More about radegast

Here’s what I wrote up today after I updated Radegast.

Hi there.

I downloaded the latest version of Radegast from

http://radegastclient.org/files/radegast-latest.exe

Here is the help.  My comments will be added beneath it.

*begin help*

In chat input pressing Enter produces normal chat.
Ctrl-Enter shouts.
Shift-Enter whispers.

Tabs:
Alt-1: Chat
Alt-2: Friends
Alt-3: Groups
Alt-4: Inventory
Alt-5: Search
Alt-6: Map
Alt-7: Objects
Alt-8: Media
Alt-9: Voice

Ctrl-Tab: Next tab
Ctrl-Shit-Tab: Previous tab
Ctrl-W: Close current tab

Ctrl-G: Open map and go to the SLURL in the clipboard
Ctrl-Shift-H: Teleport Home

*end help*

Now for my thoughts.

1.  Important! important! important! Use control-s to  save your notecard before jumping away to answer an IM or to chat in local chat.  I didn’t, and I had to restart this project several times because I thought all my text was gone.  It Wasn’t, but it takes some work to get back to it.  It’s a good idea to save in any case.

2.  You now have the ability to actually make notecards, as you can see, since I gave you this one.  It’s not documented, but it’s there.  Here’s how.

a.  Go to Inventory, Notecards and hit the applications key.

b.  Arrow down till you hear New Note.

c.  Hit enter, and wait for the plugin to say, ” Enter name of notecard and hit enter.”  Do so.  After a moment you will be placed in the notecard editor where you can paste text or type in your own.

3.  When you’re satisfied with your work, hit control-s.  Wait and you should hear the plugin tell you the card is saving and then you should     hear OK.  At that point, just hit alt-1.  That will put you back into chat.  If you find you need to edit it, go back to the notecards folder inside your inventory  with alt-4 and hit the tab eight (8) times.  When your screen reading software shows you are inside the edit window, you can arrow around using a screen reader and add/delete/modify to your heart’s content.  Just remember to use control-s to save and alt-1 to get you back to CHAT.

More thoughts on Notecards

There is no way to save objects embeded in notecards, such as landmarks,but you can still access them using Radegast.  This is  not the most elegant way of doing so, but it is what it is and it works.  You need a screen reader running while in Radegast for this to work.

When you are given a notecard and you think there may be landmarks attached, open it.  Once inside the notecard editor, hit control-tab. You will see a menu that says notecard.  Tab once more and you will se another called attachments.  Arrow around the list of attachments and when you find the one you want, hit enter.  You will be placed in a window exactly as you would be for landmarks in your inventory.  You can teleport to the location , close that window, and set a landmark that will go in your inventory.

In addition to the attachments menu there is a detach button that will put the notecard in another window.  I haven’t played with this option yet.

And that’s Radegast updates in a nutshell.

Today In SL

Since today’s Thanksgiving, I don’t plan to be on SL much.  I mostly have to sort my inventory some more for tomorrow night’s event.  Maybe if anyone’s playng I’ll go listen, but I don’t expect to hear much music.

Last night in SL was terrible!  I couldn’t teleport anywhere, so I missed a concert I wanted to go to.  Maybe things will have improved today.  I sure hope so.

Random Thoughts

Nothing much actually happened in Second Life Monday night, except I went to two concerts.  I’m slowly gaining more confidence in looking around and exploring unfamiliar areas.  At the first concert, Talvin had to give me a hand finding a seat, because the chairs were all named the exact same thing, but that wasn’t too bad.

At the second concert, the owner tried to help me find the dance machine, and I saw it, but I never could get it to work.  I imagine I did the wrong thing.  I had fun nonetheless.

I’ve discovered that Talvin’s follow script works much better than the follow feature in Radegast.  I’m glad I have both options.  It made things easier for me.

Last night was Unday at The place, and that was fun.  I left that a little early to go to an early Thanksgiving Day celebration, and I had a lot of fun even if I didn’t talk very much.  I got to dance and listen to cool music, so that worked out wel.

Really, there needs to be a better way to introduce myself to people.  “Hi.  can someone tell me what the name of the dance object is?  I can’t quite tell.”
When they tell me to click on the yellow balls behind me, ‘I can’t see those.  I’m totally blind.  My client just gives me object names.”

It feels weird just saying, “Read my profile.”  So I end up telling new people almost anytime I go to a new location about how I do things in SL.  It gets old, but it’s necessary if I want to fully participate.

