New Truth & Beauty Lab Products 2/2012

The Truth & Beauty Lab (formerly Restless Studio) would like to inform you of some new products that may be useful, interesting, fun, entertaining, or otherwise of value.

Smart Rings and Smart Cuffs - http://bit.ly/y1hNrX

Stylishly textured in gold or silver, this line of single sculpted prim Smart Jewelry from the Truth & Beauty Lab can query Wikipedia, provide answers from Wolfram Alpha, emit a wide variety of particle displays, animate your avatar during particle displays, scan the area for objects and avatars, and target an object or avatar with a particle beam. One advantage of owning a Smart Ring or Smart Cuff is that, since the items are worn as attachments, you can travel anywhere on the grid and your Pandorabot featured ring or cuff is there to command.

Menhir Internationalized Pandorbots - http://bit.ly/ysFh7w

The Menhir Pandorabot is a single prim object shaped and textured as a Menhir ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir ). Menhir Pandorabots are scripted to include all the features of the Truth & Beauty Lab Pandorabots and the textured single sculpted prim provides a realistic recreation of a Menhir. Preconfigured Menhir language versions are available in English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Polski, and Português. The language configured Menhir will query the Wikipedia in that language, understanding that language chat and responding in that language when possible.

Smart Dance Pole & Smart Tip Jar Combo Pack - http://bit.ly/rMzxle

Automatically login an avatar and have it automatically start pole dancing, chatting, quoting Wikipedia, greeting new arrivals, delivering notecards and landmarks, monitoring and responding to group chat, and more. A super smart pole dance bot! The Truth & Beauty Lab Smart Dance Pole is scripted with the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On and configured for use as a dance pole. It is an artificially intelligent dance pole and integrates with the Smart Tip Jar, accepting tips, triggering a pole dancing bot to undress, emote, change outfits, and interact with your visitors. Using an integrated Smart Dance Pole and Smart Tip Jar allows you to maintain an artificially intelligent pole dancing bot avatar who accepts tips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year round without monthly fees or hourly charges. The Smart Tip Jar can automatically trigger your dance pole bot avatar to undress when a tip threshold is reached and get dressed after a specified duration. NOTE: The Smart Tip Jar splits all tips - 90% going to the owner and 10% going to the Truth & Beauty Lab.

T3-M4 Scanning Follower Droid - http://bit.ly/zj69hQ

The Truth & Beauty Lab T3-M4 Scanning Follower will follow its owner at a configurable offset and can be controlled via a dialog menu interface. Included in its features is the ability to scan the area for objects and avatars then assemble and display a report which includes statistics on the resource consumption of the detected objects and avatars. The T3-M4 Scanning Follower can fire a laser at selected avatars or detected objects/avatars from one of its scans. It also makes cute bot sounds. The boxed product includes preconfigured Scanning Followers - two T3-M4 Astromech Droids. The droids are a realistic reconstruction of the T3-M4 from the Old Republic Star Wars era. The T3-M4 Scanning Follower integrates with the Truth & Beauty Lab Pandorabots so versions of it that chat, query Wikipedia, supply answers from Wolfram Alpha, greet arrivals, etc are also available in the marketplace store. A single prim Eye Candy Scanning Follower is also available for those who prefer to conserve resources and display cool visuals while providing identical functionality as the 39 prim T3-M4 Scanning Follower.

Particle Textures Display Heart - http://bit.ly/y0Fyaa

This single prim sculpted heart rotates, emits particle displays using the particle textures in its contents, and accepts new particle textures allowing you to view your particle displays easily and quickly. The prim cycles through whatever particle textures are in its contents. Clicking the heart prim steps to the next particle texture.

Truth & Beauty Lab Heart Follower - http://bit.ly/y4rPKK

This single prim sculpted heart rotates, follows its owner at a specified offset, changes textures, emits particle displays, and can be used to scan the area for objects and avatars producing a complete detailed report.

Second Life Haiku Generator - http://bit.ly/AjiqZ9

Rez this portrait of Basho, the famous Japanese haiku poet, and click it to get an automatically generated Second Life related haiku. Each time the portrait is clicked a different Second Life related haiku will be generated. The large collection of words and phrases used to construct the haikus is constantly growing and the haikus are generated on a server so you never have to update the inworld object.

The Truth & Beauty Lab Marketplace - http://bit.ly/xaFZ92

Many more new, entertaining, informative, useful, fun, and interesting products are available at the Truth & Beauty Lab Marketplace. Please visit https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/44210 and browse the shop.

Feedback

Do you have suggestions, requests, comments, criticism, kudos, testimonials, funny stories, etc. concerning any of the Truth & Beauty Lab products? Email missyrestless@gmail.com or IM Missy Restless and let me know what you think. I'm always happy to help if I can and many products ideas and improvements have originated with suggestions and requests from clients & casual encounters.

