CavernSense

I had another look at the discussion on the MOUL forum about User Created Content that Calam started. I won’t use his words, but I’ll point you to the thread so you can read it yourself. Ahvree has been asking for pre-made building blocks that new players (unfamiliar with age-building) can move, place, cover with images (textures), rotate, stack… you get the picture. I agree with her and mzsv that the moveable blocks probably aren’t in the cards for now (and won’t be in the ages, either) And then Ahvree, in a voice that seems familiar somehow, says that it is common sense for builders to devote energy to other builders in telling the story and building new ages first, before spending time on boring building blocks (like legos). Then she says something interesting: “Common sense doesn’t sound like an exciting advertising campaign for a game that could appeal to hundreds and not tens.”

“But Cavernsense does” I said to myself, and then outloud on the forum.

Then I heard the voices in the ethers…  “Huh?”

Yeah, I agree, what in the heck is CavernSense? Hmmm, don’t know really, except that explorers use it all the time when they help each other. Can’t point to it except I can see it everywhere in the community. Maybe I should use apophatic language here and say what it is not.

Cuz that I can say a bit about.

Let’s see…

Cavernsense is not cheese. It gets better with age, but It’s never stinky.

Cavernsense is not light. You can’t see it but its presence makes everything seem brighter.

Cavernsense is not a hammer. You can use it constantly and never pound anything down.

Cavernsense is not a burden. If you get tired of it you can always toss it aside.

Cavernsense is not currency. You can keep it all to yourself and still give it away.

Not much, but that’s a start. Later I’ll try to define what it is. Might need some help on that though.

Well known by now is the news on June 30, 2008 that Cyan received the rights to MOUL from GameTap.

Huzzah!

Good thing I hadn’t completely unpacked my linking books and sparklies —- What? I wasn’t supposed to work those loose and transport them to the surface with me? Oh… my bad.

Since then we’ve heard that Cyan is planning to give explorers the tools to build ages, import them into the cavern, and perhaps add bits and pieces to our Relto. I’m glad to hear this. Since I’ve been at Kaneva I’ve become rather attached to moving blocks around and texturing them. I’m still not versed in Blender, but just working with 3D objects and textures has already taught me quite a bit. The Medieval Village is coming along well; the Professor plans to document the site sometime this fall. She’s asked me to collaborate with her on that — what fun!

There seems to be some consternation regarding the free distribution of the tools from Cyan. I’ve been taking some time to read the posts at the Guild of Writers. The Writers seem to disagree a bit about the degree to which they should be involved in any type of control over the tools distribution. Of course, Cyan will make the decision, but I think it is good that the Writers are concerned with the nature of their role in the re-restoration.  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. There are quite a number of very talented people there — I’m hoping that if/when the Guild of Healers is fully restored we can collaborate with a team of Writers to build a Healer’s Age. Of course, that’s assuming that Cyan would allow us to do that. I wish I was better versed so I could ask some of my questions without sounding like an idiot. For now, though, since I would sound like an idiot, I will keep reading. When I find more time I’ll go back to learning Blender.

The Messengers are to be the source of information from Cyan to the Community and from Community Groups to the Community. I am glad to see things coming together there. I would like to remain involved in that as well — “ha ha,” RL whispers in my ear, “you think you’ll have time for anything?” Well, I am making progress on the dissertation, and it will someday be finished. When that time comes, then I’ll see. This summer is the big push to get as much done as possible, so I hope to be more free this fall.

Yesterday I finally felt like I’d completed all the “heavy lifting” for the dissertation. My theories, arguments, and evidence is sorted and the arguments I wish to make are in sentences on paper (so to speak). Now that they are in place, I don’t have to concentrate quite as hard on what it is I am trying to say. Hence, a blog post today. Kind of makes sense, I think. Chores first, reward with play. Right now I’m off to read more forum threads. Today I will spend some time at the Maintainers’ forum. They, too, have significant involvement with the reopening of the Cavern. I’m interested to see what it all means for a normal explorer like me. And there’s more to it, of course. The Maintainers will be an important part of the Healers’ Guild, especially in the story….

Oops. That will have to wait for a bit. No sense getting ahead of myself. Besides, I have to load up those sparklies and get them back into the Cavern before anyone notices they are gone.

~Ghaelen

I posted this on MOUL Flooding in the Midwest then it occurred to me I have a blog I’ve not been using.

