There are those in the Metaplace community - those who inhabit the dank, dark avatar-less backwaters - who strive to know as much as possible about inner workings of the system. Those who make clients, who probe for weaknesses in closed-source scripts, who still mourn the loss of OutputToUser(), and get very grumpy at undocumented changes.

When server update notes are released they don't just look at new features thinking 'how could I use this in a game?' but also 'how could this be abused?'

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Raph recently gave an interview at the Austin Game Developer Conference, during which the topic of Star Wars Galaxies and its resource system came up. It didn't take much for me to start thinking about the way I wanted to handle resources in Tile Tactics, or the more idealised version in my 'dream mmo'.


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Not that I'm under any illusions that anyone is actually reading this, let alone finding anything worthy enough to comment on... but, if such a fictional person did exist and did try to comment and did get stopped by my insanely simple yet infuriatingly pedantic bot filter... ahem, well that's been fixed!

Bug hunting inadvertently inspired by todays xkcd.

"If a blog post exists on the internet and nobody reads it, does it make a cry for help sound?"

I think this could probably fulfil the role of the requisite 'emo blog post', as per contractual blogger obligations.
I think I want a "I sold my non-existant soul to the Internet and all I got was this lousy blog" tee-shirt in return. At least it won't be a LiveJournal kind of emo!

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My quest for long(er) duration astrophotography has been a bit hit and miss. Mostly miss.
There are three basic system that I need get working correctly before I can even take one simple shot successfully; focusing, camera control, and alignment.

Focusing may seem like a trivial issue to deal with but my camera tries to make it as difficult as possible. My Canon EOS 10D was the last model of its line that went without any sort of Live View functionality, which means that you cannot use the cameras LCD screen (or better yet a computer screen, i.e. Remote Live View) to view the scene before taking a shot in order to get good focus. The only way to focus the telescope with the camera attached is to use the cameras viewfinder. At the best of times it isn't easy to actually see any stars through the tiny viewfinder in order to get a fine focus; then throw the usual light pollution into the mix. If you reposition to a star that you can actually see you may be bending over backwards just to actually be able to see through the viewfinder at all.
But then when you think you are actually focused, with lovely pinpoints of light for stars, what ends up on the exposure are big blobs of light.

I thought this focusing issue was going to be the main thing holding me back and that I'd probably be better off just getting a different camera, but I eventually found a little program called DSLR Focus that takes a series of quick shots and allows you to slowly tune in to a fine focus (and you can be sure it is focused!). The same could be done manually with some of the Canon utility programs, but the mere thought of doing it that way would just make me want to give up the whole thing.

So focusing solved, what about controlling the actual taking of pictures?
Typically DSLR cameras on their own can be set to take exposures of up to 30 seconds in duration. If you want to go for longer you need to use the 'bulb' setting and use an attached triggering device. The ones you can usually find a manual triggers, either wired or remote, but I'd want to be able to take a series of specifically timed exposures, preferably using a program like Strak-Labs DSLR Shutter. So I'd need a way to trigger the camera via the computer. I found the schematic for such a thing, which looked simple enough, so I got out my rarely used soldering iron and had a go at putting it together.

It's not the prettiest thing in the world (maybe I should actually go join the local hackerspace and learn how to solder properly), but it does work... well, at least some of the time. I've had it out at night with the telescope once and although it was triggering the shutter it wasn't holding it open. I've since gotten that to work with changing a setting in the program (for some strange reason I ignored the setting labelled for the Nikon D200).
But then yesterday I decided to try to use it to take shots for a time lapse video test, but it failed to work at all! I ended up connecting directly to a USB-to-Serial cable, bypassing my hacked together monstrosity, which may or may not be entirely healthy for the camera but it worked this once.



So I'll need to figure this one out before attempting to use it with the telescope again.

