When it rains it pours as they say...

[Sculptor]

Here's another one I did, I am donating a large sculpture to the city for the new pool building and decided to build the wall from the plans to see how it might look, I got carried away and built the rest of the facility the afternoon I constructed this.

[Sculptor]

Very cool. I may have to take a closer look at OpenSim stuff sometime.

You might enjoy it, I started out in SecondLife (by Linden Labs Inc) several years ago and had 4 sims there at one point for role play, but it was very expensive, then one day I learned about OpenSim and that it was open source and completely free- it's essentially the same software used in SecondLife, same scripting language which is why it's called "LSL" (Linden scripting language) and it can run on any computer either as a stand-alone or connected to a public access grid.

So what can you do in OpenSim? it's a fully interactive 3D world environment where everything happens in real-time, you can stand on the land and communicate with other people standing there or else where via PM's using voice chat or text chat.
You can build, create and people can watch you do it in real time as you work, scripts can generate all kinds of functions from making doors open on touch to particle displays, vehicles, etc. There is in-world streaming video and picture (media) display functionality, there's just so many things I can't even think of at the moment.
Another thing I like about this is you have full control over your content and can download and archive everything, you can't do that on SecondLife even with things you buy.
Also, you can move between different sims and different grids around the world, so I often hang out with people in Australia, Germany, Europe, the US, Canada and elsewhere.

Here's the Wiki on the OpenSim software which you can read about

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

The public grid I connect to has a page too:

http://hypergrid.org/metropolis/wiki...tle=Hauptseite

Installing this can go smoothly for the most part, it depends on the user's knowlege of their router and port forwarding- that's where almost everyone stumbles!
On a windows machine you need the .NETframeworks, on Mac and Linux you need Mono, you also need to open a listener port which is usually port 9000 by default. The grid I use has their own preconfigured version and installing that usually only requires editing a couple of lines in a couple of .ini files- pointing to your external ip and port.
mySQL can be installed or not, OpenSim comes with sqLITE built in ready to use to get started but it's noticeably slower so most everyone soon uses a full database for the performance improvements it gives.

There's also a self configuring version called "Sim on a stick" that can be installed on a thumb drive, a lot of people seem to like that one, it's just a modified version of the same software.

I had considered hosting servers locally with a Frankenserver, and I did for a while, but I decided that between parts, increased bandwidth costs, electricity, setup/maintenance headache, the need for more A/C, it was a nominal amount more to just have them in a data center.

Yeah I hear you, I've had good results here, the Dell workstation has been bulletproof, I got rid of it's windows Vista garbage and installed Ubuntu Linux and that's all the machine is used for- OpenSim, it requires practically no maintenance at all once set up. I have about a 2 mbps upload speed which works okay for how I use OpenSim, but if I had half a dozen other avatars all land on my sims together their viewers all download the images, textures and scenes at the same time, they would experience some lag untill it's all loaded in cache.
You use a special bowser-like software called a viewer to access the OpenSim world's front end, so there is a little learning curve with that learning how the viewer functions.

I feel you on working with a mySQL DB via a terminal, it makes my eyes bleed pretty quickly. For SQL DB admin I highly recommend HeidiSQL (http://www.heidisql.com/). phpMyAdmin is functional, but HeidiSQL works a lot better, IMO.

Oh nice, I'll have to check that out, because phpMyAdmin is okay, it's the standard for web site control panels you get but I'm always pleased to look at alternates to things.

Since your game server relies on a mySQL DB, let me share something with you. If you ever start to encounter any random issues and you're DB is not already on an SSD, try tossing it on one.

