responsibility extends to technology reporting?

Technorati Tags: second life, journalism, rant, technology, games

Van Gogh in The Matrix

With all the emphasis on the clubs, malls and sexual activity of Second Life in the media these days, you'd swear that was all it was about. Of course early critics of the web also managed to limit themselves to the negative aspects and ignored the rapidly growing body of educational material that was developing. Today I saw another great example of the educational and cultural potential of Second Life.

The Virtual Starry Night museum in Luctesa is a showcase of Vincent van Gogh's works. In addition to a traditional walk-through gallery containing all his paintings (with informative note cards accompanying each one), there are 3D realizations of some of them, complete with impressionist style texturing. One of these is the 'Night Cafe' foyer of the museum pictured here, and the 'Bridge in the Rain' joining it to the main exhibit. This is a prime example of a creative way of exposing new generations to classical works, and well worth a visit.

Technorati Tags: second life, sl, van gogh

Oy vey

Sheesh, yet another month with no significant posting. Same shit different day I'm afraid. Oh well, let me keep it simple and text based..

On the work and home life side of things, nothing much has changed. We've been very busy at work trying to finish off the project (the milestone deployment in Cape Town had mixed results, and over that week we racked up almost 30 hours in overtime). We've been very lucky in terms of going away. For our anniversary Natz and I went for a nice stress-free weekend out at my dad's place in the bush (minus Dad of course ;) ). Easter weekend was spent down at the Vaal with family and that was a great jol. It's the first time all the cousins on that side of the family have been together in a long time, and we had a great time. One of the boyfriends even brought along a couple of crayfish and some awesome salmon steaks-just the way to suck up in this family =D We actually had leftover crayfish! Then this last (long) weekend we joined Natz sister and her fiance at his house down at the coast.. that was great for the first couple of days, but a massive domestic between the two of them kind of spoiled the weekend-to the point of us all leaving early and spending 6 hours in complete silence on the drive back. Fun. Their wedding is next week, so I really hope they sort their issues out soon, the stress it's putting on poor Natz is just horrible.

Game wise, Natz is utterly addicted to Guitar Hero 2 and we're having a ball with the multiplayer. It's a great game, though the song selection is maybe a bit too samey with an excessive focus on very heavy rock and death metal. I finished GRAW 2 for review, and the multiplayer has been awesome on Live, it's just a pity there aren't more locals playing it. I've been playing C&C3 on the PC in bits and pieces, and thats really awesome. I think we have the new RTS champion :)

On the second life side of things, I have managed to squeeze in a couple of half hour lunch time sessions at work and make a little progress on things. I'm pretty firmly indented as a tiny now, and very rarely revert to my human avatar. I have a handful of items I have created and put up for sale, you can actually check them out on slboutique, though I get way more sales in-world. I also met another South African in SL for the first time ever-someone that owns two islands no less! SL itself seems to have become a lot more stable since a recent major update, though there are some lingering messaging issues. This is apparently a traditional quiet period in the year for SL, so hopefully Linden Labs will get a bit of time to bang some of the issues out and streamline things.

Right, now lets hope I dont go another month without posting.. it's just not cricket ;)

Floppy bits

I have been spending my lunches getting to know the basics of the SL building tools, and while I know my way around the basics of a couple of building tools, this is quite a different story. Since the tools are in-game, there's no real way of getting a proper top or side perspective (though I see there are builder hud attachment tools available for sale from third parties which I assume do just that). I learned pretty quickly that the best way to do things once the actual primitives had been 'rezzed' was to 'build by numbers', fiddling position and size values in the modification dialogs instead of trying to gauge the stuff visually in a perspective view. Having to pay to upload textures is a bit of a dirty way to do things, but I suppose it's how they avoid their system being overrun with zillions of textures, and encouraging builders to be as economic with their texture work as possible.

Anyway, the first couple of things I've built are all dead simple-and all aimed at 'Tinies', knee high avatars like my little orange cat. The first I did was a booster chair for such small avatars, to bring tem up to 'biggie height'. Around the seat itself is a 'flixi' prim that behaves like cloth, in this case simulating a comfy blanket thrown over the chair :)


Next up is a two prim tiny tie I did, which was tougher than you might expect. The combination of working in a perspective view, and tiny hight not being the intended default height for the camera make getting a good view on things a bit challenging. This took quite a bit of tweaking to get positioning correct.

