Tuesday, September 01, 2009
When people come to me talking about work in 3D, I can almost guarantee I'll hear the word "PowerPoint" in the first paragraph. What is it about this particular tool and why do they want it in 3D?
Start by separating this out. We're all very used to thinking 2 dimensionally. The desktop, the application, the image on screen, the chat window - most of the day-to-day work environment is very flat, predictable. Break out of the office, get folks together at a conference, we all cram into a room to watch a PowerPoint - one person delivering a message to many. But in the middle of that, small meetings, brainstorming sessions, people sitting around a table drawing on a whiteboard, putting the pieces of a project together. All the companies I have worked at have had the same experience - whether it be brainstorming a book project while at Wrox, to deciding how to deliver a solution to a customer while working as a consultant. These meetings of somewhere between 2 and 20 or so people tended to be the most productive and essential of the working day.
Now, while it's possible to deliver the big presentation on a screen to a bunch of folks at a conference, that's not where I see the true power of 3D. I see it as a way to collaborate on a project, to get together and bounce around ideas. It's how I work with my team on ReactionGrid, and using tools like those developed by our friend Jeff Lowe (http://theimmersivelife.wordpress.com/facilitatortoolbox/), we are able to express our ideas and come up with real results. It's those tools combined with the virtual environment of smaller teams getting together to work together that I think work the best, and it's projects like these that are the most exciting and fun to work on. I don't have to be in the same physical space, if the team are virtually there with me and we can discuss all that is needed in a productive manner in a virtual space.
So when someone asks why I do all this 3D stuff, it's not for big presentations with virtual chairs, auditoriums and PowerPoint screens - not primarily in any case - I do this for the fun and excitement of true virtual working and the potential of these tools to make a real difference to our working environments. It's very early days, the tools AND the platforms all still in constant flux and development, but it's really starting to come together. Friday's brainstorming session with the ThinkBalm community on ReactionGrid really was a fantastic session for just this sort of experience, and I highly encourage anyone interested in learning more about that community to visit http://www.thinkbalm.com/community/.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Some of you have caught up with what I’m up to these days via Twitter, others I’ve chatted to personally, but there may some folks out there who don’t actually know what I’m doing, and that’s entirely my fault.
Back in October, I think it was, I made the decision to step away from day-to-day SharePoint contract work in order to work with my good friends Kyle and Robin Gomboy on the ReactionGrid project. I’ve worked with Kyle and Robin for over a year now, first on Second Life, and more recently on OpenSim-based 3D virtual worlds. Together, we hosted the Heroes Happen Here event on Microsoft Island on Second Life, and we spent a long time reminding people that a virtual environment is not the same as a physical world environment, pointing out the potential of data visualisation, virtual collaboration and more – and then we started investigating the potential of OpenSim as a platform for making that happen and were amazed at how evolved it was.
Since that point, ReactionGrid has launched, and we now host a grid with around 76 regions, we have people joining the grid daily with fascinating and interesting projects. Seeing the potential of the platform, believing in the possibilities, and enthusing about it gave me so much more excitement and focus than in any part of my day job, and I came to the conclusion that I needed to put myself into this project as much as possible and see what could come from it. There is a real buzz and excitement around the grid, and some really interesting minds are involved in the project already. There’s nowhere else I would rather be right now than part of this project, because with so many interesting and intelligent people involved, this feels like the right place to be. As of January 1st this year, it was official – the three of us are equal partners in the ReactionGrid project. We all deal with slightly different aspects of the grid, but between the three of us we have a broad skillset that is absolutely necessary to get a grid of this size up and running smoothly, and get people in to the grid to make it so much more than a bunch of virtual land.
I spend my days doing all sorts of things – I have Visual Studio open all the time to look at OpenSim code, figure out what’s going on, and why the code is behaving oddly – and I can’t possibly say that I understand even half of how it works in any detail because it really is a vast project. I’ve concentrated my efforts, for the most part, on the SQL Server side of OpenSim, patching and improving the code there where I can, but that hasn’t stopped me from looking into other areas, investigating some interesting code, and submitting some other patches that have nothing to do with the data layer.