I feel like i need to get out more, do my own thing more.  Not that Talvin and I don’t do things together, obviously we do.   So I try out new things and see how well I manage. Most times things work out well.  Other times it’s something as simple as chairs not being labeld so I can tell them apart to take a seat.  Speaking of which, did you know that if you put an invisible prim under a chair or other object, and give it the name of the object, Radegast takes *that* as the chair name, or whatever the object is?  I didnt until Gentle Heron explained it to me.

Why do that?  Why put extra prims in,, even if they are invisible, and bring your prim count up?  Why not just rename objects?  As a short term solution it works, but over the long term I’d think you would want to go ahead and just give objects different names.

I have no plans for tonight; there is nothing special going on, unless I go to some more concerts.  I’ll have to see how I feel.

Quick Update About radegast And Other Thoughts

I confirmed last night that you can search for and join groups with the Group search function in Radegast. One of my SL friends introduced me to a new musician, and I liked him so much I asked for the group name and joined. Yay! It’s always good to have more concerts to go to. I guess I’ll just be more of a groupy than I already am.

This is good; I get to explore more places and send other sighted friends there to look around and enjoy the surroundings.

I am most amused by an underwater ballroom that I keep going to. I can’t quite say why the concept is so amusing, but it is. I guess it seems surreal to listen to a guitar player underwater. That’s the beauty of Second Life, I think. You can do so many things you normally never could do in your Real Life. I’m sure there are even more surreal places and things to do besides going to underwater ballrooms to dance and listen to music. I’d love to know what they are so I can explore and send others to explore, too.

More About Radegast

I had a nice post all ready to go earlier this week about how Radegast has improved, and it’s a good thing I held off from posting, or I’d have had to do multiple updates. It really has gone through quite a change compared to September when I first wrote about it. Maybe the changes won’t seem significant to some, but they are definitely significant to me.

First, the interface has been improved on. You don’t have to use control-left-arrow or control-right-arrow to move between tabs. You can now get to the 9 standard ones (Chat, Friends, Groups, Inventory, Search, Map, Surroundings, Audio Streaming, and Voice.) by using alt-1 through alt-9–in that particular order I wrote. You can also navigate between those tabs, plus all your group and people IMs using control-tab and control-shift-tab. Trust me, both ways of moving around are helpful. Control-w in an active tab will close that tab and put you back into Chat, which is nice, because now I can close IM windows.

Also, you can now do group searches. I have searched for groups but have not actually joined one that way, but I think you can. Group search is one of the tabs under search. You can get to that tab with alt-5.

On the speech plug in side, improvements have been made for saving voice assignments for avatars, and a bug involving parentheses (don’t ask me to explain because I can’t) was fixed. Absolutely wonderful.

But the best improvement literally happened around 5:45 PM Eastern Monday night, when the lead developer told me he had just put up a new build of Radegast with more inventory functionality …

All hail the absolutely wonderful, marvelous, terrific copy, cut, and paste actions! Not only do they work on moving objects from one folder to another, you can copy folders as well and put them in different parts of your inventory!

I am now discovering the joys (and slight frustration) of creating my own outfits. Remember that when I first had ability to wear and remove clothing, I was using the Restrained Life Viewer. Talvin had to create my outfits a certain way, all in a folder called #RLV, with a folder for each outfit. So now, to make Radegast play more nicely with my clothing and attachments, I have to create more folders under Clothing and copy everything from each folder. You’d think that’s not so daunting, except that the way the Restrained Life Viewer works, you have to have several sub-folders, so I have to open up each folder and copy each object from it and paste it where it needs to go.

But I Am Able To Do This At Last! Yay! Anyhow, it was fast to let Talvin help me, so he did.

As of 9:00 PM Eastern that same night, Give functionality was added, as well. As long as an item is copied from inventory, I can go into any profile and a Give (alt-g) button appears. I hit it, and the person gets the item. I even get verbal feedback telling me that I offered the item and know if they got it or (I presume) if they decline to take the item. That was added in sometime between Monday and Wednesday when I did another download of the latest build.

Tuesday I had a blast playing bartender at The Place, because I was able to give patrons drinks they asked for. I have over 100 drinks in a folder specifically for that, now. It’s lots of fun.

There is a bug when switching outfits, and that is that whenever I switch to a different outfit I have to use the set appearance command and the rebake textures command, which is a little annoying. But at least I can switch outfits, now. Adding new ones eventually shouldn’t be that difficult, either.

