A few days ago I noticed that my teleport door (on the TP Wall) wasn’t working. Neither Daf nor I would go up to my platform. We’d just stay there, seated sideways next to the door and in mid air. Weird!

Today I tried to fix the problem, but I wasn’t able. I’d totally forgotten that the Content tab (in Edit mode) of the door should have the Muvenation teleport script. Once again, it was Daf who came to my rescue. She told me that there was a floating box (next to the wall) with the script inside. I touched the box and accepted a folder. Then I dragged the script from the Inventory into the Content tab, replaced the coordinates and… bingo! It worked.

Yesterday I was inworld for a few hours. I wanted to muster the courage to rez my holodeck. And I did it! Yeah!!!! Here’s the photo album.

This is the process I followed. I read Shirley’s Getting Started tutorial (available here, Activity 3 forum) and Paz’s tutorial (in the Killing you softly with the Holodeck forum), as well as the “Getting Started” section of Holodeck User’s Guide notecard (inworld) that comes with the holodeck. To carry out the activity I went back and forth between Paz’s tutorial and the holodeck notecard.

First I rezzed the smaller Footprint. I understood the green area, but not the blue platforms/structures sticking out on three sides of the platform. Since that went well, I decided to rez the holodeck. Eureka! There it was, as if by magic. :-)

I adjusted it a bit inside the green area/footprint. I walked around it and deleted the green structure as well the blue platforms. I walked inside and everything seemed in place. The fact that I’d been in Daf’s holodeck helped me recognize things, though at that point I didn’t know if mine was identical to hers. 

When I read Paz’s tutorial about putting Rotation at zeros (0,0,0), I did. Oh dear! My holodeck lost it alignment. It was very strange. Too bad I didn’t take any snapshots. I decided to go over all grey floors and reset them at 0,0,270. Luckily I’d noticed the 270. I finally saw my holodeck in place.:-)

Then I started playing around with the Wall Panel to change scenes inside. The first was “The Dining Room” scene. A lovely red setting, but extremely dark. Yes, I know it’s a candlelight dinner…;-)

I remembered reading both in Paz’s tutorial and in the holodeck notecard that we should click “Clear” before moving on to the next scene. I did… and my holodeck vanished. (It seems I have a tendency to make things vanish.:-) However, I noticed that the Wall Panel was still there in mid air. I clicked it, though I don’t remember what I clicked. But I got my holodeck back and in place and… never clicked Clear again. I just clicked the Panel Wall and selected the option I wanted.

All went well with several scenes until I decided to click on “The Moon” scene. I found myself lost in space, with space rockets flying past me. I didn’t like the sensation. It was eerie. I guess I couldn’t be an astronaut.;-)

Then I found myself at the door of my holodeck, but I couldn’t go in. There was some sort of barrier. I don’t know what I did, but the door left its place and was inside, out of place, opening and closing… How weird! I tried different things to get in, but was kept outside, at the door. It’s not a nice feeling when you can’t enter your own house!

I saw that Paz was inworld and sent an S.O.S. She told me to rightclick on the moon scene (all over the floor) inside the holodeck, select Edit and then press Delete. It worked. It disappeared. And I was able to go inside.

I also asked what to do about the door. She told me to select the holodeck, delete and create another one. That’s where I stopped. I didn’t know how to select the whole holodeck and didn’t want to leave dozens of prims out there, as had happened with the XyText Notecard Reader. I deleted the door, so now my house is doorless and totally open to anyone.:-)

I have asked Daf for help, but she hasn’t got back to me.

13May09

Daf joined me inworld on my platform. She told me that, to delete the holodeck, I have to select its four parts: the doors, the four inside parts, the panels (wall and floor) and ????. I can rightclick on the doors and then press the Shift key to select the others three components. Once that is done, I press the Delete key.

I didn’t do it, because she told me she’d try to put the door in its place. I rezzed, had to “share it with anyone” and then she tried moving it about four times. Each time it would get out of place again. Finally, it stayed there. The same had happened in Daf’s holodeck.

Then Daf saw that there was a door under the platform. She told me to use the Camera controls to delete it. “You don’t neeed to go outside”, she said. “How’s that done?” I asked. Well, suppose you want to look under the platform or above the roof of the holodeck. Click on the left circle of the camera controls, arrow going up, and then zoom out with the mouse wheel. When you want to go back to normal view, click Escape. You can do all sorts of things with these camera controls. ”Cool!” I said. I had a great time experimenting different things.

Daf also told me that these are basic skills that can be learned through Torley Linden’s tutorials in the Second Life site or in You Tube. A search in his name will show his tutorials. Always great to know.

