progress: momentum is building

No excuses, simply facts:

The holidays and the month of January were busy times for me, probably for everyone. I’d hoped that we could have gotten this process out the door much faster. For those of you that care, I have a new love in my life, moved to a new place, new work in RL, among many other very large changes that take time and effort to resolve and get settled in. It is unavoidable that some times will be hectic.

While I do not excuse the impatience and lack of understanding represented by a vocal minority who seem to feel that this is an opportunity to criticize my capacity, talk behind my back, disturb me during breakfast with ’is it done yet’, accuse me of being a scam artist, or to seek out people who may wish to represent a negative view of me, I *do* apologize to those of you who have been waiting patiently and offering support where needed. Those of you who are clearly on missions to bother me, dispute this process, or otherwise waste time have already heard my thoughts and will soon enough cease to be of any importance.

That said, the process of managing a software project is one that I always believe you should put a great deal of thought into before releasing something to the public to use. Gather requirements, understand the needs, develop the product, test it thoroughly, ensure proper equipment and plan maintenance, have redundancy and backups, and make some pretty graphics and a help file so people can use it.

Users of Second Life can identify with this: the stress of attempting to log in and it’s unavailable, the loss of inventory items, tons of other different kinds of pain and suffering that emerge from a service that was imho pounded out and pushed out the door with what I perceive to be the ’success at all costs’ mentality. I do enjoy SL, and I am happy to have it in spite of it’s flaws, but there is much to be said for planning a process and giving thought and consideration to the people it will affect. If you’ve ever felt anxiety at trying to use SL, you’ll know what I mean. It can be a wonderful world, or it can be an enfuriating and nerve-wracking nightmare.

Now, I’ve pontificated enough, I am going to bullet point what we have accomplished thus far:

• introduced the concept to the public and gathered information on their thoughts with reference to the project
• this weblog as a source of information now contains diagrams of the operation of the project as well as code snippets which DO work for land search (and will soon be demonstrated)
• code for a previous project (which DID work and was a complete landbot) was cleaned up and handed over to Land Shepherd for evaluation
• a great deal of research has been done and the key advantages held by other landbot operators have been identified and are gradually being converted into assets for this process
• we now have not one, not two, but FOUR servers available to run the project. two located in California, two located in Texas, both locations grant us the opportunity to have redundancy and backup in our process as well as rapid access to Linden Lab simulators. Some of these are supplied by businesses which are being compensated for the server, others supplied by a couple of friends who are interested in seeing this process succeed
• key elements of the tasks remaining are now documented

That’s a very brief encapsulation what has been done so far on this process.

The short term future is as follows:

• more information on the task list which will enable delegation of certain tasks and hopefully provision more rapid completion
• initially our objective was to POSSIBLY open source the entire project. (some code was made public on this site previously). A number of key concerns on the impact of making an application of this sort publicly available were expressed. We need to communicate on this and conclusively determine what we would like to do and properly consider the best interest of the public, Second Life, and this project. It’s not entirely clear to me who gets a say on this.
• Issues of information to provide, how finances and expenses on the continued process will be dealt with, who gets to know and decide what need to be determined
• breaking in the server and setting up test harnesses for the application is the first step on running an ongoing process

Ok. That’s a lot of typing, but hopefully everyone is up to speed on what’s been done, what’s being done, what’s planned, and we can begin to move forward and get this show on the road.

Immediately, I plan to communicate with Land Shepherd as soon as we can coordinate and will have more for you here as the opportunity presents itself.

i’m doing a great job

I am expecting to hear back, today or tomorrow, about the availability of a server that has been ordered to facilitate a running process. 

The objective here is to mitigate another key advantage that other landbot owners have over this project: fast, consistent connection to Second Life and it’s resources.

As if THAT wasn’t cool enough, I am negotiating on a SECOND server which will facilitate a backup and alternate system for the purpose of running the landbot project.

For those of you who merely want to annoy me and say I am ‘only in it for the money’, you should know that the cost of these servers will exceed, on a monthly basis, the amount of money which was initially compensated to begin this project. You should also know that if you want to annoy me, you suck and should die horribly.

oh, wait, before i could click publish, i found out that the server is in place.

comment of the year nomination

“would it be faster and cheaper to have about 20 ante up $20 or so and
buy merlin’s bot and reverse engineer it and refine it then keep
proceeding this way?”

No. Merlin’s bot is copyrighted material protected under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

It would be both
potentially illegal
and morally wrong
to pursue this
in the fashion
you suggest.

Empowering Merlin to sue this group for copyright violation does not lend itself to a successful project.