And finally, just for the hell of it I threw together a floppy top hat. Just call me the cat in the hat:


I'd like to do some actual clothing, particularly a nice waistecoat for my little guy, but I'm a bit uncertain about how to do the texturing for something like that with no template. I'm not about to go the trial and error route when I actually have to pay to upload a texture! I'll have to make some kind of plan..

Split personality

Well, here are the new shots from SL I wanted to Post. There are more similar ones on my flickr, but these get the point across :) They were all taken at an incredible location in SL called 'The Lost Gardens or Apollo'.
The first is what my 'normal' avatar has basically settled down to. Besides the funky 'prim' hair, I got a really cool set of hi res eyes (yes, you can replace your eyes, and yes there are some unusual variations-I just didn't want to go for them) and 'flexi' wings that are scripted so they can do things like quiver, flap and enfold. The 'flexi' bit means they react to my own movements, basically like cloth.

Next up is the cel-shade black devil cat I got when I decided to try and view the world from a 'Tiny' perspective. It turns out I didn't read the description as well as I should have, because it's actually only a little smaller than a 'normal' avatar at about five feet. Still, it's nice to have as an alternative to 'normal' me, and it's just so comical to watch.. I shall call him squishy!


And finally, the tiny avatar I did get. Yeah it's cute, I looked at other tinies, but all the 'non cute' ones are really badly made and look rubbish. I even looked at a mogwai one (being a tiny Gizmo would be awesome) but they looked really lame. So I went for an orange cat, kind of in 'tribute' to my old cat Carat. It's been interesting to see people's reaction to the new avatar. Social barriers totally disintegrate when you're a knee high furball ;)

In game advertising

FlintBeikaSmallfryMobile1_004, originally uploaded by FlintZA.

While signed in to Second Life on Friday, I met a guy called Tenebrous Pau (in game that is) who is busy learning the SL creation tools, and makes himself custom T shirts as part of that. He agree do make a T with the smallfry logo and colours from the website, and here is the outstanding result.
Thanks to Tenebrous (sitting on the left) for the shirt, and the lovely Peyton Bailey (middle, leaning on the bar) who agreed to model with us. Behind her in the funky alien avatar, playing bartender is Brin Leigh. I have no idea who the guy is in the hat and scarf, he snuck into the photo ;)

(for better front and back views of the shirt, lick the link to my flickr page)

FlintBeika

FlintBeika, originally uploaded by FlintZA.

I don't know what it is about Second Life that fascinates em so much. Our lousy broadband here kind of prevents me from enjoying it fully, but I can't help be interested. I signed in again yesterday for the first time in ages, and took a different approach, finding some decent places that actually had new people willing to help and cat a bit. I really wish I could get into it properly.
Anyway, here is a shot of my in game avatar, Flint Beika. Despite the flexibility SL allows, I haven't gone for a very unusual look at all (except for the wings-I always wanted to have wings).

Virtual Economies hit SA newspaper

When it comes to technology news, non-specialist South African newspapers (both physical and online) tend to be way behind the curve. Their reports on new technology are usually days or weeks behind and are very often just plain incorrect. For this reason, when something like this does actually hit a South African newspaper, you know its here to stay because it’s been around long enough for the scoop-challenged SA editors to sniff it out. Today’s case in point is an article on virtual economies by The Mail & Guardian. It’s actually a pretty good read, accurately and correctly summarizing some of the virtual economic activity going on in various persistent online worlds. Unfortunately it also carries that signature disbelief and masked ridicule that seems to accompany all gaming related articles in major SA publications.

Here we go with yet another late and picture-less post. Blame it on work and Xbox 360! I’ve been playing lots of Oblivion, advancing in rank in the guilds and just generally enjoying the game world. I have also been playing a bit of Geometry Wars (the guy at the top of the leader-boards with a score of 250 million can not be entirely human!), and I checked out the Sonic the Hedgehog demo on Live. Sonic looks absolutely amazing, and the game-play is extremely simplistic and reminiscent of the old 2D titles, but the games camera is just horrible. I never imagined a camera could affect a game quite so badly, but the developers of Sonic reached a new level of crappiness with their camera. It never points quite where it should and controlling it is painfully sluggish! I really hope this is fixed in the final retail version!