My main focus has been on making it possible to manage a large OpenSim grid. The main web interface for most OpenSim grids is MySQL-specific, so I have worked on a toolset incrementally based on what I know would make our lives as grid managers easier. The three of us now get alerted when new regions are added, when owners are changed – we live thousands of miles apart, so anything that helps spread the day-to-day news without IM overload is essential to us.
We only actually met together once, back in April last year, for a total of about 4 hours. When I mention this to people, many are baffled, but when you work in an environment such as this you can start to understand. We are in constant contact via IM, virtually on our grid, we interact all the time, we know each other well, having spent so much time talking to each other, working together - we are truly good friends, though it is a shame we are separated by that pesky Atlantic ocean!
So, that’s what I’m up to – I have a ReactionGrid blog for grid-related blogging, so if you are interested in that side of my life, head to the Ninja blog on the ReactionGrid site. I’m not leaving this blog, but I do use Twitter a lot these days, so if you are Twitter-enabled, follow dstrawberrygirl for my random ramblings! That’s probably the main reason why my blog has been silent all this long time :)
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
So I volunteered again for a .NET user group monthly meeting – this time I’m presenting a whole session on getting information into and out of Second Life using .NET on the server-side. If you can make it along on Saturday 27th at 12pm SLT, you may learn something about the following (agenda still to be confirmed!):
It's all about the data - storing data from SL externally, using external data in-world
What can you store?
What can you get in-world?
How can you get data into and out of SL - HTTP, XML RPC.
The basics of HTTP - GET and POST
Making HTTP requests from SL
Encoding request data correctly
Handling a response
ASP.NET Pages and Handlers
How to respond to data coming from SL
Using LSL to work with responses
A brief overview of LSL lists
Doing something fun with data
XML RPC - what is it? How can it be used?
Walkthough of basic XML RPC code on the server
Sending data in-world to a prim and doing something fun with it
Email – send feedback on a notecard, receive data
Future – LSL HTTP server (designed to replace XML-RPC) - still a work-in-progress
Breakout time!
Once I get slides and code demos ready I’ll package it all together for Saturday and make it all available after the event.
Friday, September 05, 2008
So I got blog tagged by Dana Coffey - and what does this mean? Well, I have to let the world know 6 random facts about myself. Here goes!
- I'm allergic to milk (diagnosed officially), and I think I'm allergic to almonds, possibly peanuts. Personally, I'd rather not test this out, so I just avoid them.
- I grew up with, at one time, 4 cats, a pair of lovebirds, two rabbits, and a tank of tropical fish. The fish died, Romeo killed Juliet, the rabbits tried making bunnies so we had to give one away... the cats lasted years, though.
- I once almost joined the RAF to be a pilot, but chickened out. Still would love to learn to get my pilots licence, and to fly a helicopter.
- I had ballet, tap dance, and modern stage dance lessons as a kid over around 13 years. During that time, I appeared on stage as a sailor, an icicle, a cat, and in quite a few outfits covered in sequins.
- Because of the dance lessons, I had real problems with my ankles as a kid, and once ended up off sport with ankle in plaster for 6 weeks. During all sports lessons, I would play on the BBC micro in the school, tinkering with BASIC programs. This may have had an impact on my chosen career.
- I used to go by the alias of Crustacean on several Telnet talker services (primitive chat rooms, for those of you too young to remember them) around the mid 90's, and it's because of those talkers that I ended up meeting my husband.
So, now, aren't you glad you read that? So, here are the rules:
- Link to the person who tagged you.
- Post the rules on the blog.
- Write six random things about yourself.
- Tag six people at the end of your post.
- Let each person know they have been tagged.
- Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
My victims for this are:
James Hart, Dave Sussman, Dan Maharry, Lou Barr, Kyle G, and Zain Naboulsi
Monday, August 25, 2008
I've been totally swamped with all sorts of projects recently, including hacking with OpenSim code, building a SharePoint deployment solution, building content for then hosting another fantastic event on Second Life, hosting Code Clinics on Microsoft Island every Wednesday, and watching Bob the Builder (we love BBC iPlayer).
