I've Been a Bad User

Hey, I don't recognize that world?

That must have taken *ages* to align correctly...

I never want to say AW is in dire straits, but, well, it's been pretty quiet lately.  We've had a hard year in AW -- Tom left and two of our prominent citizens have passed away -- and I think its taken its toll on people.  Even stalwart users have been showing up less often, and I personally have begun looking to expand my horizons...

Here's hoping AW 5.3 will have some strong offerings.  I don't know about you guys, but I look at my long past with AW and when I see all the content and effort I've put into a reputation, it's a bit disheartening.  As I become a better programmer I imagine I'll have more open doors, but I do still enjoy building and the screencaps above are some of my first forays into building within Second Life.  If you've ever used Google SketchUp, I find the building operations and manipulations to be very similar, with the exception that the surfaces and lines are replaced by primitive, solid objects.  The building system there was very intuitive to me as I've used 3D modelers before, and I was building in under an hour.

If you've spent time here developing skills, I think you'll find that many of them can easily translate into projects beyond AW.  Perhaps not the building interface itself, but certainly the design sense you pick up in a community like this, and the intuitive geometric relations that you can recognize while working with modular objects.


Anyway, that's it for now.  I'm probably going to continue laying low, until AW 5.3 comes out.  Later guys.

Too little, too late?

Hey guys, just wanted to drop in to share an update to AW that hasn't been applied to the release notes for whatever reason.

• The Contacts List has been reordered
• Sorted by ONLINE and OFFLINE users
• AFK users are denoted by a yellow check
• After X minutes, users can be automatically toggled AFK by the browser.

I like the yellow checkmarks as they offer some visual consistency to the notifications in the contacts list.  Hopefully someone will get some use out of it... I came in today to check it out and I didn't have very many friends online. :(

Noticeboard: AW User Conducting Survey

Hey everyone!  A fellow AW user -- Absolute Monarch -- is conducting a survey through his university and I'd like to help get the word out.

Quote: "I'm conducting some research on video games and would love it if you could help. You don't need to be a player of games to participate; you can have never played a video game in your life and I would still need your help. All you have to do is click the link below and complete the survey. It will take you 20-30 minutes."

Link: https://anupsych.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0ARwEhz5Pyc0r2Y

Noticeboard: JAM Logo Contest

The JAMs are holding a contest for a new logo, and offering a nice prize (~$20) for the 1st and 2nd place winners.  It sounds like anything is fair game, as long as it is at least 480 pixels wide and features JAM or Just Ask Me in the image.

Entries can be submitted to the JAM blog on the AW Forums.

Good luck!