I have always used WD Caviar drives in all of my computers, never once had a failure or problem with any of them!
I did buy the components to build a Linux box last year and planned to switch to it for daily use and use the Mac tower for the OpenSim server to replace the Dell workstation. I bought a Samsung SSD for it, but I ran into some issues I was unable to fix, the drive itself was going wierd on me, I don't remember all the details now but I could not get any OS to work very long or install right.
Eventually I discovered a few issues, one was the SSD was defective, another was my monitor cable and the adaptors I used! I could get the normal 1920 x 1080 on my 6 year old Mac for my LED display- it automatically defaults to that, yet, with this brand new machine and monitor I could not get that to even show up in the display choices!
I had a $350 graphics card that had high reviews, it was so frustrating and I couldn't get any answers, then I figured out another problem! Not only was my CABLE wrong, but the only driver available for that AMD based card once I installed it that's when the system started going wierd and more.
So it turned out to be the:

Graphics driver
Display cable and adaptor
SSD drive itself

I wound up selling the AMD based board on Ebay , the processer, and the graphics card sold for $5 more than I bought it for. I'm going to get an Intel based board, processor and card- there's more drivers.

The OpenSim might use the mySQL a little differently than games do, I have never seen what you describe, the way it works is when someone logs into a sim with their viewer the viewer calls up all of the scene's objects within a radius, the scene is made with "textures" which are just image files, so liek a web browser loading a web page the viewer loads the images of the scene then caches it, once loaded it's there to use unless something changes.
The avatar's personal inventory resides on the grid's own servers, so all of the avatar's inventory, shape, clothes attachments etc are loaded from that remote server. It can be changed for local inventory server which is what a "standalone" grid usually does, but it's more complex to set up and more bandwidth of course to do it that way.

Here's a screen capture video I did a while back on one of my sims, the sound is a bit tinny but it will show you what this looks like.

[Gradient Shift]

Very cool. I may have to take a closer look at OpenSim stuff sometime. I had considered hosting servers locally with a Frankenserver, and I did for a while, but I decided that between parts, increased bandwidth costs, electricity, setup/maintenance headache, the need for more A/C, it was a nominal amount more to just have them in a data center.

I feel you on working with a mySQL DB via a terminal, it makes my eyes bleed pretty quickly. For SQL DB admin I highly recommend HeidiSQL (http://www.heidisql.com/). phpMyAdmin is functional, but HeidiSQL works a lot better, IMO. Things are laid out for you in a more user friendly way and it is more responsive as it relies on a direct connection to the DB, rather than having a php script parse and render the data.

Since your game server relies on a mySQL DB, let me share something with you. If you ever start to encounter any random issues and you're DB is not already on an SSD, try tossing it on one. I was running a game server that relied heavily on a mySQL DB and over time players started to get micro-stutters. I spent weeks attempting to isolate the problem and tweaking configs with very little results. Eventually I ran out of ideas and decided to relocate the DB to a SSD on and hope and a prayer... it was a huge difference. The performance monitor IO numbers didn't seem bad as far as I was concerned, but that one change made a huge difference.

[Sculptor]

Cool, very cool. I have a casual relationship with HTML, PHP, and C++; former relationship with BASIC and Visual Basic. I can usually hack/fake my way through something in order to bend it to my will provided it isn't super complex, but can't create something from scratch without relying heavily on reference guides. Well, I have created video game add-ons using C++ and eventually was able to create stuff without the need of referencing the internet much, but I digress... :P

We are very similar there in that I can usually figure out how to tweek/modify but anything else I really have to search a reference guide.
The LSL I mention which I understood was based on C+ or C++ is not hard to modify once you know what the scripts do, and there's lots of references for it. The in-world environment of OpenSim has a built-in script editor in the tools, the editor will not only compile the script for you it will tell you if there are any errors.

Here's a couple of simple scripts as examples, you might even recognize similarities to what you have seen:

This plays a sound file in-world:

default
{
link_message(integer src, integer ip, string sp, key id)
{
if(sp == "SOUND") llPlaySound((string)id,1.0);
}
}

This placed in an object causes it to rotate, both speed and direction xy or z axis are controlled by changing the numerical values:

default
{
state_entry()
{
llTargetOmega(<0,0,0.2>,PI,1.0);
}

}

Even the military is involved now with OpenSIm:

http://militarymetaverse.org/

Here's a scene in one of my OpenSim regions

Cron jobs are basically scheduled bash commands/scripts in a nix system, you just add a schedule at the front (minute, hour, day, month, weekday); example, you can make a cron job that runs programStart.sh at a specified time. Pretty handy for obvious reasons.

