Ebbe and Flow (^_^)

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Imnotgoing Sideways

This new LL CEO is seemingly making waves in quite a few directions.  It sounds like he’s going to bring the Lab back inworld and provide backing for education and volunteer communities. (^_^)

… Then these new avatars come about. (O.o)

Then we get a new blog post from a Landon Linden who quite openly described what went wrong and apologized for the dread it caused. (^_^)

M was a flat-out betrayer.  I’m still trying to figure out how Rod got things so wrong.  He sounded so on it from the start.  But, in the end, it turned the lab into a shut-in development house. (>_<)

So, now we got Ebbe.  And, kind of like before, he sounds so on it.  (^_^)

I hear that the Lab has pushed out a sample of what SL is going to be like for the Occulus Rift.  (^_^)

Though, back to those avatars… Ebbe!!! What were you thinking!?!? DX

Look at the first actions of the majority of people who join SL.  All those help and newb areas packed with people in Edit Appearance mode.  What do these new avatars do for that?  They make it hugely more difficult to make those little changes many people are after. (>_<)

Pretty avatars have been shown, over and over, to scare people away from SL just as fast as they attract them.  And, by the way, these avatars ain’t pretty!!! DX

So, volunteers who are helping people spread their virtual wings suddenly find themselves going from “Hey, try this skin and bump the sliders around a bit.” to “Here is how you detach everything and remove alphas and no you’re not stuck in that shape and yes I know the sliders aren’t working and yes, that avatar’s eyes are not affected by the eye sliders and no wearing that shirt you picked up from the freebie mall won’t work on that avatar…” (=_=)

Come on… (=_=)

Though some good is coming from Ebbe so far. (^_^)

He has gotten the attention of some of the helper communities.  Particularly NCI. (^_^)

If you don’t already know, NCI (New Citizens Inc.) started as a group created by Brace Coral.  She had this wonder vision of people helping each other out in ways that LL failed to provide.  And, IT WORKED! =^-^=

Well, guess what, she’s back! XD

Seems she’s had some words with Ebbe and some others to get to stepp’n and bring these helper communities back to the front.  So, in her hands stands NCI. (^_^)

Surely she’s rock’n the boat within the group.  But, it’s a boat in need of rocking.  Some changes is a’coming.  =^-^=

Lessee if Ebbe has things going in the right direction. (^_^)

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The Leaf =^-^=

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Imnotgoing Sideways

My partner came home with palm leaves from Palm Sunday mass and tacked them high up, knowing Loli’s (our cat) history with plants. All was fine for the week until last night. And, apparently, I slept through the whole thing. XD

Somehow she found a way to ascend along the wall and pull one leaf down and started playing with it on the bed. The ensuing chaos woke my partner up who confiscated the leaf and placed it under their pillow. Loli, knowing where her new toy was, started digging and pressing herself under the pillow. =^-^=

My partner was awakened again and decided to move the leaf from the pillow to under the blanket. Bad move. Loli drove her way under the blanket, pretty much making matters worse. =^-^=

Finally, giving up, my partner got out of bed and put the leaf in our hallway cabinet… To which Loli sat under, gazed upon, and howled at for a while. (O.o)

Then, in the morning, my partner is telling me the story and goes to take the leaf from the cabinet to show me. Once the cabinet door’s magnet ‘clicks’ we hear Loli doing her slick-floor-burnout and she comes racing up the hallway. XD

Once she drifts her way to our feet, she looks up at the open cabinet door with the most wanting look in her eyes I’ve ever seen. XD

She REALLY likes that leaf. (O.o)

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It’s Purple Again!!! XD

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Imnotgoing Sideways

Finally!!! I did it!!! I got the Twentyten theme to NOT crash the server. =^-^=

Dunno what exactly was going on, but, it was a frigg’n mess.  Plus, I was too lazy to really deal with it.  But, after I tried to set up a NextGen album, things went all haywire with the site. (>_<)

Even after I got the site working again, the database got all screwed up and all kinds of funky values were getting thrown into the layout.  I finally found some stuff to delete which got it all worked out. =^-^=

Anyway…

I been quiet a while, ain’t I?  (o.o)

I been lazy and work has kind of gotten really fun… Odd match, that. (O.o)

Anyway…

Work has kind of gotten really fun.  I’ve been messing with more projects using Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards.  I spent some time in Japan translating some VB.Net code so that we could re-use some software one of our customers created.  And, I been working with a WinCE box for a while, finding ways to break it. (^_^)

SL has gotten really quiet.  Well, kind of quiet.  NCI is still busy and slightly dramaz laden.  I’m keeping my classes alive and doing what I can to keep it all a community driven system.  (^_^)

I think I’ve pretty much come to terms with the inworld friends I screwed up on over the past couple years. (>_<)

Though, I seem to have drifted into an earlier bed time lately. Like, 7pm kind of early. (._.)