>>The storms and heavy rains over the last few weeks have caused rivers and streams across Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan to swell to record levels. Eastern Iowa and Western Wisconsin and Illinois are particularly hard hit, as most rivers flow toward the Mississippi, which is also reaching flood stage. Cities such as Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Davenport, and numerous small towns are experiencing floods in the streets. Many can now only get around in boats.

This is on the heels of several weeks of devastating tornadoes (one wiped out a whole town, and part of another). It gets more amazing every day, in a most unpleasant way. I have not experience more than basement flooding (thank goodness) but I watch neighboring towns struggle with rising rivers during yet another round of storms.

It is not a rapid catastrophe that makes big news, but a slow, steady destruction by a very powerful and moving force. It is really quite terrible. Farmers who have finally gotten their crops planted are now watching their new plantings drown under several feet of water. The University of Iowa is in danger of losing an art center, museum, and music building. Those who live along the rivers are watching the rivers submerge their homes. Since Iowa doesn’t normally make it into the national weather map, I thought a short update was in order. What does make the news is nothing like the real thing. Over half of the counties in Iowa have now been declared disaster areas (updated to 55 out of 99). The breadbasket of the country isn’t going to make much bread if this doesn’t end soon. <<

I’ve been watching the weather on the news, which has been on air all day. One large city (Cedar Rapids) has evacuated 8000 people from their homes. Downtown Cedar Rapids is under about two feet of water. So many little towns are devastated. Iowa City is evacuating people along the Iowa River. Des Moines, Davenport, and a multitude of small towns along about a dozen rivers are evacuating and homes are going under.

We’re getting close to meeting the criteria for the 500 year flood. And it is still raining. It is really too amazing to explain well enough for anyone to really understand.

A tidbit about the flood, with pics. There are many of them on YouTube already, but the music in this one seems appropriate.
Cedar Rapids in the Flood of 2009

It is about time. Throw out some of those ridiculous standardized tests. How can numbers on a scale possibly show how students will perform in the classroom? Or how they will do in life when they find their niche? Anyone who advocates standardized tests from behind a desk needs to go in the classroom and teach for a while — get in there and talk to them as if they are people. Every single student brings something different and unique to the group. Sometimes it is annoying behavior, but most of the time it is a skill or a bit of knowledge or the ability to question all the “trust me” messages they get bombarded with by companies that only want their money. “Heh, don’t question me just pay me.”

Or the messages from our “for the people” government. “Don’t question me, just obey me.”

I won’t start in on the myriad of other “don’t question me” authoritative figures. That would only turn into a rant.

Some colleges have decided to drop the requirement for the SAT. Huzzah! There is nothing worse than a group of students whose creativity and analytical thinking is squelched because the teacher has to teach to the test. Students are coming to college expecting to be told what they have to learn. They are often shocked when I tell them I want them to think first, learn second. LOL, that they question.  Well, it’s a start.

I hope that this policy trickles, no floods down to the grade school level. We should leave the tests behind rather than the students and teachers whose relationship suffers as they struggle not to fail the tests — and each other.

Well, I do believe the upgrading, updating, re-baiting, and rearranging is almost done. I moved the CavernScents story to its new home, and when it it properly skinned and dressed I’ll ask if it can be added it to UruBlogs. Even after the Cavern has closed I find myself investigating… oh, there I go again. That’s a story of a different character and I have to stop criss-crossing the criss-crossable boundaries. “Obey, Ghaelen. Walk over there and talk about that.”

I am just grateful to the blog divinities that I didn’t break this blog as I stumbled around trying to move the installation from Fantastico to Simple Scripts. It worked. Huzzah! I do like the export function in Wordpress. That helps a lot.

The Cavern closed on April 9 as several groups of people around the cavern celebrated or mourned or comforted each other or gazed out onto the lake or into the myst in quiet solitude. Near the end we suddenly recieved a message that the cavern would be closing. That was quite a shock. It was at that moment when we all realized we wouldn’t see each other again, nor explore, nor laugh or dance together. Tears issued in abundance for a while.

Suddenly I couldn’t communicate with anyone. They were there, but they weren’t “there” any longer. I thought of the death of a loved one, whose body remained while the soul/spirit left it. Everyone just stood there, motionless, as the Beam from the Great Zero continued to pass through the Pub. It seemed emptied of life.