Yeah, I think I had at least a grasp of that basic description, might be interesting to look into. I have similar scripts in my OpenSim server which function to perform manual backups to save the simulators along with their contents, setting and the land- that's all packed into a compressed file called an OAR (OpenSim Archive) it also saves all of the details required by mySQL database, so you upload the OAR to the simulator and the mySQL database is populated and set up automatically for you. There's one for the avatar's inventory that saves all the objects and things in inventory and it's called an IAR (Inventory Archive)
So the cron jobs is probably a lot closer to what I already do and I didn't know it.

I see. I thought you were using the reseller account to actually resell hosting to clients. Yeah, you could run 20 websites (or a million if you want) via NFO on the $3 a month plan ($30 for a year), which includes unlimited bandwidth,.

Nah, I ran the numbers once and decided to get that reseller acct as I know I'll be adding, we'll see how it goes.
I looked at that host, they look good, though I did look too at their gaming server page and thought that might be a possible solution for those who need a commercial host to run their OpenSim, I run mine from home connected to a public grid in Germany for free, but home connections are limited in upload speed and OpenSim runs best with faster upload speed than I have with cable if you have more than a few concurrent visitors.
I have a friend in OpenSim who is connected in some way to the Military, she is trying to start some business with this, I should run that host url past her and let her look at it.
OpenSim is not bandwidth heavy and most of the time has a static even bandwidth use, but does require mySQL databases, a couple of open listener ports and the ability to scale up for sudden increases in traffic.

My server is just a refurbished Dell workstation with 8 gb of ram, it's been on 24/7 in use for this for about 18 months now.

PHP, SQL, and CSS is a beautiful thing. I spent the last year and a half casually learning how to manage SQL databases and creating scripts and whatnot. It was a lot of fun.

I am reasonably comfortable with mySQL databases, I can find my way around, repair, edit, manage, install, but I'm not proficient and do have to look up syntax and how-to now and then. I've had to learn it becauise they are used in everything from wordpress to mailing lists and forums as well as OpenSim. I like PhPMyadmin on the web control panels so I have that on my server as the front end- I like to SEE my databases not work on them with a black screen command line as I have had to do on occasion.

PHP is great, I use a special PHP contact/email script that eliminates ALL spam, the way I have it set up is the contact form uses the PHP script I found, and as a further block to spam I set the access page to the comment form page itself to password protected, and just include the user name and password right on the pages.
It works to totally eliminate bot/spider email spams because the user and password have to be manually typed in to even get to the comment form at all, once on that page it's php shields my email address even from source code views.

[ArmyVet]

I have had no issues either integrating an adult into a household with existing dogs, or with having a puppy, but with puppies if people are out at work all day it's difficult unless you make use of and learn to use a wire, or plastic airline kennel for puppy to stay in while you are away at work.
I don't like having outdoor dogs and never had that situation, outdoor dogs are subjected to extremes of temperatures, constantly tormented by flies, gnats, mosquitos and more. Indoor dogs can be a chore to train and you WILL have things damaged during the process but they do learn fast and usually by 4-5 months of age they are housebroken.

I always strongly suggest people make use of one of the airline kennels, if they are fed in there with the door open they learn it's a safe comfortable place and after a while they will go in to nap on their own- the kennel is perfect for training during housebreaking, teething phase, and untill they prove they have no inclination to chew furniture legs etc.

Great information here! I am not a huge fan of outdoor dogs either, but mostly because the people that tend to keep outdoor dogs tend to leave them out there and forget about them. I have seen it too many times.

As noted above, puppies are definitely a lot of work, but if you have the time, you will be able to train the puppy the way you want and will have less transition issues. If you decide to get a puppy, do not buy it at a pet store. Those puppy mill puppies come with a lot of problems. Do the research and go with a reputable breeder. Adopting from a shelter is wonderful thing and you will likely end up with a great dog. It will be older and less work than a puppy, but may come with its own issues. You will likely have more medical issues sooner. You may not know it's entire history. Is it aggressive to other animals? Children? The shelters do a good job of trying to identify this, but its not always possible.