Finally, we have voice support, now. I have yet to fully test it, but I know that I can at least transmit. I managed to spam an entire sim with static. Oops!

And that’s Radegast in a nutshell; you can get the latest build at

http://radegastclient.org/files/radegast-latest.exe

But I wouldn’t recommend downloading the file all the time. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Unless of course there are new features you want to take advantage of.

You can find the Radegast Users group doing a Group search and join it. They will post notices of new releases, and it’s a general way for those who use Radegast to connect, share tips and tricks, and ideas they may have for future development. They are very intent now that they know disabled people are using the client, to make it as accessible and friendly as possible.

Landmarks

I’ve rediscovered the joy of landmarks. Right now, it’s faster to use those than it is to teleport using the Teleport in Sim or Map features.

What I find myself doing is whenI teleport somewhere I haven’t been before, I create a landmark. If I can remember the name and destination (helpful because it puts coordinates on it) I can find it again in my inventory. Even if I’ve been somewhere, I still teleport there the slow way and create a landmark so I can return there more easily.

I even found some landmarks that Harper Ganesvoort gave me soon after I started blogging. I plan to check out the jazz places soon, now. I can’t wait.:)

Its nice to see how useful these things can be. I thought I was done with them forever, but I am so glad I’m not. I’m glad I don’t have to store them in an object, either.

I have to say that if the script editor is made accessible, and I am able to edit my own list of teleport favorites, I’ll still rely on landmarks, at least to get somewhere, and then if I like it, to edit my favorites list to make it even easier to teleport. The cool thing is that I don’t think it’s easy to loose landmarks, so even if I have somedisaster, I’ll still be able to get around.

Last Night In SL

Last night I hung out in Second Life some more. I took the time to play more with Radegast. I am trying to use that client as much as possible. I want to test its’ limits.

Major accomplishment! I managed to teleport to the Sight Unseen Shop. Granted, it was in the same sim, and I managed to teleport to two different houses before I got it fixed, but it’s progress! The problem two nights ago and again last night when I tried to teleport was that I somehow had the wrong coordinates to the shop so of course I couldn’t get anywhere.:) (I didn’t mean to teleport into those houses, I promise.)

I was thrilled beyond thrilled that I was able to accept a teleport offer from someone last night! Maybe it was it he IM, I’m not entirely clear how I got it …

I go to Joaquin Gustav’s concerts whenever I feel I can tip *something*, and I had some Linden dollars and the ability to *spend* them. When the IM popped up from the Tango Time group, I asked if someone could send me a TP. I had to move around the screen some, but I managed to find the button and click it to teleport to the venue. Turns out it was underwater, and I would have been more at home in my swim suit, but I didn’t realize that then. I just enjoyed myself a lot and made a landmark so I can (hopefully) find my way back there next Wednesday. (Did I mention that I am now newlyo fond of landmarks? More on that later.)

I like Joaquin’s music because no matter how I’m feeling, extremely happy, sad, tired, whatever, it makes me mellow and more relaxed. But then, I’m partial to guitar music that’s well-done.

Next post will be all about landmarks.

A New Second Life Client

I am now experimenting with another Second Life client called Radegast. It is a text-based client, and it has a speech plugin to read text (IMs, local chat, and group chats, to name a few)as it comes in. It even works on netbooks!

For the first time last night I was able to access my inventory, including objects. I didn’t do much with them, just read some note cards (it would be nice to be able to make/edit them, too!) and used a couple of landmarks to get around. But it was nice to see all the stuff/junk I’ve accumulated. I haven’t yet gone through and removed stuff. That’s the last thing I want to do yet.

I have also been IMing like crazy on my own. I love it! Just today I was able to leave an IM for the person who worked on the client by using people search and sending it to her. I’ve never been able to do that before. I mean I have never been able to look up a person on my own and IM them like that before.

Last night, I was also able to give tips to a venue. I was attending a concert and wanted to tip the venue and the singer. It worked, but it needs improvement. I need to know that a payment has been done. It doesn’t automatically say so–but it can be done, at last! I can pay people directly, or I can pay objects.

I haven’t experimented fully with landmarks, yet, but the ones I have in my inventory (the ones whose names/destinations I remember) work well, so teleporting that way is feasible, but I am attached to the command-line TP.

I have to be honest–it *does* need work. The best solution would be to put some RLV code into the client to allow some of Talvin’s scripts to work. Scripts like Face, Sit, Stand, TP, and clothing. I understand that I am now able to move through my inventory and switch stuff around, but I like the scripts I have. At least I can add more outfits on my own, eventually.