Oh, and I kind of almost got my house broken into during the holidays.  I was home and I saw them through the curtains.  I was able to ID them and get them arrested.  Even went to court to testify as a witness and all. =^-^=

Jeebus criminal… I’ve gone quiet for a long time, ain’t I?  (O.o)

Well… I’m still here. =^-^=

 

OH!!! XD

Check this out.  Das Keyboard is coming out with a new plank of clickey goodness.  My main reason for NOT getting a Das for work was that the keyboard I do have has a built in volume knob that’s really convenient and Das ain’t got one.  Well, now, the new one does! XD

So, yeah, I totally pre-ordered it.  Got the Ultimate with brown switches to be quiet for the office.  It’ll ship at the end of the month. (^_^)y

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See Plusplus! See Plusplus run! Run Plusplus run! (>_<)

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Imnotgoing Sideways

Hey! Smart people! My luck has run out. MSDN, cplusplus, StackOverflow, and various other sites can’t seem to help me. (>_<)

Here goes: I have bitmap resources embedded in my x86 executable. I have them properly defined as resources. I have very similar code in another project for WinCE6. But, when I try to load my image resources, I keep getting error 1814(0x716)! (._.)

resources.rc

#include "resources.h"

IDB_BITMAP1 BITMAP "tpcn.bmp"
IDB_BITMAP2 BITMAP "red.bmp"
IDB_BITMAP3 BITMAP "blu.bmp"
IDB_BITMAP4 BITMAP "grn.bmp"
IDB_BITMAP5 BITMAP "pat.bmp"

resources.h

#ifndef RESOURCES_H
#define RESOURCES_H

#ifndef IDC_STATIC
#define IDC_STATIC      -1
#endif

#define IDI_CSICO       101

#define IDB_BITMAP1    201
#define IDB_BITMAP2    202
#define IDB_BITMAP3    203
#define IDB_BITMAP4    204
#define IDB_BITMAP5    205

#endif // RESOURCES_H

The snippet of code that fails. (T_T)

	HBITMAP image = (HBITMAP)LoadImage(NULL, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_BITMAP1), IMAGE_BITMAP, 0, 0, LR_DEFAULTCOLOR);
	if (image == NULL) printf("Failure Loading Bitmap %i", GetLastError());

I’m using GNU GCC as my compiler. It does compile. It does run. But, it does always print that “Failure” line I stuck in there. (._.)

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Asking The Stack XD

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Imnotgoing Sideways

So, I’m sitting around at work and chiseling away at some C# code for a quick little compatibility routine I got.  Yeah, I’m bored. =^-^=

Anyway, the way this device throws data back is as a simple unsigned word value.  Well, almost simple.  It actually does include values starting at 0xFFFF for the value of -1 and going down from there. (>.>)

Did that make any sense? XD

I figured I’d use the KISS method to turn this friendly little mess into a signed integer.   My little snippet of code is as seen here:

int GotSlope = gotData[0] + (gotData[1] << 8);
if (GotSlope > 0x8000) GotSlope = -(0xFFFF – GotSlope);

It does the job. =^-^=

But, as usual, I get curious.  I wonder if there are more readable and/or efficient ways of doing it.  I Google “positive to negative in C#” and one of my top results leads to my favourite site… StackOverflow.com! =^-^=

This is where the LOLs start coming in.  Someone did legitimately ask this question back in 2009 and the responses go from the serious to the idiotic to the hilarious real quick. XD

This should be community wiki, for its entertainment value as well as for its being a cautionary tale on the dangers of having a head made of Legos.

Pretty much sums it up.  XD

It gave me the laugh I needed in what was an otherwise boring morning. (^_^)y

 

 

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No Such Atrocity. =^-^=

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Imnotgoing Sideways

Madness… MADNESS, I tell you!!! XD

If you haven’t seen this… What rock are you under!? (O.o)

So, the get-all-up-in-you-stuff spy agency is getting all up in our SL stuff now!?  I can’t imagine that being any more hilarious.  Though, it’s fun to see that SL still gets a little bit of spotlight once in a while. (^_^)

So, what is their quest? (o.o)

If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a window for hacking attacks, to build pictures of people’s social networks through “buddylists and interaction”, to make approaches by undercover agents, and to obtain target identifiers (such as profile photos), geolocation, and collection of communications.

I LOL like I’ve never LOL’d before. XD

Really… Okay… Seriously…  What does this say about the state of surveillance and the things to come?  I mean, there is a chance to find unsavoury communications everywhere.  Does that mean we need an agency around every little bit and byte of data we’re dumping out?  And, of all places, SECOND LIFE!!!?  I could understand watching the L$ market for money laundering and such, but, profile pictures and approaching people inworld is no way to even grasp what kind of person you’re dealing with. (=_=)

My real problem with the NSA is that they come across as the blind leading the deaf.  It’s like, they are so uninformed about what or who they’re looking for that they’re looking everywhere “just in case”.  (>_<)

And, they’re so totally reactionary.  They focus on what one person has already done and do everything possible to prevent what already happened… As if it’s bound to happen again.  Yet, they miss the mark every time.  They take away nail clippers, someone loads a bomb into their shoe.  They scan shoes, find nothing, yet other weapons still make it on to planes.  They ethnically discriminate, the next terrorist may be so whitebread that nobody will believe what happens is true. (=_=)

Heck… This blog now has a few keywords that’ll probably dump my site into their radar.  What are they gonna find?  My pixel butt, that’s what!  Will it be worth the time and tax dollars?  Of course not… Though, some may say I have a pretty nice butt. =^-^=

 

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