From the recent code clinics I've had requests for some links and follow-up materials, so catching up on the past few weeks here's what I've got (it's not an exhaustive list, sorry, but I'll try to keep more notes following meetings in future!):
Data Access tricks - the Using statement
This one generated a fair bit of feedback from members who'd not discovered this extremely handy tool. With minor tweaks to your code you can ensure that data access code always closes your connections cleanly. For example:
Using conn As New SqlConnection(dsn)
Using cmd As New SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM Employees", conn)
conn.Open()
Using rdr As SqlDataReader = cmd.ExecuteReader()
While rdr.Read()
Console.WriteLine(rdr(0))
End While
End Using
End Using
End Using
And here is the C# version:
using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(dsn))
using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM Employees", conn))
{
conn.Open();
using (SqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
while (rdr.Read())
Console.WriteLine(rdr[0]);
}
}
And it can be used for much more than just data access code too. Here's a starting resource for you: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yh598w02(VS.80).aspx
Themes in Visual Studio
Tools - Options, in almost any flavour of Visual Studio. Head into that menu and you can customise your entire environment, showing line numbers, control how your code is formatted, and change your font styles and colours completely. Scott Hanselman's blog post on this has some great links to some dark themes for Visual Studio.
VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1
Quite a lot of new features bundled in the latest point release - yes, the numbering system for .NET really is all over the place, since this service pack includes new features, not just bug fixes. But no, it's 3.5 SP1, not 3.6. Numbering aside, for more information, and links to the download, head here.
SQL Server 2008
The latest and greatest database from the MS; personally I'm interested in seeing if I can get my OpenSim database down from 1.4Gb to something more realistic with some of the new data compression wizardry! For more about new data types, new features, and the rest, head here.
10 Tips to Better Javascript
From the recent discussion on how to improve your JavaScript life came the following:
/* JavaScript
- it's not as bad as you think */
/* 10 steps to better JS Code */
var agenda = [
'Use a proper editor and debugger',
'Use var obsessively',
'Understand "falsiness" and "truthiness"',
'Learn to love object, function and array literals',
'Grasp the symbol/string dichotomy',
'Learn to use regexes and JS string functions',
'Master scope and closures',
'Don\'t try to build classes like you\'re used to',
'Grok "this" and functions as values',
'Use JQuery'
];
If you've not yet joined us for a Code Clinic on Microsoft Island, or have never even logged onto Second Life, why not give it a try? It's a great way to meet peers and learn about new and existing technology without having to leave your own home. Drop me a line if you need convincing - chris at codetorque dot com.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Edit: March 09 - this post is a little out of date, some folks have had trouble as a result. I've tweaked the instructions so you are less likely to have problems from now on! Also, see opensimulator.org/wiki/MSSQL
Over the past week I've made some great progress on my OpenSim experiment. For starters, I've got my server configured in Grid mode, and I have all four five of the main servers running on SQL Server. This did require a bit of development - the inventory server was quite broken for SQL Server, so James and I fixed the code and submitted a patch, but the good news is that this means it'll be in a better state for the rest of you from now on.
If you're committed to switching from SQLite as much as possible then I would recommend configuring your server to run in grid mode. Even if you are working locally, there's something a bit more comforting about seeing messages relevant to each server on each of the console windows, rather than all jumbled up in one console window. Makes it much easier to see bugs and have a think about how to fix them, for starters.
So, where to start? Well, good news and bad news - the good news is that this is possible, the bad news is that it's not simple, and unless you figure out how to export content from a SQLite-based OpenSim, you'll be starting from scratch on your new sim. Before you start, you obviously need a SQL Server to work with. As long as you can install SQL Express on your OpenSim server, you have everything you need, and since SQL Express is a free download, there's no cost involved. Get SQL Express from here, then get SQL Management Studio Express from here - this will give you a tool for running queries and editing your database.