I finally left. The next day I tried to return (just had to, I guess). The gateway was closed. I tried a different route, one I hadn’t used in a few months. That one worked, but things were different. There was no communicate with others through my KI, nor could I tell if anyone else was in the cavern. Links to new areas were gone, too. I realized I was back to being there alone, or once again out of time/space phase with anyone else who might be there. With a sense of sadness I recognized the cavern I knew before I knew others might also be there.

I wonder if this is part of what the bahro can do — change KI frequencies or even the magnetic frequencies of the ages so we can’t see each other. Maybe the books were still there but now I can’t see them. But then, why would they do that? It doesn’t make sense to me right now.

Anyway, it’s a lonely place again. That much I do know.

Oh my gosh, the closing of the Cavern is coming…..

There are some beautiful tributes to our community. They all make me cry. I’ll update this post as each one comes out.

“Don’t Give up, Uru.” Project Video by Marten, Tweek, and Erik: A Music Video to “Don’t Give up”

“Remember MOUL,” by Leighana: Music Video

A Memorial Video by Libera: “Remembering”

The Cavern Choir has had their final concert. There are links to a beautiful video by Veralun in several formats on the MOUL forum from the Under the Roots Party.

I’ll add more as I become aware of them.

…………………….

~Must get more tissues. I do believe I will cleanse my entire body of toxins during my shedding of tears for MOUL.

I thought I should add a category about Common Sense. But there really isn’t any here.  I mean, I don’t have any. And people in the Uru Community are way beyond common sense. They arrive equipped with CavernSense. It’s much deeper, more expansive, more sensitive to things they and others need. They may not USE it but they HAVE it. The seventh and eighth senses, you know the one’s that connect us all together and ….

but I digress. More about that another time.

Rest assured, should I find some common sense somewhere, I’ll be sure to make a note about it.

Last Thursday, April 3, GreyDragon posted that Cyan wanted to keep us all together on a common server and give us tools with which to care for the Cavern. They are just waiting for Game Tap to decide whether they will release the rights.

What a wonderful surprise. My spirits lifted over the course of a few hours, and my whole life/goals seemed clearer again. Isn’t that something?  I’ve seen that some people don’t believe it will happen, and others wait with baited breath.  Some will never know because they left long ago.  Such is life I guess.  But I’m happy.
So here is the post I should have posted a couple days ago when I ended up doing the WordPress upgrade. I’m still laughing about that. Check29cents

“Know when not to start upgrading.” Ignore that message about the out of date version!

Well I didn’t listen.

Our web host provider, BlueHost has very nicely added a new scripting program, SimpleScripts, that installs various web programs for us, like WordPress, Joomla, ZenCart, etc. I have irritated my friends for years with all my hype about how great BlueHost is, and so of course this should be a great addition to their service. For a couple of the programs the installation went like a breeze. Faster and more up-to-date than Fantastico, which wasn’t bad at installing, just slow at recognizing new versions. I was tired of manually upgrading because of that. So I thought to myself, yay, this is the answer to all my time-consuming manual upgrades.

…..because you know those folks tend to upgrade frequently…..

Well, it didn’t work. I first tried an install and named my own databases so I know what the heck database goes with what blog. No way. config file not found. So I asked Simple Scripts to do a new install and control everything (so I could see how it worked). No way again. Huh? Now the login file wasn’t found. Looked around the WordPress forums, found a few ideas but no answers that worked. Went to the BlueHost forums, no answers there either.

Sheesh.  After three hours, I went back to the manual install and created a new database. Name the database here, add a user there, unzip, upload, add a few lines to config.php, dum dee dum… Point to the install file, and presto! In ten minutes I had the new installation running.  Upgrading the old took a bit longer, but nowhere near the time to use the installer.  Still can’t figure out what is wrong.  I still think BlueHost is the best thing in host servicing, because they got right on the problem and had the same thing happen that I did.  They are working on fixing what they can, and the rest is up to SimpleScripts.  Guess I’ll go back to manual upgrading.

The most humorously annoying thing is that it took me even longer to sit here and complain about it than it did to do the manual upgrade.  Now I’ve spent four hours on it, when all I wanted to do was write a short entry here about how glad I was that Cyan is trying to keep the Uru Community together on one server if they possibly can.  A bit about their post yesterday on the MOUL forums, to be exact.  Heh, I still have to add that entry here.

Next time I take my own advice.