I always recommend crate training. If done properly, as outlined above, it should be a comfort area for the dog or its den. It should never be used as punishment.

Both of my dogs are retired working dogs...they come with their own set of issues and precautions. One lived in a kennel his entire life, so he's not really housebroken and it's unlikely he will ever be. The other I don't have much history on. Both required emergency surgery this past spring. One had a bleeding mass in his abdomen and I was discussing euthanasia with the internal medicine specialist because the chances of it being very bad cancer were extremely high - it turned out to not be cancer. We didn't know that until I removed it and sent it off for pathology. The second ate a sock, which ripped open his intestines. He was very sick and hospitalized for a week, but he beat the odds. I am very lucky to still have them both with me.

[Gradient Shift]

Cool, very cool. I have a casual relationship with HTML, PHP, and C++; former relationship with BASIC and Visual Basic. I can usually hack/fake my way through something in order to bend it to my will provided it isn't super complex, but can't create something from scratch without relying heavily on reference guides. Well, I have created video game add-ons using C++ and eventually was able to create stuff without the need of referencing the internet much, but I digress... :P

Cron jobs are basically scheduled bash commands/scripts in a nix system, you just add a schedule at the front (minute, hour, day, month, weekday); example, you can make a cron job that runs programStart.sh at a specified time. Pretty handy for obvious reasons.

I see. I thought you were using the reseller account to actually resell hosting to clients. Yeah, you could run 20 websites (or a million if you want) via NFO on the $3 a month plan ($30 for a year), which includes unlimited bandwidth, databases, diskspace, email accounts, etc, etc. All you have to do just point the domains to their name servers, and the name server to the appropriate folder(s). They do not handle domain registration though, so you wouldn't get any sort of cost reduction there.

They really do have a 99% uptime and very high network stability, so them going down isn't even a remote worry for me. However, if something goes down (normally due to a DDoS) it is rarely more than a couple minutes as the target machine gets null routed pretty quickly. They will also send out detailed e-mail notification(s) which includes what the problem was, what they are doing, when it will be fixed, and whatnot; unlike some providers who stick their head in the sand. The issues are more common if you are using a virtual dedicated server, since kids nerd rage after getting banned and decide to DDoS the server. Since they specialize in video game server hosting the network must be very stable and they can't hide stuff or leave their clients in dark, as that is totally unacceptable to gamers, otherwise they'll get a bunch of, " WTF!!1 I WANNA PLAY ON SERVER NOW!!1! U SUX!1!"

PHP, SQL, and CSS is a beautiful thing. I spent the last year and a half casually learning how to manage SQL databases and creating scripts and whatnot. It was a lot of fun.

[Sculptor]

Definitely keep them in mind when/if you decide to move.

NFO Servers does a daily file and database backups and goes approximately 22 days back. If you were so inclined you could set up a scheduled crontab job which will automatically backup everything to another location.

I have seen the term crontab for many years but never looked into it at all, it's a part of the server environment and capabilities I never used before.
I write basic HTML code typically by hand, I do a little style sheets and php and that's really all I've needed to do.
I used to teach HTML and how to use dialup shell accts to people back in 1995 era but so much has changed since.
I still have the little book written by Tim Berners Lee on how to write HTML, he mailed it to me from Switzerland at no charge way back then just because I asked!

I run OSX and also have used various flavors of Linux, I also run a server with Ubuntu Linux at home 24/7 that is dedicated to running a public access OpenSim (similar to "SecondLife") it uses the command line in terminal to operate and maintain it, I've had to learn everything about that to do it but I did and can set one up easily now. Some of the ways I use that also involves tackling scripts that are a modified version of C+ I believe, called LSL, so I think a crontab script would be within my ability to figure out and implement.

I'm not so much in need of frequent site backups because once everything is set up I rarely ever need to change any of the pages again, the exceptions are when I add new items, or add to the blog etc. I rarely need to do full site backups more than say once a month.

