Bought a new outfit

I just tested the new viewer of Second Life and was really astonished of the speed and the nice graphic details. And I was so excited, that I bought a new outfit. ;)

A new beginning?

Hi,

I haven't been to Second Life for couple of month. Why? I was really tired of it. I used SL primary for developing little and nifty things and to publish the source code in this blog. But there was nothing going forward in SL and a lot of companies and other people where leaving -- so I also left and even sold my nice home.
One week ago, I logged into Second Life again, because somehow I got motivated to develop new stuff. But in the end I closed the client after 15 minutes. 15 minutes where I noticed, that 90% of my landmarks had been gone, because the islands don't exist any longer. I don't know.

• Who has the same experience?
  
• Are you also tired of using Second Life?
  
• Do you think that they will improve their system in the future?
  
• Does it make sense to invest more time and maybe money into it?

I always liked to walk around and using the platform as a 3D developing environment, but now I don't know if Second Life has a future.

Mbulu Oh

Sold my house

I really enjoyed my flying home (see posting), but i sold it, because i was spending to little time in it. So the only thing left is me and this blog. Maybe in the future i will develop and show some new SL stuff in the world at my own place.

But now i have little time and a lot of friends have left Second Life behind. A lot of companies have sold their islands. 

But i still like the idea of SL as a 3D development world.

A.L.I.C.E. Chatbot Connection in Second Life using Ruby on Rails

Like i told you some month ago, i have quick-hacked a Chatbot for Second Life, which connects to an A.L.I.C.E.-Bot at www.pandorabots.com. In this posting i want to show the LindenScript-Code and the server-side code i've used. On the server-side its Ruby on Rails, as usual. ;)

The Ruby on Rails serverside script:

I have built an "bot_controller.rb" file which looks like this:

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'cgi'

class BotController < ApplicationController

 def ask_question
   question = params[:q]
   custid   = params[:cid]

   res = Net::HTTP.post_form(URI.parse('http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk-xml'),
                                 {'botid'=>'###YOUR BOT ID###', 'custid' => custid, 'input'=>question})
   case res
   when Net::HTTPSuccess, Net::HTTPRedirection

    xmlDoc = REXML::Document.new(res.body)
    
     botCustid = xmlDoc.elements["result"].attributes["custid"]
     statusCode = xmlDoc.elements["result"].attributes["status"]
    
    
     case statusCode
     when "0"
       render :text => xmlDoc.elements["result/that"].get_text.value+"||"+botCustid
     else
       render :text => 'Help, this error occurred: ' + xmlDoc.elements["result/message"].get_text.value+"||"+botCustid
     end
    
   else
     render :text => 'error'
   end
  
 end

end

The controller just takes a given conversation-id (custId) and the question from the person in 2nd-Life. Like you'll see later, the custId is just for possible future improvements and has now no special use. :)
The other parts in the script are like in the Twitter/Jaiku scripts which i did. They retrieve the XML-document and get the right parts using XPath-expressions. And after that the script builds a nice "||"-separated result-string for the Second Life world.
You also need your own bot-id from the pandorabots-site. Create an account there and you get your own.

The LindenScript:

key requestId;
string custid;

default
{
   state_entry()
   {
       llListen( 0, "", NULL_KEY, "" );
       custid = "";
   }

   touch_start(integer total_number)
   {
       llWhisper(0, "Talk to me on Chat-Channel 0.");
   }
  
   listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string message)
   {
       requestId = llHTTPRequest("###YOUR URL###/bot/ask_question",[HTTP_METHOD,"POST", HTTP_MIMETYPE, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"],"q="+message+"&cid="+custid);
   }   
  
    http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body) {
      
       if (request_id == requestId) {
          
           if(body == "erro") {
               llWhisper(0, "An error occurred. Please try again later");
           } else {
  
               list parts = llParseString2List(body,["||"],[]);

               string that = llList2String(parts, 0);
               custid = llList2String(parts, 1);
               llWhisper(0, that);
           }
  
       } else {
           llWhisper(0, "An error occurred. Please try again later");
       }
   }      


}

The script is really easy. It just listens on Channel 0, gets the message from the user and calls the Ruby on Rails script. After that it gets the result, splits the string using the "||" separator and then prints the answer for the question.

Possible future extensions:

There are a lot of possible extensions for this script. The most important one i the problem with the conversation-id.
It would be nice, if the Chatbot in Second Life could remember the different users. For example on the server-side we could create a database which manages every person which has talked to the chatbot. We store the SecondLife-username and the appropriate conversation-id in a database-structure. Everytime the user comes back, we get the conversation-id from the database and use this one. So the A.L.I.C.E.-Bot can optimize its questions for every user.

You can also add some error-handling. So that the user gets nice messages if something goes wrong.

So, hope you like it. :)

Not homeless anymore :)

I have a home again.

Its a small parcel on the mainland. And its in the sky, because on the ground are to many ads and other annoying stuff.



My new SLurl.

Homeless

I am homeless now. :-(
My rented land gets to expensive for me, so i have canceled the rental agreement. The SLurl is not valid anymore. I will look for a new home for the Developer's Corner.
So if you have any hints for me, where i can get some sq. for low price, tell me. ;-)

Thanks.

Daniel aka "Mbulu Oh".

twitter/jaiku server

just setting up a new server for the streaming, so the service i currently unavailable.... :=)