Xbox live goes down for maintenance, and sleeps in

Microsoft’s scheduled maintenance on Xbox Live and xbox.com last week must not have gone quite to plan. Instead of the scheduled 24 hours, the downtime ran closer to about 36. When the Live service finally came up a couple of hours after the 24 hour promised deadline, things were still not well. The service suffered from a couple more hours of unreliable connections, missing marketplace content and general POSiness. Similarly, by the time the xbox.com website came back online, it was far from healthy, with sign in attempts leading users back to the main page, weird FireFox compatibility issues, and all sorts of other nastiness. Of course system maintenance is not that big a deal to anyone working in IT, and we all know that it almost never goes as planned, and it always turns out that the test system on which the upgrades worked flawlessly is not quite as much of a perfect replica of the live environment as everyone imagined. What makes this particular system upgrade special is the uproar it caused amongst gamers. It would appear that some people are unhealthily attached to Xbox Live. The way some gamers were carrying on in forums and blog comments, one would swear that their daily food stipend had been cut off!

Lumines drops in chunks

When Live did finally come up, and the marketplace was once again stable, gamers could download the then newest arcade release, a port of the massively popular PSP launch title Lumines. I was never a fan of the original, perhaps because I feel being charged a premium game price for what is essentially a casual game is a huge rip off. I decided to give this version a chance, but it still doesn’t really tickle my fancy. Genre tastes aside though, what is interesting about Lumines is the way in which Microsoft and Q Entertainment chose to deliver this version to Xbox Live. At 1200 MS points, Lumines already ties for the dubious honor of most expensive Live Arcade title, but on top of this the 1200 point version is not the entire game! Not only are additional contact packs due to be released at a price, entire game modes are all but missing from this ‘full version’. Between this and Sony’s ludicrous idea to require players to download the bulk of the content for the next-gen Gran Turismo, it seems that companies are taking chances and testing how far they can go with micro-payments and piecemeal content, and I really hope the majority of gamers don’t fall for this crap and vote with their wallets!

Lots of virtual people

I’m a bit late on this one, but it seems sometime in the past couple of weeks Second Life hit 1 million residents. It’s nowhere near World of Warcraft’s enormous numbers, but considering the residents of Second Life actually impact a real virtual economy that interacts with real world currencies, it’s probably much more important.

L1f3

First off, My mom is at home and has been totally cleared of the pneumonia, which is great news. Now let's hope she keeps away from the damned cigarettes!
More good news is that I have landed my first print feature article! G.E.A.R. magazine, a gaming publication by the same publishing house (Intelligence) as the South African version of PC Format, was recently introduced. I wrote a feature article for them on mobile gaming, which has been accepted and will be in the next issue. Now I just have to come up with ideas for a few more article pitches..

Second Life
On the geek side, I discovered Second Life through a Business Week article. No, this isn't some kind of tech spin on being born again, it's a rather unusual MMO that ditches the common theme of violence and replaces it with community. Second Life could be described as an MMO version of The Sims, or perhaps as a 3D chat client in which your profile picture is replaced by a full 3D avatar, and the context for your chats is a full 3D world. The truth is, however, that it is much much more.

What really makes Second Life interesting though, is it's take on player created content, the ability to buy and sell land, and it's connection with the real-world economy. The game is built around the concept of player created content. Just about everything in-world was created by a player or 'resident' using a combination of the built in modelling tools, and imported textures. Rather than laying claim to created content though, Linden Labs, the creators and owners of Second Life, allow the content creators to keep IP ownership rights. Residents can also buy in-game 'land' which they can then build on, rent out, or simply resell for a profit. Additionally, Second Life has an in-game currency that is hooked into the real world currency and fluctuates in value based on in-game and real world factors, this currency (the Lindon Dollar) can legitemately be traded for US dollars and vice versa. These three elements have created a world which has offered residents the opportunity to earn real money by employing real-world and in-game skills such as object modelling, texturing, animating, communication and many others.
The bad news is, this sort of practice would most likely be all but impossible in South Africa in the short term, due to the bandwidth intensive nature of the game and our insanely overpriced broadband services. It's still worth a good look. If you happen to try it out, drop me a notecard (you'll find out when you start playing ;)), my avatar is Flint Beika. It would also be really nice if you use me as a reference..