But that isn't what is really keeping me from taking a decent astronomy photograph. It is the alignment that is holding me back.
I think my inability to cut or drill straight is coming back to haunt me, because right now the wedge just doesn't seem to be working out too well. Every attempt at alignment so far has been waaay off, with a five minute exposure leaving a lightning blot like zig-zag streak.
One issue is that I may just be setting the altitude angle wrong, as I don't have a relatively easy way of actually setting the angle (the threaded rod is great for actually changing the angle, but I'm just not quite sure what angle it is actually at).
The other issue is a complete lack of any sort of azimuth fine control. If I want to alter the azimuth I have to actually move the tripod itself, which is... eh, not ideal.
There are a few adjustments I might try in order to overcome these problems.

I knew from the start that the wedge just might not work out in the end, but I'm not giving up on it just yet. I put too much bloody work into it!

By 2005 I had really started to get more and more interested in game design and development and was building up a bit of a library of books on the subject. I had even started making games, having gone through a few projects over the course of the year (that's not to say any of them were ever finished!). The first of which I had totally forgotten about until I found it again just now.

It was really a project to try and learn some Flash, but as a "Hello World" goes it was a bit over the top. It was a turn-based territorial game that connected to a MySQL database via PHP. The grid that represented the map was built using dynamic 3D elements, so that you could zoom in and out on it and also rotate it.



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I've been a part of the Metaplace alpha/beta test coming up on 16 months now, and I've been having a look back over the various worlds and modules I've made in that time. Since I was a member in the time before Open Beta, when you could create as many worlds as you wanted, there is a lot of stuff to look through. I currently have 100 worlds to my name, which I think could be the most any single tester has (excluding MP staff that is). Of course that is not to say that I've made 100 engaging worlds bursting at the seams with content, in fact the vast majority are empty with names like chat_local_xw_echo, data_template_test and where_does_UI_live! There are a lot of worlds whose sole purpose was to test a single feature or to try and find the source of a bug.

But there are worlds where I did make a genuine attempt at creating something that would be worth visiting (I must stress attempt). There are also a number of modules I've made in that time; some useful, some broken, some unfinished. So I thought I'd perhaps take some time to chronicle my experiences in creating content in Metaplace. This will probably be a series of posts as there is a lot of stuff to get through.

So where best to start than the beginning.

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When I was a kid I wanted a telescope. So one day I got together what money I had, probably the proceeds of a birthday or christmas, and went into town with my mother to buy a scope. It was just going to be a simple refractor aimed at kids, probably good enough to make out the planets but little more - not that I knew what a refractor was, let alone it's capabilities.

We got up to the counter and there on the shelf was what we were looking for. I was ready to hand over my money and begin my new career as an astronomer. I was excited!
But then I saw something else on the shelf beside the telescope... and I get even more excited!

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More tapping...
Here is a game that I put together in Metaplace. It is a...eh, cover/tribute/something-that-hopefully-won't-get-me-sued of a classic. I think it came out pretty well.

*tap* *tap* *tap*... this thing working?

So I guess this is one of those 'blog' things. But not just any old blog, this is my blog! As in I made it, from scratch... just because! Well, because I've always said I'd never have a blog until I made one myself. Why get something for free from someone else when you can waste hours of your own time doing it yourself? Perhaps not a rule to live by.

Although I made all this from scratch (with an exception of one library for the final interaction with the DB) a lot of the heavy-lifting in making the MVC setup, including the domain object handling, markup parsing, etc., had already been done for a core code-base that is already running a handful of sites. I guess none of them needed any bloggyness before. So really this was just a minor addition of a few commands and a bit of html. Which I suppose is why I've finally gotten around to doing it; it was easy!

It was also a distraction from some other coding project that I should have been spending the time on. Where would we be without the distracting little side projects?

Now that I have it I'm trying to figure out what I'll do with it, which is probably the real reason why I never bothered before now. It's not as if I have any mind shatteringly important information to impart. So a 'real' blog then...
It's been a while since I've had a personal public facing website, and that was really just to host a bunch of little smiley faces that I made along with a bit of... ahem fan-fic. So I think I'll stay true to form and post every now and then about my current creative aspirations, which would be mainly game development and photography of the astronomical variety (and perhaps a bit of terrestrial too).

I'm sure the search bots and odd spammer who happen to pass by will find it all fascinating!