Now, I'm assuming you've done the right thing and already configured your system so you have a Subversion client installed, right? TortoiseSVN is my favourite, with its extremely simple shell integration. So, you have an OpenSim directory and you can grab the latest source code from the Subversion repository - this is pretty important, since the code changes very frequently. Now you will need to head to SQL Management Studio Express and create a database ready to store your OpenSim data. Right-click on the Databases node and and select New Database. Call it OpenSim, accept all defaults and click OK.
The next step is to create a user account for running your OpenSim on SQL Server. Firstly, you need to enable Mixed Mode authentication on SQL Server.
Right-click on your database server in Management Studio and select Properties, then go to the Security tab and select SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode, click OK. Back in Management Studio, expand the Security node and in the Logins section right-click and create a new user, called whatever you like, select SQL Server authentication, give it a strong password and select the OpenSim database as the default database. Click OK.
Then navigate to the OpenSim database and go to the Security, then Users section. In there, create a new user, select your new admin account and make sure it has the db_owner role in the Database role membership section. Click OK and you should be ready to use that account to connect to the database.
Edit: you don't need to create any tables by hand - that happens automatically provided your connection string is working.
Time to edit the Ini file. I recommend heading to the OpenSim documentation on configuration for more in-depth details on this process, but here's an abbreviated version that might help fill in some gaps for you. While there is a mssql_connection.ini file, I also have settings in my main ini file too - I haven't yet dug through the code thoroughly enough to know which ones are used and which ones are not.
Edit: you should not need the mssql_connection.ini any more. Having separate connection details for each server allows you to scale by using different machines for the different servers, hence makes a bit more sense than one central ini.
There's a sample mssql_connection.ini.example file in the OpenSim code repository, so make a copy, rename it mssql_connection.ini and replace the appropriate values with the correct data for your server. As an example:
[mssqlconnection]
data_source=servername\SQLEXPRESS
initial_catalog=OpenSim
persist_security_info=True
user_id=adminuser
password=password
In the main ini file, [EDIT 25th Oct: NOTE that the section below marked asset_database should be set to "grid" - this is very important or you end up using SQLite for asset storage!]
gridmode = True
storage_plugin = OpenSim.Data.MSSQL.dll
storage_connection_string = "Data Source=servername\sqlexpress;Database=OpenSim;User=adminuser;password=password;";
storage_prim_inventories = True
inventory_plugin = OpenSim.Data.MSSQL.dll
inventory_source = "Data Source=servername\sqlexpress;Database=OpenSim;User=adminuser;password=password;";
userDatabase_plugin = OpenSim.Data.MSSQL.dll
user_source = "Data Source=servername\sqlexpress;Database=OpenSim;User=adminuser;password=password;";
asset_database = "grid"
asset_plugin = OpenSim.Data.MSSQL.dll
asset_source ="Data Source=servername\sqlexpress;Database=OpenSim;User=adminuser;password=password;";
The other part of the puzzle is getting your sim running in grid mode, and for that to work you need to be a little more clever with IP addresses and the like, but don't let that put you off. Know your server's IP address, then enter it in the following section with the following port numbers:
grid_server_url = http://192.168.0.1:8001
grid_send_key = null
grid_recv_key = null
user_server_url = http://192.168.0.1:8002
user_send_key = null
user_recv_key = null
asset_server_url = http://192.168.0.1:8003
inventory_server_url = http://192.168.0.1:8004
messaging_server_url = http://192.168.0.1:8006
Notice there are some keys listed in here that are null - you should change these so that you only allow access to people who know both your server's IP AND the appropriate keys to grid up with you. And from looking through the code, it appears that the keys are any valid string value, though I haven't yet tested this out.
You may also want to double-check that the IP address is configured correctly for your region (head to the OpenSim\bin\Regions\default.xml file) and make sure that the IP addresses are set appropriately. Again, check the OpenSim site for a bit more information on this.
