bi-weekly developer meeting chat log/transcript for sept 21, 2007

Text Chat Transcript: Croquet Roadmap

John Dougan has arrived (at 10:32:42)

Mark has arrived (at 11:14:39)

John Dougan (at 11:15:56)
Hey there!

Mark (at 11:21:07)
hi

Mark (at 11:21:17)
I'm doing a few last minute housekeeping tasks

Mark (at 11:21:23)
people forget their passowrds...

Mark (at 11:21:34)
or want accounts...

John Dougan (at 11:21:35)
ok...was wondering if you get email from Craig Latta on joining our  
merry band?

Mark (at 11:21:50)
I just set his account up

John Dougan (at 11:21:58)
cool.  thx

Mark (at 11:21:59)
if you can IM him tell him to check his e-mail

Mark (at 11:22:17)
I wanted to set it up this morning - but -too many interruptions

John Dougan (at 11:22:32)
JUst did. thank you.

John Dougan (at 11:22:43)
I understand all too well.

CraigLatta has arrived (at 11:23:46)

Mark (at 11:24:55)
Hi Craig!

Craig (at 11:25:02)
hey there

Mark (at 11:25:16)
I was afraid you wouldn't check your mail in time

Craig (at 11:25:54)
:)

andreas has arrived (at 11:26:46)

Mark (at 11:26:57)
Hi Andreas!

Josh has arrived (at 11:28:30)

DaveFaught has arrived (at 11:30:27)

Howard has arrived (at 11:33:37)

Peter has arrived (at 11:35:39)

Peter (at 11:35:49)
hey guys

Peter (at 11:36:01)
my mic sucks

Josh (at 11:36:14)
s'ok

Peter (at 11:37:26)
cool

Mark (at 11:39:07)
Craig is workin on mized reality apps with Croquet

Mark (at 11:39:26)
getting live camera and video into  croquet

Mark (at 11:39:53)
and getting croquet things to appear in the real world

Peter (at 11:40:09)
we've gone live with our spanish language progmatics application

Peter (at 11:40:23)
students are starting to use it as we speak

Mark (at 11:40:50)
Craigs team includes anthropologists, and some techies - 5 - 6 people

Mark (at 11:41:17)
including
  an ethnographer

Mark (at 11:42:40)
Craig's stuff could run 6 months or more - its a research project

Peter (at 11:42:57)
not me

Peter (at 11:43:58)
I sit next to a board memeber but she's away

Mark (at 11:44:12)
and hopefully will include some contributions to the open source  
code base

Peter (at 11:44:28)
I do but my mic isn't working very good

Peter (at 11:44:32)
I'll try

Mark (at 11:44:36)
general comment that it would be nice if Liz was here to be a conduit  
to the consortium board

Mark (at 11:45:27)
MInnesota deliverde its Spanish language app

WilfPinfold has arrived (at 11:45:36)

Mark (at 11:45:41)
stundets are using this as we speak

Mark (at 11:46:00)
the format is a quest - and interaction with NPCs

Mark (at 11:46:17)
85 students will use this

Mark (at 11:46:42)
there are about 20 spaces

Mark (at 11:47:38)
Andreas suggests that people make sure to use the newest updates -  
this improves uptime

andreas (at 11:47:47)
For servers!

Mark (at 11:48:00)
Peter promises a video highlight real

Mark (at 11:48:06)
and possibly a demo world

Mark (at 11:48:16)
but fist priority is good experience for the students

Mark (at 11:48:20)
*first

Mark (at 11:48:35)
general demand for a public demo world

John Dougan (at 11:48:47)
Heck, I'd settle for a publically accessible router

Mark (at 11:49:03)
cvlass will be using this for about a month

Howard (at 11:49:19)
There is a publically accessble router. croquetcollaborative.org.

Mark (at 11:49:25)
class covers requests in spanish, and appologies

Mark (at 11:49:31)
this is part of a research project

John Dougan (at 11:49:43)
I thought that was Wisconsin only?

Mark (at 11:49:48)
and they are capturing messaging so people can playback the interactions

Howard (at 11:49:53)
Nope.

Mark (at 11:50:01)
then researchers will analyze the interactions

Mark (at 11:50:08)
so - its not done for a while

Mark (at 11:50:18)
its part of a phd research project

Howard (at 11:50:24)
Anybody can use it. I don't have a lot of time to keep kicking it,  
but I try.

John Dougan (at 11:50:52)
OK, which port is it on?

Howard (at 11:51:29)
I forget. 5910 maybe? It's in the code.

Mark (at 11:51:35)
questions about capture of audio for both spanish language thing at  
MN and these meetings

Josh (at 11:51:42)
5910 sounds familiar

John Dougan (at 11:52:09)
I''l chech there then. Thanks!

DaveFaught (at 11:52:30)
what format are you saving the audio in?  Croquet's router messages?

Mark (at 11:52:33)
Wilf from intel is working with qwaq to integrate mirimar

Mark (at 11:52:40)
into the qwaq tech

Peter (at 11:53:02)
david: yes

Mark (at 11:53:17)
wilf is chairing a high performance computing  conference

Mark (at 11:53:40)
and is considering getting parts of the conference into an online  
space for sharing

Howard (at 11:53:56)
(Peter, you're crosstalking audio. Wanna mute?)

Mark (at 11:53:57)
so is interested in croquet/qwaq for this sort of thing

Peter (at 11:54:15)
my mic should have been muted

Peter (at 11:54:29)
I don't think it was me

Mark (at 11:55:14)
Wilf is interested in conference education programpossibly moving  
into online space for curriculium

Mark (at 11:55:53)
plus exhibits - for potential revenue stuff

Mark (at 11:56:39)
[I wish I had a way to mute people's audio - meeting organizer craves  
more power!!!!]

