Peaks and Valleys…

What got things going, I’m still not clear on.  I think I took out a small classified, but that was it. I just had my store there, across from Chriss’, nothing more.  But it didn’t take long to see I had something people wanted. I was soon making more sales than I could imagine possible, certainly more than I ever expected.  People’s excitement only fed my own excitement, it was a true synergy. I listened to their ideas and turned out new versions with new features, or to fix the bugs that often plagued my early attempts.  It quickly became clear I had  a problem though.  How to get these new versions out to people?  I knew then I needed an update system. 

     Being the Fetish Gear whore that I was, i was very familiar with Amethyst’s update system, at least, how it worked from the user’s perspective.  You wear your item, you push a button, you drop the box given, and poof, new version installed!  It couldn’t be simpler, and i knew that I had to have a system like that.  I wouldn’t settle for less. I searched and searched, but the only resource I could find for such a system was a crudely made script by someone named Lasivian Leandro. It had some odd limitations that to this day I don’t understand, but it showed me enough to begin working on my own system, which I still use to this day.  I eventually released a simplified version to the SL forums for all to use, as I think more creators should be doing these kinds of updates, it’s the easiest on the customer.

 Along with ideas for improvements, came ideas for new items.  I had a long list of my own wants, but when you get the ear of the public, you end up with quite a list.  I won’t mislead you, I usually do what moves me at the time.  The act of creating can’t be forced.  Come to me with tales of your desire for a new diaper, and well, you should probably go elsewhere with that request.  Nothing I’m interested in making.  There *are* creators who are out for the almighty Linden, and who will do whatever they think well sell the best.  I just make things I like, and make them work how I think they should.  Not that it’s all about me.  I can be swayed by good reasoning, just as any reasonable person can. :)   But I do have strong thoughts about how these lovingly crafted items should behave.

So Improvements, New items, updates, bugs… Bugs! How can I not talk about the bugs.  I have been doing some form of programming or another since my teen years.  I can tell you nothing has been more frustrating than LSL coding.  It’s quirky, it’s inconsistent, it’s unstable.   and 16k… that has been my biggest enemy.  90% of my bugs have been a result of running out of memory in my scripts.  The other 10% are a multitude of headaches.  There has only been once that I was ashamed of my own work, and that was in relation to the early blindfolds.   To be frank, the worked only under perfect conditions.  It was during this time that SL was undergoing a long, drawn out period of having huge issues with lag, failed TPs, etc, which drove people mad at every turn.  When I was scripting my blindfold, it was under conditions most didn’t have access to, a huge empty private island with nearly no lag.  The Blindfold worked GREAT there.   In the rest of the world, it did not.   Even still, that didnt’ deter my customers, they continued to buy and wait, because even by then I had gained a reputation for good customer service, and if I promised it would be fixed, I’d come through.  :)   I love them for that.  That trust.   And while it took me a couple tries, I did finally work out a system that retained all functionality, but worked under the most lag-filled conditions.  It was actually a great learning experience for me.  Coding for lag is an art I learned from that. :) 

Speaking of lag, it’s a funny thing, but the grid is like a living thing.  When the grid is sick, it suffers, and so do all who live there. and it shows in so many ways.  Take for instance this graph of my sales since I opened:

Now it’s obvious there was a very sharp climb when i first opened, but why all the ups and down?  If you match the weeks at the bottom to the Linden blog, you will often see why….  On weeks when there are outages, or asset issues, or some incredibly stupid or ill-timed announcement, sales hurt because of it.  Sometimes when I release something new, it shoots way up. ;)   But certainly one can see it’s anything but predictable.  I have noticed some trends.  End of month is usually slow, I attribute this to people having bills to deal with.  Tuesdays are usually busy, I think in great part to Stipends!  I can talk financials all day, but oh wow, isn’t that boring. :p   I know, I know, get to something good… 

 see you next post… ;p

How I got started…

I”ve decided I’ll be posting daily leading up to Friday, which is my 1 year anniversary in SL. One thing people often ask is what started it all. It’s not a long story, so here it is, for posterity.

To really know the beginning, you would have to go back, way back to November of 2006, a mere month after I joined SL. After finding some of the more kinky sides of SL to explore, I was also a bit disappointed in the lack of variety. I had KDC’s fine armbinder, but other than look nice, it really didn’t do much, and the hands, exposed? I didn’t like that style. Not having much skill with the building tools, and just starting to learn scripting, my first attempt at making my own binder didn’t go far. I had a shell, but frustration forced me to shelve the project. Fast Forward a few months later. I had bought my own sim by then, driven out of my mainland plot by 3 Casinos. I was sharing the sim with some close friends I had made, Cleo Wombat, Chriss Florio, Giri Gritzi, and a few others. Always eager to see what was new and for sale, I happened upon that appeared to be a dream of mine, the Dictatorshop Scolding Mask. I eagerly paid my Lindens and got it home, only to be

sorely disappointed. Why? Judge for yourself: As you can see the design is simple, overly simple. A sphere, and cylinder or two, very low rez and the scripting, was nothing to write home about either. Click, it’s locked, Click, it’s unlocked. At least it locked. I had picked up the Amethyst Blindfold some weeks before and was disappointed to find it couldnt’ be locked at all. you could remove it, and nothing happened?! what kind of bondage device is that? So this mask was the last straw for me. I looked at it, and said to myself, “I can do better than this!” and on that day, in mid January of 2007, I decided to do just that. I had an idea in my mind what I wanted, but I wanted a degree of realism too. So I researched some popular designs on the internets. but what works in RL doesn’t always work in SL. As you can see from the early works in progress, the two straps crossing under the chin just didn’t look right. So that’s when I got the bright idea to use a sort of leather chin cradle instead. I began doing the blindfold and the gag separate, but midway i figured,