Once you have configuration sorted, time to run the servers and keep your fingers crossed! The OpenSim site strongly recommends starting servers in a specific order: UGAIM: UserServer, GridServer, AssetServer, InventoryServer, Messaging Server, and then Region Server (OpenSim.exe). Note that the first time that you fire up the servers in grid mode, you are asked for some information to create some system-specific configuration files. Make sure that when you start up each server you enter the data correctly - the data you will need to enter is exactly the same as that entered in the ini file, so make sure you fill in the fields so that they match. Once you have configured one server, move on to the next. Once you have all five running, you're almost ready to log in!
Here's a handy tip - now you have 6 console windows open, click on one of them on the task bar, then ctrl+click on the other four windows. Right-click on any of them and select Tile Horizontally and you will see all your servers neatly arranged, and you can watch things happening as you log in and do stuff on your sim.
Just before you connect, you need to create a user account, so go to the user console and create a new user account. Then it's time for the client bit - if you're using the SL client, set your loginuri startup switch as before, but this time you'll connect to port 8002, not port 9000, so for example:
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -loginuri http://192.168.0.1:8002
Once you launch your client, you should be able to connect to your grid and off you go. Fingers crossed, and I hope it works for you.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
I've just been through two days of pain trying to get content deployment to work from an internal authoring site, authenticated against Active Directory, to a live site that is Internet-facing (hence allows anonymous access), and has a forms authentication user store. It's more of an admin nightmare than a developer task, but as I've found over many months, working with SharePoint as a developer involves a lot of the admin side of things too. This blog post is a guide to a proof-of-concept, and not meant for a live production environment.
So, what can I share with you that might help? Well, let's list a few links that you need to read first:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263428.aspx
http://www.harbar.net/archive/2007/06/27/Content-Deployment-Ensure-your-platform-hygiene-before-randomly-abusing-the.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/05/02/content-deployment.aspx
So, that out of the way, here's how I got it to work. And bear in mind that this is on a development machine where all sites are hosted on the same box - albeit in different web applications. Different applications, different authentication, same central administration application.
Firstly, you'll need to have two sites, one for authoring, one for live. If you want a forms auth site as your live site, there are many resources - this one is pretty good. When you create your sites, the golden rule applies:
The target site for content deployment MUST be created using the BLANK site template
Even better, if you can get it to work (and I could only get this to work for an AD-based site, not the forms auth site, but I digress), you can try the following once you have created the web application to create your target site collection:
STSADM.EXE -o createsite -url <url-to-site-collection> -ownerlogin domain\user -owneremail <email-address>
So, you have a blank target site. I'm going to assume you have an authoring site set up to use some kind of template - I set mine up as a collaboration portal. Another word of warning - as yet, I've not tried content deployment against a site with custom features, web parts, etc. As far as I know, those have to be installed separately and available on the destination server prior to deployment - I may have to write a follow up to this article when I get that far. Enter some content to make it clear that your site has been deployed - I added some images to the main images library and edited a couple of content editor parts. Now, over to Central Administration console you go.
Head to the Operations tab and there you will find the option to change your content deployment settings and to set up deployment paths and jobs. In my Content Deployment Settings, I have configured my server to accept all incoming deployment jobs, and selected my server from the import and export server drop-downs. Worth a note - the temporary files entry on here specifies a local path for temporary storage of deployment data. I have read that you need to make sure this directory can be written to by your service account, so I added appropriate security settings to that path to make sure there would be no grumbles there.
Now, to set up some paths and jobs. I created a new path and selected my source application as the authoring site. Make sure you select the appropriate site collection - mine all use the root site collection, so this was a simple setting. The URL to your Central Administration application should be simple enough to enter, and you need to make sure you can connect to that application using the appropriate credentials. One of the benefits of a hacky dev environment is a central user account for all application pools. Again, this is a proof-of-concept. Select the destination web application and site collection, then decide on what to export - user names, other security information - the choice is yours depending on your configuration. I've set this up to only deploy role definitions. Click OK, and fingers crossed the first part is done.
