Sloodle Alpha Testing
Posted by Peter | Filed under Second Life, Sloodle
Just realised I haven’t blogged in a while, so I thought I’d mention that the next major release of the Sloodle project (version 0.3) is pencilled in for the end of June/beginning of July this year, and we are getting started on the alpha testing phase.
A lot of hard work and new ideas have gone into this version, hopefully revolutionising the way Sloodle tools are created. That’s partly due to an all-new configuration system (whereby you configure the in-world objects on your website), and partly also due to the new localization, which transfers all the lingual output functionality to a separate LSL script via link message (which makes it easy to translate everything… hurrah!).
Things have also changed big-time on the Moodle side, so you now add ‘instances’ of Sloodle to your Moodle course if you want to access it from Second Life. These instances are currently called “Sloodle Controllers” (as they control access to your courses), but that is subject to change. This update increases security and flexibility, giving the educators control over how Sloodle behaves on their courses, instead of relying on an administrator setting a site-wide configuration.
Right… off to do Sloodle 101…
Oh, and btw, Second Life is (R) and (TM) Linden Lab etc. etc. and all that legal junk they want us to say every time we mention their product/service.
Brain…. too…. slow….
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games
Here’s a brilliant little game… called “NanoTube”:
http://dolphincrap.com/g.php?g=126
The concept is very simple once you understand it… a bunch of coloured dots fly out from the centre, and you have to rotate the outer disc (or tube) so that the coloured dot hits the matching coloured part. Sounds simple, and it is… at first…
When it got on to multiple colours, I quickly found myself getting wildly confused. Mind you, maybe I shouldn’t have been trying it at 2.30am at the end of a LOOOOONG week.
It’s a well made game anyway, and must be great for tuning your quick-thinking and hand-eye coordination!
Powder Game
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games
Another physics sandbox game here, but this is incredible. (Sadly it’s a Java applet though, so it could be WAAAAAAY faster):
http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/
At first it seems like your basic particle-properties thing, where you’ve got water, fire, oil, sand… etc.. But this one has a whole bunch more stuff than the usual, and also includes wind motion which affects everything else in brilliant ways. For example, scatter some sand about, and ignite some nitro on top, and you can see the shockwave hurtle up to the top of the box, and round and back down… so it’s not just the initial explosive blast, but a rippling effect.
Very cool!
Incidentally, the wind motion might remind you somewhat of the fluid dynamics seen in the outstandingly inimitable Plasma Pong, which seems to have been squashed by Atari corporate evilness. (Seriously Atari dudes… I think you *might* have a fair amount of mileage from Pong already… give it up!)
Magic Pen
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games
I do like a bit of physics modelling… and here’s a kind of dynamic rigid-body game which is pretty good fun:
http://andyslife.org/games/game.php?file=magic-pen.swf
Your objective is to get a ball to one or more flags. You cannot directly manipulate it. Rather, you need to draw convex object with the mouse, each of which becomes a rigid body. You can use fixings and hinges too, but you rely entirely on gravity to provide the motion, which makes it pretty challenging, but a lot of fun.
It’s a Flash game, and it’s nice and slick (presumably unless you draw waaaaay to many objects!). Graphics are a nice kids’ crayon kinda style, which makes it feel more fun. Well worth a try, as it’s a nice casual challenge, albeit a tad infuriating at times!
Programmer Productivity
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming
Quick link here to an interesting article:
It’s about the difference between different ‘levels’ of programmer… some are good, others are totally mind-blowing. I’ve certainly known a number of people in the bottom couple of categories (drones and idiots)… not that I say that to be insulting… it’s merely that some people are simply not cut out for it. (Let’s face it… if I tried to become a hospital nurse or a painter, I would fail miserably!)
The workhorses are always good to have around though. Programming is a job, and that’s it. So long as they produce something usable, readable, and effective, then we can be happy.
The top two categories are a different breed altogether though. The trailblazer and the visionary. I’ve never been much of a visionary in anything, but I have a great deal of respect for those who really can hold and pursue a brand new vision with all diligence.
I reckon I would be somewhere between workhorse and trailblazer… depending on how good/bad a day I’m having! 
I love to make elegant and effective solutions, but sometimes I do need to simply step back and say “it’s just a job!”.
When tabs go bad
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming, Sloodle, Websites
I am a Firefox fan-boy… and more than that, a tabbed-browsing junkie. It comes in very handy when working on the Sloodle project, and I’ve got our main site’s forums open in one tab, alongside documentation, a webmail folder (or 5), and a locally hosted Moodle site for testing on.
One thing I’ve learned the hard way recently though is to be really sure of what tab you’re using at what moment. Having tried a few things out in the Sloodle code on my local installation, I wanted to uninstall it from my local Moodle, and re-install it to see if my changes worked properly. Unfortunately, the Moodle tab I had open at the time wasn’t the one on my local machine… but rather, the one on my web-server. I didn’t realise until a fraction of a second too late!
I didn’t lose any seriously important data… this time… but it was quite a nuisance anyway.
I now simply don’t keep more than one Moodle open in the same instance of Firefox at the same time. It’s not worth the risk!
