Archive for the ‘Public service announcements’ Category

A while ago, when I started this blog i used to rely on a couple of plugins to perform a few basic functions: Visitor statistics, Spell checking and a couple of other things. At some point down the road most of these got merged into “Jetpack”. Jetpack is kind of an official “megaplugin” that gives you access to a bunch of excellent features and let you piggyback on some services provided by WordPress.com. But there is a catch:

It’s extremely slow.

What you’ll actually use is in the glove box.

It might not matter on a professional, high capacity server, but the reality is that this is not what i have access to. I can “barely” run an unmodded Minecraft server. Jetpack introduced a huge latency both for visitors and for me when publishing, yet some of its features (Stats, automatic social media publishing, spell-checking, contact form…) where invaluable to me. Followed several years of damage control, trying to optimize the site’s response time with all kinds of caching and preloading voodoo.

Today somehow was the last straw, I say goodbye to Jetpack and hope that i will never have to come back. Now for those who are curious, here are the plugins i now use in replacement (subject to change), and YES it’s still faster.

• WordPress Contact Form Maker
• Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
• NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
• TinyMCE Spellcheck

Fuck you jetpack

As it turns out, when you try to use Twitter/Facebook and other social media APIs as an individual, without using any kind of intermediate service/company, the procedure goes from mildly annoying, to utterly impossible: Google for example doesn’t want to hear about you, Facebook and twitter both want your cellphone number, Plurk was by far the most convenient so far… but who use Plurk anyway?

I though it might be useful to get a few things straight about how I handle customer support, if you have a problem with a product, please follow these instructions:

I can only reply in French or English.

If you need to contact me, please try to use one of these two languages. Sure I can use a translator, but for precise instructions it’s going to turn into a catastrophe.

Do not send me notecards

I don’t know who decided that notecards where the “superior” way of contacting shop owners, but it isn’t! Send me an I.M. instead, those arrive in my mailbox and I can reply to them quickly. If for some reason you cannot send me an I.M. (overzealous RLV settings for example), there is a contact form on this website, just don’t forget to put your avatar name then.

Be brief and clear.

I don’t need a copy of the entire marketplace transaction, the transaction ID, buyer name and date is all I need.

Be patient.

Give me at least a day to reply, I’m not always in SL or browsing my emails.

Talk to me before giving me a bad review.

I’ve had several customers drop me a 1 star review on a product, it hurts, it’s the wrong way to attract my attention, and I usually end up solving your problem in the end.

I will start a new KDC project on Monday, April 22, 2013. The live stream will start around 8 am GMT and will continue until the model is complete, or until I’ve had enough :), whichever comes first.

[livestream type=”twitch” channel=”kyrah3D”]

If you want to tune in and watch: http://www.twitch.tv/kyrah3D

Keep in mind that you will need a twitch account in order to use the chat.

To be clear, the stream will start at 8am GMT but will most likely last the entire day, minus breaks so do not worry too much if you cannot be there in time for the very start, not everything will be interesting anyway.

The reason there hasn’t been any progress on the chastity belt is that i was adding some improvements to the TouchBound base code to support it properly.

The belt is going to use 6 anchor points for a total of 8 sensing zones, that’s a lot more than what my other products have and I needed to make sure it would fit in the tiny memory left in the core script.

I also decided to do some standardization in how objects relate to each others. Before, you would generally have to click the wrist cuffs first because clicking the collar first would serve no animations (the collar had no animation support). This is now a thing of the past and I do intent to have the system work consistently regardless of the clicking order, excepted specific cases such as the collars back locks, which does NOT (yet) feature a locking ring (back locks only lock the object in place).

I also wrote a new synchronisation system in order to restart missing animations when the avatar is logged off/on.

I will roll updates for most of the current TB products in the coming days, and once this is done I will finish the chastity belt implementation.

Those who have been following me for a while know i tend to dabble into game design and that I have been, for a while now, a licensed developer for Torque3D.

Torque3D is now free, and they released the source code for everyone out there under an MIT license.

You can download the latest source repository and documentation from github here.

Based on the awesome ZeroBin project, i hereby give you paste.ethernia.net a lightweight code/text pasting tool with a twist:

• All the text is encrypted client side before it is uploaded, as a result, it is very discreet and very safe to use.
• Burn after reading: Spy movie style “this message will self destruct after reading” feature.
• Discussions: Either anonymously or with a throwaway name, the little icon near the name you picked will make sure that other readers know it’s you.
• My only change so far is that i removed the ability to create pastes that last for a year or forever.

I apologise for the lack of updates, I had a small RL job to do and it kinda took most of my focus this week. Sometimes, i do not function well under pressure.

About the hunt

There is a lot of things to win in each stores, and unlike some of the participating stores I’m actually giving something of value: the TouchBound lined chrome collar. That’s your occasion to try the TouchBound system and see if you like it!

Check the fetish love hunt web page

If you are doing all the shop in the right order, my shop is number #48.

HINT: Gaze deeply into the fire, you might just find something.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/dead%20realm/128/128/604

I am giving away a copy of Left4Dead2 on SteamGifts, same concept but with a twist:

• Starts the 6/06 Ends in 6 hours.
• You must have contributed 6$

During the month of June, 60 fetish creators are participating to a hunt: Solve the riddle in each site to get a gift and a landmark to the next one. Have some fun and get some nice things at the same time!

Click here to get teleported!

I am giving away a copy of Portal 1 on SteamGifts, in 22 hours a winner will be picked randomly from the list of applicants. Feel free to try your chance, it’s free!