User:Q Linden/Office Hours/2007-09-24

Transcript of Q Office Hours on Monday, 24Sep07, 7:30 AM PST

Note: although in general, anything said during my office hours can be considered to be public, in this case there was only one other person there, and at times the chat veered into personal discussion that one of us would prefer to keep private. Those places where text was cut are marked in the transcript.

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Time	Speaker	Remarks
[7:45]	Q Linden	Hey, Jansen
[7:46]	Jansen Miles	Hiya. Hmm. First office hours?
[7:46]	Jansen Miles	Looks like you need to build a following. :)
[7:46]	Q Linden	Yup...but it wasn't well-announced. I failed to complete the wiki page properly ,and just figured it out this morning.
[7:46]	Q Linden	No biggie...I'll get it right next time. :-)
[7:47]	Q Linden	Did you just trip across it, or were you looking for office hrs?
[7:48]	Jansen Miles	No, I was checking office hours on the Wiki. I got up unusually early this morning and was wondering if any office hours coincided.
[7:48]	Q Linden	cool. anything in particular on your mind?
[7:48]	Jansen Miles	Nope. But I have some advice. You need to set out some chairs, or let us place our own. :)
[7:49]	Q Linden	see those? Those were supposed to be my chairs for the day.
[7:49]	Q Linden	I popped 'em up there this morning. :-)
[7:49]	Jansen Miles	Ah, okay. I didn't realize.
[7:50]	Q Linden	Or since there are so few people, we can go over to my gazebo
[7:50]	Jansen Miles	Maybe five or six chairs close to the campfire would seem more inviting.
[7:50]	Jansen Miles	So, you're a new Linden, but how long have you been on SL?
[7:50]	Basic Chair	Right click me and choose 'Sit Here' to sit down
[7:51]	Q Linden	just 2 months!
[7:51]	Jansen Miles	Oh wow.
[7:51]	Q Linden	So I'm really a n00b
[7:51]	Jansen Miles	You're even newer than me.
[7:52]	Q Linden	What attracted you to SL in the first place?
[7:53]	Jansen Miles	Well, I read Snowcrash in the 90s.
[7:53]	Q Linden	Heh. As did half this world, I think.
[7:53]	Q Linden	Did you have experience with other online communities?
[7:53]	Jansen Miles	And I'd heard about SL for a couple of years. It was on my list of things to check out and I finally got around to it.
[7:53]	Jansen Miles	No. Not really. I played MUDs in the 90s
[7:54]	Q Linden	Do you consider yourself a gamer?
[7:54]	Jansen Miles	And beta tested and played Asheron's Call 2.
[7:54]	Q Linden	ah, cool
[7:54]	Jansen Miles	I would say yes, but I'm definitely in the camp of "SL is not a game."
[7:54]	Q Linden	me too...on both counts
[7:54]	Q Linden	but I like to know what people have for background experience
[7:54]	Q Linden	as a reference
		[PERSONAL INFORMATION SNIPPED]
[7:56]	Q Linden	Do you build stuff in SL?
[7:57]	Jansen Miles	I do.
[7:57]	Q Linden	Code too?
[7:57]	Jansen Miles	Yep.
[7:57]	Q Linden	I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts -- what works well, what doesn't.
[7:58]	Jansen Miles	I have definite opinions although at this early hour (I'm PST remember), I don't know if I can say much that's intelligible.
[7:58]	Q Linden	:-)
[7:58]	Jansen Miles	I'm putting together a list of UI enhancements I think would be good.
[7:58]	Q Linden	We haven't invented virtual caffeine yet.
[7:59]	Jansen Miles	Mostly relating to the build tools.
[7:59]	Jansen Miles	Building is very primitive in SL. Pun not intentional.
[8:00]	Q Linden	Heh...yeah. A lot of my recent history has been spent making 3D construction tools, including tools for kids. So I care a lot about this area.
[8:00]	Q Linden	It's one place I hope to spend some of my development energy at Linden.
[8:00]	Jansen Miles	And the build editing tools are impressive as they're expressed in-world, but leave much to be desired when compared to what a professional content developer might expect from his/her tools.
[8:01]	Q Linden	Yeah
[8:01]	Q Linden	Do you have particular high points of pain?
[8:01]	Jansen Miles	Some of the problems are intractable at the moment. Such as the parent-child relationships of linked sets. I.e. one root only.
[8:01]	Q Linden	(when you say you're putting together a list, how do you plan to share that list?)
[8:02]	Jansen Miles	Through the JIRA.
[8:02]	Q Linden	excellent
[8:02]	Q Linden	do you know about the SL Dev mailing list for open source discussions?
[8:03]	Jansen Miles	...that would require major re-working of the SL object system. To smaller issues like the lack of ability to change point of rotation when rotating an object or linked set.
[8:03]	Q Linden	Yup, that's a problem I encountered this morning
[8:03]	Jansen Miles	I'm vaguely aware of SL Dev group activity, but I'm not directly involved.
[8:04]	Jansen Miles	I've attended one or two open source office hours.
[8:04]	Q Linden	Who else's have you been to?
[8:05]	Jansen Miles	And I'm familiar with Dale Glass' work because I see him at half the office hours I attend.
[8:05]	Q Linden	yup, he's been pretty involved, at least I've seen him around quite a bit
[8:06]	Jansen Miles	Rob, Lindie, Benjamin bug triages. Qarl. Zero. Torley. Blue.
[8:06]	Q Linden	oh, by the way...since this has ended up being a private session, is it OK with you if I post the transcript?
[8:07]	Jansen Miles	And I'm actually a bit surprised not to see Wyn Galbraith here. She seems to usually hit all the office hours I attend, although that may have something to do with you posting the hours late.
[8:07]	Jansen Miles	If you like.
[8:08]	Q Linden	I'd just like to establish a tradition of being open about everything that happens in my office hours
[8:09]	Q Linden	There were a couple of people who said they'd come if I held office hours, but I think that the late notice was a problem.
[8:09]	Jansen Miles	More than likely that was it.
[8:10]	Jansen Miles	So, what, in fact, is your role at LL? Boston. You were part of the Windlight team that came over?
[8:11]	Q Linden	No, actually. I was the first non-Windlight dev hired in Boston. I'm a game developer who became interested in SL. I'm just finishing up my "training" phase and looking around for what I should be spending time on now. User content creation tools is one possible area, as is architecture.
[8:12]	Q Linden	architecture meaning the long-term system design
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[8:16]	Jansen Miles	C++ and OpenGL?
[8:16]	Q Linden	My skillz? That and Python, Java if you make me.
[8:17]	Q Linden	That doesn't parse unambiguously -- I love python, not so much Java
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