As usual, I learn a lot with Daf and we also have some great laughs.:-))

14May09

Daf, the teleport cube went back to its original place. I’ve changed the Position coordinates and think it’ll stay put this time.;-)

I worked on the activity Becoming a virtual curator of the educational tools exhibition on and off over a few days after having been to the exhibit and considering it very useful. So I thought I’d collaborate. I went back a couple of times. On one occasion I met Tempest, who gave me the frame wall and the concrete base. Then I found out that there were more tools in the mvn welcome house.

I needed to describe a simple tool, because my SL savviness is stil in its infancy. I decided on the XyText Notecard Reader (NR) that Wico Braveheart/William Colmenares had used and given us in his Mod1 workshop. It’s a very practical, useful and simple tool to use.

I rezzed the NR on my platform, thought about how to describe it and decided on having “it” talking to the people in the first person. I created the notecard with the content based on my experience of it. I also took some screenshots for the wall frame. Another time, I uploaded the image and inserted it in the frame.

There’s almost always a problem with these activities and this time it seems that I spilled prims all over Muvenation. To the point that I couldn’t rez anything anywhere. Not even on my platform. I sent Paz an S.O.S. message (5May) in this forum explaining what had happened and asking for help.

“Hi, Paz!

This evening I was at the mvn sandbox and rezzed the concrete platform and the Notecard Reader (NR) to mount it on the platform for the exhibition. I tried to link both after they seemed to be fairly in place.

When I tried to unlink to change the content of the NR (I’d forgotten to do it previously), it wouldn’t accept any content. All of a sudden I saw myself deleting the different parts that make up the NR. A pretty chaotic situation!

Now I can’t rez the NR anywhere, not even on my platform. I keep getting the following message: “Can’t rez object ‘XyText Notecard Reader v1.3.1′ at {228.181, 26.4902, 503.264} on parcel ‘Muvenation – Shirley’s and Luca’s parcel’ in region Muvenation because the parcel is too full” with different coordinates and names of locations dependeing on where I am.

Any ideas as to what I should do? Help appreciated. TIA.

Teresa”

I was quite frustrated at not being able to continue my work, but knew it was my fault when I decided to link the NR and the base (after watching a tutorial on how to link prims) and then unlink them, because I’d forgotten to update the content of the NR. Far be it from me that the NR has 250+ prims!!!!

The following day Daff/Nergiz left this message.

“Teresa,
When you select “unlink” it unlinks all prims of those two objects. The notecard reader consists of many prims, 255 to be precise. So be careful when unlinking such an object. Also, when you link objects that have scripts in them, this can lead to problems as well (not in your case probably because the platform had no script).
Actually, you don’t have to link the platform and the reader; you can simply shift select both (shift+click on each object that you want to select) to move them together or even take them into your inventory as a set.
Your parcel or even MUVEnation might be too full. As I said, the notecard Reader consists of 255 prims. That’s a lot! You should otherwise not have a problem rezzing it because each time you drag it out of your inventory, it is a new copy. Try rezzing it on another sim (EduNation sandbox for example) just to see if it works.”

A little later I met Daff inworld. She demonstrated the strategy she suggested above. That was great, Daff! Thank you! We exchnaged a few ideas and I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need the base.

I headed on to the place where I had to exhibit my work and completed the activity.

That evening I met Paz inworld and she sorted out “the prims situation”. All’s well that ends well.

I contacted Daf about doing this activity together (Uncovering active and other learning approaches in Virtual Worlds) and she agreed. Our topic was “team teaching”, because we’ve done a lot of that over the years. Besides, it wasn’t even a topic on the list or . We were innovating! :-)

As usual, we got together at Yahoo Messenger. Daf created a wiki page with the official template, we brainstormed a few ideas and then decided that we would split the topics. I opened Notepad and started jotting down ideas for my topics. Why? Because only one person can edit at a time. We gave ourselves editing turns through YM. We also did a search re: team teaching, each one used a different doc, got a few ideas from it and included the links to those docs in the template.

We worked non-stop for about two hours to complete the activity, always exchanging ideas about the new content we were including. We finally arrived at the final version of Team Teaching.

It seems like I didn’t learn my lesson the first time around.:-(

A while go, when belatedly deleting my workshop prims, I did it again. I deleted the platform! I was so mad at myself. Ughhhh!!!

This time, though, the fence around the platform, the floor and a prim to tp me back down stayed in place. Floating, of course!

While looking for the platform in the Inventory, I came across my lost “door” from the Muvenation Tp’s wall (that teleports anyone in the course up to my platform). An hour before I’d sent Paz a message saying that my door wasn’t in the house. Now it’s back and… working.:-)  And I’ve sent Paz another message.

After finding my platform, I went to Shirley and Luca’s parcel in Muvenation, rezzed my platform, inserted the coordinates and… bingo! Up it went. And it’s in place again.