I’d also like to be able to customize my teleport list if I want, but currently I can’t do so, because the script editor is not accessible.

Speaking of teleporting, teleporting using the map or Teleport Sim isn’t very user-friendly yet. At least, I, without getting Talvin to assist, haven’t had luck in teleporting using the map or teleport sim functions. It looks like it should be doable by typing in the coordinates into the proper edit boxes, but I have yet to successfully teleport using those methods.

Movement is still largely confined to buttons and menu items, but they acknowledge that and are working towards making it easier to move around. I have to say that I love the spatial location of people now in SL. I literally, if wearing headphones, hear people off to my left, right, in front or behind. (I’m always in the center.) Still no way to voice chat, but while I would like that, it’s not high on my list yet. I still have the RLV client to use if I need to.

This opens up a whole new world in some ways for me. Take shopping. I now have access to more stuff, like clothes or furniture and things.:) This brings up more issues. How can I be sure I am buying something that would look good on me? In RL, I get Talvin to do that. He does that now, too, in SL. An eventual goal, though, is to be able to go into a store somewhere, get a good idea of what an outfit looks like, (assisted shopping maybe? interesting way for someone who’s good at describing things to make money.) and then to get the outfit, make a folder under the RLV one, put it there, then wear it using the scripts.

I suppose I’d have even more access to inventory, and would be able to give things to people, and help tend bar more. Interesting thought. I will have to experiment with that some night at Callahan’s. (Yes, I still hang out there.)

So these are my preliminary thoughts on this client. It has a great deal of promise, and I am looking forward to working more with it.

BlackListing A Venue

I hoped I would not get to the point of having to write a post speaking against a music venue in Second Life, but the time has come for me to do so.

I was all set up to write a nice post about Cascadia Music Park this afternoon. I’ve attended several concerts there and the people were friendly and helpful. That is, I did, until just an hour ago. With no warning, I found that a Landing Point had been set on the sim where the music park is–about in the middle of the sim! I asked Talvin to assist me; the management of the place would *not* im me to try to assist me at all. I could not independently navigate to the place like I had been able to before. It was in effect closed to me.

What really angers me is the way Talvin was treated. Management kept getting all defensive and whiny, claiming, “We didn’t change anything!” Well, obviously, someone did, and refused to work with us to resolve the situation. I could have accepted a Landing Point closer to the shop, even, right outside the door where I landed before. But no, they wouldn’t even consider that. I am not the only one affected. Other patrons had just as much trouble as I did.

I have IMed the sim owner, Ticious Trottier. I politely explained the problem and requested that she change the Landing Point back to where it was. I have not received a response.

I’m not against the idea of Landing Points. I feel that they can be useful. For example, we have a Landing Point set to bounce people who don’t live in our home to just outside our front door. It’s our home, and we should be able to control who can teleport in directly. But Cascadia is a public music venue. If they feel they must restrict access, OK, but make it closer to the place. Or, if they have multiple venues–this place has four–then turn it off altogether so we can teleport to the venue we want to get to.

Now that my afternoon of concert-going has been effectively shot, I’ll find something else to do offline. Probably will sit down and try to fix the tutorial for the wiki some more. I’m just really upset on several levels. It was nice having a place to go all on my own, where I could just sit and listen to music and work on making my own set of friends. It’s not that I want to never spend time with Talvin online, but I really felt, for a while there, that I was working toward being accepted as an individual, not the woman who’s always hanging around with Talvin. I had really wanted that to continue.

Now I have to find more music places to try out. Any suggestions? Looking for guitar musicians and people like Fyrm Fouroux. For that matter, if anyone knows of any other pla ces he plays that I can get to,I’d appreciate comments.

A Quick Update

Life’s been crazy lately, so there have been no updates in … well, a while. Apologies about that.

A lot’s been done. We have a new set of scripts coming out soon that take advantage of the features found in the Restrained Life API. I can now sit, stand, rotate my avatar, dance!!!, and I have some access to changing clothes!!:) I can also teleport to a preset list of destinations by typing /3 tp @place name and hitting the enter key. There’s no tab key to press, and no permission to accept. It just takes me where I tell it to go.

I’m really delighted with this new set of scripts. My next wish is to get all of this fun stuff, plus extras, hard-coded into an accessible viewer using the Restrained Life code. For now, though, I’m delighted with all that I can do. Just last weekend, for instance, I helped Talvin sail a boat. Now *that* was cool! There’s more to write about, and I will inanother post.