How to Upgrade Your Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On

There have recently been a number of improvements to both METAbolt and the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On. Support for the recently released METAbolt Group Responder has been added to the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On. This allows your bot to detect trigger phrases in group chat and respond with customized group IM's. Additional security has been added to the METAbolt LSL API and configuration for this security feature has been added to the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On. Also added is support for easily moving your Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On to another SL object (e.g. a drum kit or dance pole). Many improvements have also been made to the Pandorabot scripts.

If you own a Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On and want to freely upgrade to the current version, you can do so by following these steps:

• Copy any changes you have made to configuration notecards
• Copy/Move any items you have added to the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim (e.g. landmarks, notecards, textures, ...)
• Take the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim back into your inventory (log your bot out, right click the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim and select "Take")
• IM Missy Restless (search for "Missy Restless", click on the "Missy Restless" search result, click on "View Full Profile", click "Instant Message")
• Drag and drop the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim item from your inventory onto the Instant Message window (note, the object will have the name of your bot)

You should receive the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On update as soon as I receive notice of the transfer. When you receive the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On box, rez it, open the box, copy the contents to your inventory, and rez the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim. You will need to re-do any changes you made to your previous Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On Base Prim (use the saved configuration notecards as reference). Note: I may be away from my computer - if you do not hear from me drop me a reminder.

Enjoy!

Text Clients Clothing Layer Problem

Recently several people have reported Second Life clothing display problems when using a text client to login their avatar. Users of both METAbolt and Radegast have seen problems which do not appear when a standard viewer is used (e.g. Viewer 2, Phoenix). I've verified this myself using a jacket layer corset from a Pandorabot owner.

You can read the METAbolt Forum topic discussions here and here.

The problem appears to be in the interaction between the libopenmetaverse library and the SL server code. Further complicating matters is the fact most clothing layers display properly and only a few items have been seen to display incorrectly.

So, what does this mean to you, the Second Life Pandorabot owner ? Well, if you do not use a text client then you have nothing to worry about. If, however, you own an Actorbot or METAbolt Add-On and log an alt in with one of these clients then you may see problems. Currently there is no known workaround and any fix needs to come from either Linden Lab or the Open Metaverse Foundation. All you can do is, after logging your alt in with a text client, login with a standard viewer and check your alt's appearance. If a clothing layer is not displaying properly you will need to replace that clothing item with another.

If you see any display problems with text clients please let me know and I will pass the information along to the appropriate forums. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Now METAbolt Site Is Down

Today the METAbolt site http://metabolt.net went down and continues to be unavailable. Earlier this week the Sine Wave Actorbot site http://sinewaverobots.com was down for several days. Kinda makes you wonder, huh? Is somebody attacking virtual world bot websites ? Probably just coincidence. Or not.

People who access Second Life with METAbolt can still login using the METAbolt client but issuing a command (e.g. change clothing folder) and anything else that uses the website does not work.

I'll comment here, post to the Facebook page, Plurk, and Tweet when metabolt.net is back up.

Sine Wave Actorbot Site Down!

The Sine Wave Actorbot site at http://www.sinewaverobots.com is down and has been down for several days. This means that all Pandorabot Actorbot Add-Ons are unable to login to Second Life. I do not know when or if the Sine Wave Actorbot site will be restored.

All owners of the Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On can exchange their purchased product for a free Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On by IM'ing Missy Restless inworld or  emailing missyrestless@gmail.com and requesting an exchange. The METAbolt Add-On can do almost everything the Actorbot Add-On can do, is lighter weight, frequently updated, and well supported. In fact, even when Sine Wave is up I recommend METAbolt over Actorbot for all uses except those requiring your bot to sit on another prim and return (e.g. sex bot).

Actorbot users who do not own the Pandorabot Actorbot Add-On may wish to switch to METAbolt. The Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On can be purchased on the Second Life Marketplace at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Pandorabot-METAbolt-Add-On/1793057 for L$395

Why Am I Getting "HTTP error ..." From My Pandorabot?

Occasionally your Pandorabot might reply with the message "HTTP error ...". This happens when the request to pandorabots.com times out. If you see this error, open a browser and go to http://pandorabots.com to verify that the site is up. If the site is down then check back later, hopefully service will be restored shortly. If the site is up, verify that you can chat with the default Pandorabot there by visiting http://pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=85173fb54e344b2d and entering any text in the "Tell Ana" field.

If pandorabots.com is down or otherwise unavailable then the AI chat facility will be disabled. The Pandorabot will still be able to query Wikipedia, greet new arrivals, deliver notecards & landmarks, and all other functions. It will just reply with "HTTP error ..." when attempting to access pandorabots.com.

Missy Returns!

I have been afk for a while but have returned all refreshed from swimming and sunning and eating and drinking and <insert fun thing here>. I will answer all the email and IM questions I received while away as soon as possible.

p.s. RL is super fun sometimes!