If this works ok, you'll have a quick deploy job set up already. Try running that and pray for success (keep clicking on the Status column header to refresh the grid). If you get a fail, you may need to double-check some settings. And if you chose anything other than a blank site when you started out, don't blame me :) Now, bear in mind that this quick deploy doesn't deploy the content! This is a big thing I found - I was expecting it to have deployed everything - not so. If you browse to your site now it will look pretty empty, so you should now create a new job to deploy content from authoring to live.
Create a new content deployment job for that same path and set it to deploy the entire site collection, and deploy all content, including anything previously deployed. You may be able to run this with just deploying new content, but my first instinct was to deploy everything first time. Later on, create a job to deploy changed content and set it to run on a schedule if you like. Run the job, make a coffee, then come back and find that the whole thing has run perfectly... well, that's the theory, and I certainly hope it works for you. If not, there are a lot of resources out there with suggestions for how to make it run a bit more smoothly, and there's a great blog post from Andrew Connell with information on a couple of hotfixes that might help solve some issues.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work on a project that involves this configuration over the next few weeks, so I may write some more on this as and when I can. In the meantime, I'd like to thank Nebulae Voom, friendly SharePoint guru from the .NET group in Second Life, and SharePoint from twitter (The official tweetstream of the SharePoint product group) - while neither solved this for me, you helped my brain think the right way!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Over the past few weeks I've taken a big leap into the world of Open Source development and started messing around with OpenSim, the BSD licenced 3D virtual world based on Second Life, but reinvented from scratch using C#. It's an immense project that's been in development for a while, and it's starting to look pretty good.
Getting hold of OpenSim is relatively easy, especially if you're a developer and have used Subversion before. Grab the latest code, run the pre-build tool, build the solution and you're just about ready. Make sure you run the correct exe for your system (64bit machines have to run a 32bit launcher), and you are hosting your own little simulator that you can connect to.
So, next step is to connect to the newly-created world. You can either use the standard Second Life client with a modified startup shortcut, or you can download and use the realXtend viewer and specify your server as part of the launch. And then you're in your own little world...
Now, since that picture was taken I've completely broken the server by attempting to hook it up to SQL Server, but that's all part of the fun - and there are so many bits and pieces to look at and tweak that this is proving to be quite an entertaining project.
So, why am I doing this? Well, I've been working with Kyle for a while on MS Island on Second Life, and this is part of an exploration of open source alternatives to the Linden Labs controlled world. Project Manhattan is the first project we're working on, and it's still in its early stages - but it certainly makes a welcome change from SharePoint development.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Handy tip that James pointed out the other day - my Virtual PC machine console window keeps disappearing (perhaps thinking that I have an external monitor plugged in). You can see it on the task bar, but clicking on it doesn't bring it to the top of the pile on the desktop, so, how do you get it back on your main screen?
In the following order:
- alt
- space
- m
- any arrow key
- move the mouse
Hey presto, the window snaps to under your mouse cursor and you can drop it wherever you like. Very handy and useful to remember.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
April 26th is the day for your diary; all our preparation work finally gets load tested to the extreme as we host the Heroes Happen Here launch event for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on Second Life. We're getting three extra islands for launch day so we can make the event run as smoothly as possible for all the attendees, and there'll be much partying and some freebies for those who come along to the island.
Before that happens, I'm travelling to Orlando for 3 days (figured I'd need jet lag before a major launch event), for the DevConnections conference, where I'm hoping to get up to speed on some of the cool new stuff that's been coming out recently. I've not had a chance to play with Silverlight yet, or look into the new MVC framework, since I've been so busy with SharePoint code and SL fun. And there's also a load of SharePoint talks happening at the same time, so I'm hoping to chat to some gurus about SharePoint Internet site projects (my next piece of work, starting soon).
I also mentioned recently that I was in a recording of .NET Rocks recently; well, the show is now live, so hit the link and hear a bit more about what I've been doing (along with Kyle and Zain) on Second Life, and some discussion of why it's not (as many people think of it) a game. Zain Naboulsi does a great job of explaining that too in his recent video interview with Keith Combs and Matt Hester.