aubreTEC Labs

Question from WickedSF:

Where the fuck have you been?

The answer to this question is simple:  I’ve been working.  I was offered a rather excellent job as a project manager outside of Second Life and I took it.

Yes, I still intend to be active in Second Life, and I’ve been working on a couple of projects I’m very excited about.  I just got hit with the learning curve of working with a new company, coupled with some major changes in my personal life, and I needed a haitus.

I’m really excited to be back in-world, though, and I have some great ideas to start putting to prims.  We’re going to be culling our inventory - removing any products that we consider to be obsolete or no longer relevant - so that we can focus on making a few really, really good products.

Thanks for your patience, and I’ll see you in-world!

We’re pleased to announce that our VX-7 Scorpions are back online with a new 1.23 update.  To get your update follow these instructions:

1. Unpack a fresh set of your Scorpions (If you used your Scorpions and got the CCS error message, the CCS API disabled those entirely, so toss them).
2. Rez one of the freshly-unpacked Scorpions on the ground (do NOT wear it - if you attach it, CCS will shut it down).
3. Wait a few moments.
4. You’ll receive an inventory offer from our update servers.  Accept it, and you’ve got version 1.23!

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We have taken the VX-7 Scorpions temporarily offline to deal with some CCS API changes.  We’ll release an update to the VX-7s within the next day or so.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The time to update our flagship psiTEC system has come around again, and we’re asking psiTEC users for their suggestions.

Among the questions we want to hear from you about:

1. Should we turn it into a HUD (heads-up-display) or keep it one of the few non-HUD attack systems out there?
2. What non-attack features would you like to see?
3. What attacks would you like to have at your disposal?

We can’t guarantee we’ll take every suggestion, but we’ll consider anything tossed our way.  Remember, those who speak get heard, so sound off in the comments with your inevitable opinion.

So Kokiri Saarinen and I just spent a very geeky couple of hours testing Mono list storage capacity (and, sadly enough, competing for the fastest result times) and we accidentally discovered something odd:

Casting keys as strings allowed us to store 13x as much data.

We ran different tests, with different configurations, compiling the lists in different ways, for a solid hour, and kept arriving at the same results: a key, stored in a list as a key, ate 106 bytes. The same key, casted to a string, ate 8 bytes. We were able to create a list of 7692 (under ideal circumstances) 36-character strings (keys converted to strings) before the script ran out of memory and stack-heaped, but only 583 keys.

This is pretty odd, and I’m not yet ready to declare that conclusive, as that’s a rather huge discrepancy. List memory usage in Mono is supposed to be calculated thusly:

string: 22 + 1 byte per character
key: 34 + 1 byte per character

So while strings should be a little bit more memory-efficient, they should still eat nearly 60 bytes. Why, then, the script would be storing them as 8 bytes is beyond me.

These tests all stored a global list and ran a loop adding keys to the list (with results displayed via llSetText) until the script barfed up a stack-heap collision.

If anybody else who has more knowledge about LSL memory would like to enlighten me, I’d love to hear it.

Right on the heels of our long-awaited CCS enhancement update for the VX-7 Scorpions comes our first ammo pack specifically for CCS gameplay. This pack contains four new CCS-enhanced ammunition types (Frag, Consecrated, Desecrated, NaCL, and Ash Core). Read the product details or buy this item in-world for only $175L.

Right on the heels of our long-awaited CCS enhancement update for the VX-7 Scorpions comes our first ammo pack specifically for CCS gameplay. This pack contains five new CCS-enhanced ammunition types (Iron, Silver Nitrate, Z-Factor, EMP, and Nepetalactone). Read the product details or buy this item in-world for only $175L.

This ammo pack instantly adds CCS-enhanced ammunition options to any VX-series weapon. These packs install automatically with no editing!

Note that all of these rounds are designed for CCS (Community Combat System) regions and will not work in normal damage regions or other RP systems.

This pack includes five CCS race-specific rounds. Each round delivers +10 damage to that race (and normal damage to a target of any other race). Each round features a 25-round clip with a 7-second reload period.

• FRAG - Human specialty round
• CONSECRATED - Demon specialty round
• DESCRATED - Angel specialty round
• NACL - Supernatural specialty round
• ASH CORE - Vampire specialty round

Instantly improve the usability of any VX-series weapon with new strategic choices for CCS roleplay!

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This ammo pack instantly adds CCS-enhanced ammunition options to any VX-series weapon. These packs install automatically with no editing!

Note that all of these rounds are designed for CCS (Community Combat System) regions and will not work in normal damage regions or other RP systems.

This pack includes five CCS race-specific rounds. Each round delivers +10 damage to that race (and normal damage to a target of any other race). Each round features a 25-round clip with a 7-second reload period.

• IRON - Sidhe specialty round
• SILVER NITRATE - Lycan specialty round
• TRIOXIN - Undead specialty round
• EMP - Cyborg specialty round
• NEPETALACTONE - Neko specialty round

Instantly improve the usability of any VX-series weapon with new strategic choices for CCS roleplay!

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I got this question from TJudge:

It seems like you’re always involved in a ton of projects at once.  I can barely remember to tie my shoes in the morning.  Do you use some kind of program to keep track of all the stuff you do?

The answer to that question is, of course, constantly evolving, as anybody in a creative field I’m sure can tell you.  I think the biggest challenge when managing multiple tasks is in finding a way to keep track of those tasks without getting overwhelmed.  There are a lot of philosophies on this subject, but the increasingly dominant one comes from a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen.  The common term for this, in true internet abbreviation style, is “GTD.”

The GTD philosophy is complex, but it essentially boils down to keeping close track of what actions you need to take, when you need to take them, and what dependencies exist for these tasks.  It’s about structuring your time to maximize your resources and focus on the tasks at hand.

For this purpose, I recommend one of three bits of software (all for Mac, sorry) - OmniFocus, The Hit List, and Things.

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