I am not entirely clear on how you are using your site/services, I run two different websites, and possibly a third in the near future, all from one account using the "lite" package for only $2.54 a month with a 12 month discount ($3 otherwise).

Good luck doing your thing and enjoying the remainder of your vacation.

Well I have over 20 domain names, some are hosted some are sub domains and redirect/point to others, I have one dedicated for my book with it's own domain, another for my non-profit art gallery/museum, another one is devoted to all
of my sculptures which includes reproductions, while yet another is devoted strictly to my designs of my own creation devoid of any reproductions of antiques.
I prefer to keep them separate and not put all my eggs in one basket is a host or something goes down, is unavailable etc., and I'm trying to build up a name for myself as a professional sculptor who also takes custom commissions instead of just someone who makes reproductions.

I'm also working towards another line of hand made terracotta for a higher-end market, so I have ideas on how I want to do that as an individual site ratehr than just and "addon" product to my exisiting line.

I have a namecheap reseller acct and a custom DNS, it's $99 and provides a large number of includes and disk space, it's cheaper that way to be able to host several sites and domains on one, but I still kept at least one domain and web site separately hosted at hosttiger just in case something happened at namecheap, as it turned out hosttiger went down.

I need to do some work on converting the last directory of of .html pages to .php and my new format today, I started on it last night and there's 15 pages left to do yet.

I don't know if you know php but I really like it since I set up one file for the header which never needs to be changed file to file, one for the footer and one to include the same generic text every page gets such as shipping information, finishes available etc. So just inserting the small code line on each page:

<?php include 'footer.php'; ?>

to call up each of those 3 files, every page gets the content, changes then are simple- change or update 1-3 files and the changes affect every page across the entire site.
Ditto for the .css which I also use for the fonts and layout.

Enjoying my vacation, thanks

[Gradient Shift]

Definitely keep them in mind when/if you decide to move.

NFO Servers does a daily file and database backups and goes approximately 22 days back. If you were so inclined you could set up a scheduled crontab job which will automatically backup everything to another location. I don't know how exactly, but I know it is possible with NFO Servers. If you e-mailed them or used their forum I am sure a solution can be found.

I am not entirely clear on how you are using your site/services, I run two different websites, and possibly a third in the near future, all from one account using the "lite" package for only $2.54 a month with a 12 month discount ($3 otherwise).

Good luck doing your thing and enjoying the remainder of your vacation.

[Sculptor]

Thanks everyone, your words mean a lot to me. I'm still getting emails from folks on the Belgian mailing list who get the digest version, it all helps! I'm sorry to read that chapwolfe, my veterinarian had a similar thing happen to his dog one winter, but they never found him.

If you are looking for new webhosting I highly recommend NFO Servers

I have used them for websites, unmanaged dedicated/virtual dedicated servers, TeamSpeak, and managed video game servers for about two years now.

I have tried GoDaddy and a few other places in the past, and would not recommend them to my worst enemy. NFO Servers is fantastic.

Thank you for that Gradient Shift, I will bookmark that for reference for sure, always good to have customer references on a good host!
In my case I have both a hosted site and a separate reseller account hosting since I have both profit and a non profit, personal and business stuff I prefer to keep separate.
What I did was I went with my registrar's hosting (Namecheap) whom I have been with for quite a while now with good results. They offered a super good deal back then for GoDaddy customers who switched domain registrations to them that month, it was 50% or 75% off and it was offered when GoDaddy's CEO was being slammed in the media for going on a hunting trip to Africa and killing an elephant, he was pictured standing on the elephant's body with his rifle smiling, Namecheap's people were about as outraged as many were so they offered that deal.

I moved all 20+ of my domains and hosting off GoDaddy then.