As a software developer I also find it offensive that some people believe that this is an acceptable course of action.

And it’s not necessary. The software to perform this task was completed a year ago, it was simply not updated because for a variety of reasons, a retest and accomplishing the items on the task list will put it into an operational state, and the main reason it wasn’t made operational earlier is primarily the fact that I didn’t want to run a landbot. I STILL DON’T WANT TO RUN A LANDBOT, BUT I’M DOING IT ANYWAY FOR SPITE NOW.

The way to get this project completed faster and cheaper is to get the tasks aligned, determine what can be delegated, who can help, find the proper in-world resources, test program routines, make a few decisions on how to manage the ongoing process and deal with finances and information that needs to be distributed.

Another way to expedite this process is for people to stop wasting my time with gossip and bullshit. Of course, asking for that to happen is like expecting puppies to start doing calculus overnight. If you want to blog about me and how much I suck, go right ahead, if I find out about it, fuck you, I’m doing a great job.

upcoming agenda for this process

After a long day of RL, SL crashes and an unnerving time of not being able to log in, I neglected to publish this article before I fell asleep. Apologies if anyone felt mislead. Here’s the post promised in the group.

A few days ago I met with Land Shepherd to discuss priorities for the project. We identified the key tasks necessary to get the project off the ground. I expect to have another meeting with him soon to discuss progress and identify further targets.

The following is a list of tasks beyond mere programming which we identified, that are likely to be required, in order to ensure success in this endeavor. Some items are optional and merely presented here for the sake of completeness. The items are not in a specific order and some rearranging will occur later.

1. set up alt with premium + tier fees
2. accumulate landmarks for ocean sims
3. test buy code
4. purchase 512m land for testing
5. divide parcel to 16m
6. test / refine search code
7. notify sellers when land was purchased (hi, i am a bot and bought your land, IM so and so if your sale was a mistake)
8. create group for purchases
9. coordinate with server company
10. test deed to group functions
11. test buy for group functions
12. decision making on community interests
13. optimized libsl + testing
14. new base app to test new libsl
15. monitor the system for program crashes
16. recover from failed teleports
17. verify code to check price and size limits
18. reconnect on disconnect
19. start program at server startup
20. bot attachment – always flying
21. larger logo for land ads
22. documentation and notes for public consumption
23. promotional offerings
24. public support campaign
25. visible bot identification (t-shirt or outfit for alts used)
26. bot announcer for group posts land search results which are extremely low.

This is obviously a fairly substantial list and now we have targets for those who have offered generously to volunteer time and effort to the project. How we will manage and reward those who make an effort in this process is also something to be determined.

oh… neat

researching this process just took a turn for the better, as we now know two of the major tricks used to make landbots perform better:

http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/01/phantom-bots-sk.html#more

I knew some modification to libsecondlife was going to be required to make this possible, this just takes the mystery out of it.

I hate Google Code, btw. I tried setting up a sourceforge svn, we’ll see if that repo is happy.

Keep your fork.

i am… notacrook! (you won’t have dick nixon to kick around anymore!)

Once again the naysayers who either despise this process, contribute nothing, or foolishly think I care about their opinion of me, decided it was time for the ALMIGHTY UPRISING OF ACCUSATIONS in the Public Landbot Project group.

Myself, ever the theatrical agent, I was more than happy to oblige with the CAPSLOCK KEY OF DAMNATION AND PROLIFIC USE OF THE FWORD, because we all know that I can’t write a landbot, and I’m on my way to Mexico with the vast fortune I pried from Land Shepherds cold dead hands after I shot him cruelly in the back and did unspeakable things to his… body…. mmm….

NEVER MIND CHRISTMAS, WE DEMAND LANDBOT NOW! DO IT OR EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE, WILL SAY CLINT EASTWOOD IS THE BIGGEST YELLER BELLY IN THE WEST!

Sorry, folks. No matter how much you pay me, I still don’t have to put up with your crap. I’m not running for president, I’m doing a job. Don’t care if you like how it gets done. It’s gonna get done. Think otherwise and I’ll be able to mock you. AND MOCK YOU I SHALL.

Oh, btw, I sent Land Shepherd an email with old code for the old landbot I wrote. That code is dated, I am considering publishing it in a reference branch of the SVN, as soon as I can stop LISTENING TO GOSSIPERS and instead TOUCH THE SKY AND BASK IN THE GLORY. Gee… sorry I don’t have 24 hours a day to listen to you complain, I’ve got work to do.

New one will be ready WHENEVER IT PLEASES ME TO DO IT, or tomorrow.