why not make a version combined? surely people will want to use both. And so on a whim, the Combo was born. I have a whole slew of pictures showing every stage of work, i was excited, my creative juices were in overdrive. I would send pictures to my friends on an hourly basis, asking for feedback. I stayed cooped up in my house for hours on end building. And once the building was done, It was time to bring it to life! by this time I had scripted many things, a Certain One-Way-Door was previous to this, as well as many other things. but This would prove to be my biggest challenge yet. I was working on 3 scripts simultaneously, one for the blindfold, one for the gag, and of course the combo, which incorporated features from both, and by far the most difficult. After a *lot* of trials and revisions, I felt it was finally ready. I plunked down my prefab “garage” across from Chriss’ shop and put my single freebie HiroVendor with the 3 items in it. I waited with bated breath. Would anyone think my efforts any good? I had a couple sales that first week, mostly

friends who had been keeping up with my progress. Then I suppose they showed a friend, who perhaps bought one too, and at some point things just kind of snowballed… But that’s a story for tomorrow.

( Continued here )

A day is drawing near…

It’s hard for me to believe, but in just a short few days, it will be my one year anniversary in Second Life. As the day has approached, i’ve grown quite retrospective, and introspective.  I can still remember how I felt those first few weeks, slightly confused, full of curiosity, teleporting from sim to sim, eager to see what was next around the bend. I know I spent a lot those first few weeks but i was having a ball.

 October of 2006 was on the cusp of SL’s great expansion, in that month they had just broke 1 million residents for the first time. They would break 2 million a scant two months later, and of course now, 1 year later, they are nearing the 10 million mark.  With such a boom in population, came also a boom in new creative drive.  I, like many others, found SL full of wonders, but also with obvious gaps.  In my own narrow field of expertise, BDSM gear, I’ve seen such a large increase in the number of creators over the last year. I myself started in Febuary of 2006, just offering something I created for myself across the street from my friend’s shop. Needless to say, it took off like a wildfire, something I wasn’t expecting or prepared for.  But I can say, it altered my Second Life in ways I never expected. 

I think many are suprised that I am not a Domme, in reality I am a switch, and often lean toward th sub side.  But if ever I wanted to be a slave, I am one now. My business in SL runs my life, my customers are my oh-so-cruel Masters.  And those other creators I mentioned?  Well, we can’t leave them out. With so many fighting for their share in a small market space, at times it can be quite ugly, which to me is a shame. I never came to SL to make money, but it’s clear to me some have. I am happy for the creators I have met who do it for the love of the lifestyle, and the joy of creation. I am happy for the friends I’ve made, for they are all I have to keep me sane in this madness. Although I know at times I drive them crazy :p

Any talk of the last year would be incomplete if it neglected to mention the sweeping changed the Lindens have instituted in Second Life, some for the better, some for the worse.  First there was the removal of Gambling (good), the crackdown on Ageplay (good), Voice (bad), and the new age/Identity verification (bad). The main theme running through all of these is the slow, inexorable creep of real life in SL. This is of course contrary to what most who come to SL wish for.  SL is supposed to be an escape from RL, not a low resolution copy of it.   But the Lindens don’t care for that, they can’t make money off people’s fantasy lives.

So as this year approaches, and I remain introspective and retrospective, I have to say my best times were the early days, when things were simple, and SL seemsed full of boundless opportunity, nary marred by greed, averice, hate, or deceit.  But once the serpent entered the garden, that all changed. Even if this serpet took the form of a panel gag.  I have to look back, and say where it all went bad, and it’s incredibly easy for me to see, the day I placed my gag out for 600L for all to try, was the day SL changed for me forever, and definetly not for the better.  It’s something I will regret always.

Pointers for using the JIRA Bug Reporter.

Today when it was posted that a new scripting feature that allowed one to position a sitting AV was broken by the rolling restart, Someone was helpful enough to link to JIRA where it had been opened as a bug.   While i was happy to see that nearly 90 people had voted to fix this issue, and (gasp) Lindens were actually posting in the comments, my joy swiftly turned sour when I read the incredibly smug comments from these Linden Lab representatives.  One in particular rubbed me the wrong way.  Here you have many concerned and upset individuals, expressing their concern and naturally upset that their content has been broken, and Soft Linden (which by the way is a “shared” account any Linden can use) feels the need to say this:  “Please help me thank dibbs Dovgal, Esmee Isbell, Silicon Plunkett, and Strife Onizuka for providing useful comments.”  Or in other words, “The rest of you can go to hell, your input is unwelcome.”

    It’s exactly this kind of attitude that incites so many to be hostile toward Linden Lab and it’s employees.  If your comment isn’t “useful”, your input doesn’t matter to them.  I think there is a core problem in how LL views Second Life, and how the users use it.   LL sees it as a “platform” and a technological work in porgress. They seem to forget that, truth is, Second Life is a Social Networking medium. The key word is “SOCIAL” for those wondering.  Linden Lab needs to be more social in it’s dealings with it’s residents, and not so quick to dismiss the people and input who they find aren’t “useful”.

The truth about the JIRA is, if you aren’t one of a handful of people that Linden Lab finds “useful”, your bug will get no traction, and is destined to remain at the bottom of the file, for all eternity.   At this time, I have two issues open. One is rather new, WEB-338 where the download button for transactions doesn’t work.  Not too serious.  However the other,  SVC-369 ”‘Sell objects with the Land’ option only transfers ownership of the root prims” is quite serious.  It’s been reported since June, 2007, with nary a “we’ll look into it” or even a “we can’t reproduce it”.  Often times, a negative response is better than none.  How many other serious bugs are going unresolved, simply because the “useful” people didn’t report them?  I really don’t think I want to know…