This closure really messed me up and I spent several hours dealing with it, but thankfully only for a couple of days- I was able to backup everything and lesson learned- make sure I have site backups more frequently I got busy and lazy, and knew hosttiger did maintain full weekly backups for customers anyway, but who would expect the hosting company itself to just shut down!
If I wasn't able to go back in and backup everything the other day, wow, I mean I have all kinds of email forwarders, filters, redirects, mailing list, wordpress, 2 databases, .css files, images that are linked to by other sites and so on- all very hard to re-generate from scratch/memory and Google doesn't save that stuff either.

I am on vacation now for 2 weeks from the day job, so hopefully I can get motivated to finishing revamping the last category on the web site that needs updating and converting to the new php and css format I use now.

[chapwolfe]

Sorry to hear about your pup, Sculptor. We lost our rattie back towards the end of winter. We'd had him 13 years. He was a rescue and the vet said he was 3-6 years old when we got him. He had discs degenerate in his back and really bad cataracts. He used to go out at night and fall in the cactus and come in looking like a porkypine. He went walkabout one night and I found him the next evening. :-(

[JasperST]

Sorry for your loss. I have two furry companions that are starting to get up there age wise. Dogs just don't live long enough, seems like a cruel joke on mankind.

[Gradient Shift]

Sorry for the loss of your pooch.

If you are looking for new webhosting I highly recommend NFO Servers (http://www.nfoservers.com/). I have used them for websites, unmanaged dedicated/virtual dedicated servers, TeamSpeak, and managed video game servers for about two years now. The servers are fast, their network is super stable, they are very fast at mitigating DDoS attacks, support is very responsive (I've normally gotten a response of some sort within 5 minutes), and they have been around since like 2001 with no signs of closing down anytime soon. Hell, they even have a public forum. Few webhosting/server companies have a public forum because it is just a troll mine.

I have tried GoDaddy and a few other places in the past, and would not recommend them to my worst enemy. NFO Servers is fantastic.

[Sculptor]

Sorry for your loss, I lost one to cancer.

Trying to decide if I should adopt a mature dog from a local animal shelter or go with a pup.

Thank you sanitizer, I am sorry to read that too- cancer in dogs is pretty common, it seems Golden Retrievers have a high rate of it and that breed tends to be very popular as a family pet.

I posted earlier on one of my dog mailing lists about cancer risks since it's been a recent ongoing topic, this will be a long read but an important one for both dogs and people- I'll post that in a new thread.

As far as where you should get a new dog from it's entirely a personal choice, I can tell you I have had everything from a 6-1/2 week old puppy to being given adult (2-5 years of age) dogs and an elderly dog by the breeder I bought a puppy from years earlier- the elderly dog (St Bernard) was the 10 year old mother to a dog I bought as a puppy who died age 3-1/2 of stomach torsion (AKA "Bloat) she lived on to be a little over 13 years old so had 3 good years from her, the 5 year old was a former show dog and I used to show him on occasion, he lived to be over 13 as well, so he had 8 good years in him.
I have had no issues either integrating an adult into a household with existing dogs, or with having a puppy, but with puppies if people are out at work all day it's difficult unless you make use of and learn to use a wire, or plastic airline kennel for puppy to stay in while you are away at work.
I don't like having outdoor dogs and never had that situation, outdoor dogs are subjected to extremes of temperatures, constantly tormented by flies, gnats, mosquitos and more. Indoor dogs can be a chore to train and you WILL have things damaged during the process but they do learn fast and usually by 4-5 months of age they are housebroken.

I always strongly suggest people make use of one of the airline kennels, if they are fed in there with the door open they learn it's a safe comfortable place and after a while they will go in to nap on their own- the kennel is perfect for training during housebreaking, teething phase, and untill they prove they have no inclination to chew furniture legs etc.

[Iowa #1603]

Sorry for your loss, I lost one to cancer.

Trying to decide if I should adopt a mature dog from a local animal shelter or go with a pup.

I am going to make a case for an older rescue dog..........................................

MOST of the time a dog that has been in a shelter really shows it's new owner the true meaning of love and trust.------Rescue dogs are something special..........

[sanitizer]

Sorry for your loss, I lost one to cancer.

Trying to decide if I should adopt a mature dog from a local animal shelter or go with a pup.