DaveFaught (at 11:56:44)
no, I'm just speculating

DaveFaught (at 11:57:17)
and muted

Mark (at 11:57:18)
[Andreas will have to extract the text from the XML again - too bad  
there is no UI-visible way to do this]

andreas (at 11:57:42)
Actually there is - in later clients

Mark (at 11:57:49)
/me sighs

DaveFaught (at 11:57:59)
are you referring to my questions about scripting on the developer  
email list?

Mark (at 11:58:07)
both

Mark (at 11:58:15)
you have the floor

DaveFaught (at 11:59:04)
I'm just trying to get a general frame of reference for how scripting  
should work

Mark (at 11:59:21)
this is a question for Andreas...

Mark (at 11:59:39)
Howard suggests talking to Stirck

Mark (at 11:59:45)
who has been traveling a lot

DaveFaught (at 11:59:56)
no, i haven't talked to strick. all i know is his "q" game

Mark (at 12:00:52)
Josh says strick is working on SL / croquet interoperability

DaveFaught (at 12:01:07)
my interest is not so much the language as how it needs to relate to  
croquet objects

Mark (at 12:01:12)
strick has both SL and croquet holodeck implimentations

Mark (at 12:01:37)
and updates between the two worlds are handled through an http server

Mark (at 12:01:45)
which is the message passer

Mark (at 12:01:58)
so objects can be moved in one place and affect the other world

Mark (at 12:02:17)
but this is currently simple primitves

Mark (at 12:02:24)
rather than complext objects

Peter (at 12:02:55)
Andreas: can you point me to the Delay fix you mentioned, I can't  
find the thread from squeak-dev

andreas (at 12:03:28)
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=6576

Peter (at 12:03:41)
thanks!

Mark (at 12:03:45)
any scripting language needs a way to talk to web services

Mark (at 12:03:52)
since that is the way to glue things together

Mark (at 12:04:23)
Josh observes that the polling of http messages is goign to be low  
performance

DaveFaught (at 12:05:57)
I think that both "outside" router message-based scripting and in-
wlrd scripting are important

Mark (at 12:06:14)
how do we get to something usable in the near term?

Mark (at 12:06:32)
since this would blunt the "smalltalk is weird" argument

DaveFaught (at 12:07:23)
they have different uses and different implications in perfoamnce and  
mode of interaction

Josh (at 12:07:23)
not hearing you too well, Howard

DaveFaught (at 12:07:55)
I'm not sure how strick's gvscript works, but that's what i'm  
referring to

Peter (at 12:08:48)
I need to get back to work here

Howard (at 12:08:48)
(I guess my connection is weird. I"ve reset sound (going forward))

Mark (at 12:09:23)
/me notes we have migrated to a pure text conversation now...

andreas (at 12:09:23)
We actually have a few load problems on the server (I'm just  
investigating this)

DaveFaught (at 12:09:48)
my connection is always weird

Mark (at 12:10:03)
I just started having avatars disappearing - then reappearing

Craig (at 12:10:12)
I'm seeing that too

Mark (at 12:10:13)
this feels second life compatible suddenly

Craig (at 12:10:18)
heh

Mark (at 12:11:57)
[listens for virtual crickets to start chirping]

DaveFaught (at 12:12:02)
i guess the audio died?

Craig (at 12:12:05)
(got to duck out for a few minutes... to follow up on a tangent from  
a while back: I'd guess that an ethnographer is a "cultural  
anthropologist" as opposed to a "physical anthropologist")

Craig (at 12:12:56)
we're certainly interested in cultural issues (one of the things we  
want to do is use this between here and other labs in Japan), and in  
human factors more to do with ergonomics.

Mark (at 12:13:08)
very cool stuff

Mark (at 12:13:35)
I think these immersive spaces develop their own seperate culture

Mark (at 12:13:47)
based on what is possible - and emergent social conventions

Mark (at 12:14:12)
liek what is happening right now - audio is flakey at the moment so  
we revert to text

Mark (at 12:14:39)
and end up taking notes in the text chat since that is the easiest  
way of providing a transcript

Mark (at 12:15:21)
this is similar to what happened at the Dr. Dobbs thing in Second  
Life yesterday for Julian and me

Mark (at 12:15:40)
text chat is the dialtone of social presence spaces

andreas (at 12:15:58)
We have a CPU-hog on the server...

Mark (at 12:17:22)
well...

Mark (at 12:17:31)
it seems that we may be out of topics

DaveFaught (at 12:17:39)
this is just too exciting, i have to drop off.  talk to you later

Mark (at 12:17:49)
I think we are done

John Dougan (at 12:18:01)
Oh...I'd thought we were still having problems with the server./

WilfPinfold (at 12:18:03)
Thanks have a good weekend

DaveFaught has left (at 12:18:36)

Mark (at 12:20:02)
discussion of the wisdom of seperating applications from the router

Mark (at 12:20:22)
if an application server eats a lot of CPU the message router can get  
staarved

WilfPinfold has left (at 12:20:44)

Josh (at 12:20:49)
bye

Mark (at 12:20:50)
-meeting ends-


Mark P. McCahill
Architect, Computing Systems
Duke University - Office of Information Technology
334 Blackwell Street, Suite 2107
Durham, North Carolina 27701
USA

[hidden email]
+1 919-724-0708  (mobile)
+1 929 668 2964  (fax)