Presto vs tickets

**EDITED BELOW. NEW INFO IS IN BOLD**
New info has been used by me personally when my step dad and i had to go somewhere today

Recently I bought a Presto bus pass and was able to use it for a bus trip down to a local Future Shop store. Years ago i use to have to buy bus tickets to travel on the bus which was a pain to do and why i stopped using the bus. Here is my list of the pros and cons between old paper tickets and the new presto card.
By the way, this is for the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Ontario (Canada) area aka GTHA but I do know that some cities in the USA and other countries have similar systems in place.

Presto Pros

1. Can reload online using interact online.
2. Can check your balance and see transit history as well as get a print out for Public Transit Tax Credit from the Presto website.
3. Just tap the card on a Presto card reader at any stop and on any bus.
4. No need to wait for a transfer to be printed, Presto's system will see your transfer as a transfer if tapped on a 2nd bus within an hour after you tapped on the first bus. So your ride would only cost you for that first bus ride.
5. Very handy for those on a fixed monthly income. Load the card when you get paid and don't have to worry if you have money for the bus close to the end of the month.
6. Only need to carry 1 credit card size card, no need trying to find a valid bus ticket.
7. Can travel from Hamilton via HSR to Pickering (or Pearson Airport) via Go train/bus then transferring to the TTC with just 1 card. No need to buy different fees and tickets for different public transportation.
8. Tap and go. No need to try to get your ticket or money into the fare machine and no need to worry if you have exact change. Fare fee is deducted out of your Presto account that the card is set to.
9. No monthly, yearly or load fees.
10. Uses NFC technology to transmit the card's number to the receiving Presto fare box.
11. Presto has discount rates for students and seniors.
12. Presto offers replacement card for lost, stolen or damaged cards without costing any extra and you don't lose your balance.
13. Saving trees since the card is plastic and not paper.
14. Can pay for multiple passengers with just 1 card.

Presto Cons

1. Their website is not mobile friendly yet but it is accessible from any smartphone.
2. Takes 24 to 48 hours for your card to be fully active and registered. Have to wait 24 hours before you can register your card on their website.
3. There is a $6 fee when you first buy it and only load it with $10. For Hamilton as a promotion, its $20 and the $6 fee is waived.
4. No mobile app yet but they do say on their FAQ that they are investigating on doing a app.
5. Can't put holes in the card because that can damage the antenna and chip that is inside of the card.
6. Can only buy the card on the Presto website and at certain stores. For Hamilton they are only sold at most Fortinos stores.
7. Balance does not get updated until the bus(s) or train(s) arrives as a Presto wifi update station. This usually happens at night when the bus/train pulls into its maintenance garage for the night to be cleaned and refueled for the next day.
8. When loading your card, it won't show up in the Presto card reader till the next day for the exact same reason as number 7.
9. Have to tap the main box first to pay for your fare then tap the transfer printer for each guest and wait for that guest's transfer ticket to be printed then can tap again on that same box for your next guest.

Ticket Pros

1. Can get on the bus at a cheaper rate than with cash.
2. Can gift the ticket to a friend or family member very easily.
3. Can write stuff on the ticket before putting it into the fare box.
4. Most stores sell bus tickets.
5. Most stores sell different bus tickets for adults, seniors and students all set at their discount price.
6. If you want to kiss your money goodbye you can wrap it around some weed and smoke it.
7. Can get on a bus as soon as you buy a ticket. No waiting 24 to 48 hours.

Ticket Cons

1. Very easy to lose, your screwed once lost.
2. Very easy to rip which could cause the fare box to void the ticket forcing you to buy another to get on the bus.
3. No mobile app or website to store your bus ticket on. Its paper!
4. Can only use one ticket per bus. Have to get a printed transfer if you are needing to ride more than 1 bus.
5. To go from Hamilton to Pearson Airport would require you to buy multiple tickets for multiple rides along your journey.
6. Sometimes difficult to get your ticket into the fare box. Box sometimes can get jammed or filled up with tickets.
7. Depends on how many tickets you buy can become very bulky in your purse or wallet.
8. Can run out of tickets and money close to the end of the month if on a fixed monthly income.

So there you have it. Thats my lists between Presto and tickets for public transportation in the GTHA.

Overall i have to say that Presto makes it super easy and worry free to use public transportation.
I can seriously go from my place in Stoney Creek all the way to Pearson International Airport and back with just 1 card and not have to deal with multiple tickets and fare prices.
Granted, HSR, Go and TTC all have different fare prices but those prices are deducted from my Presto account, all i have to do is check the prices for all 3 and add that amount to my card a day before my journey then just tap and go.
And Presto is working on ways to better improve the system so it will soon be even easier to use the card. I know delivery and taxi drivers all carry mobile interact machines so im sure Presto will use the same kind of technology as those machines uses so when you tap, the fare is deducted right there, no waiting 24 hours.

Anyways hope this helps explain how these new cards work. Happy new years world.

4 reasons why not to use public standalone for opensim.

First off just like to thank by buddy Tim from Zetamex with doing this list.
This list is for public use of standalones.

1. Strain of having grid services and region load on the same instance.
2. OpenSim's HTTP service can barely handle the requests it has now, forcing opensim to serve both as a standalone just makes things worse.
3. Standalones are not able to contain large traffic, and often need restarting.
4. Limited to just a few regions that the computer can handle‏.

These 4 reasons are why Tim doesn't offer standalones and why i always suggest not using it as a public grid.
I do use a standalone with 2 sims for personal use and testings but i made it so no one else can get on which is fine for just testing scripts but standalone for others to visit and use is very bad.
I lag with just 2 standalone sims on a 12GB ram, 3.1GHZ quad core cpu, but of course i load balance my 2 sims when i boot it up. Most of the time its just unused files on my 1TB hard drive. But I will be converting my standalone to Robust in a few weeks so I don't lag as much as I do right now with it being standalone.

I have seen people use standalones as a public grid and usually the person who made the grid would put up like 10 to 100 sims then complain on social media that they are lagging. Well gee i wonder why. You're using a standalone to host 10 to 100 sims.

Lets break it down to simple terms.

Opensim.exe can only mostly handle sim activity like walking, local chat talking, rezzing, prim settings, physics, scripts, lighting, terraforming, and parcel's. Thats it. You then make the program have to handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts its gonna choke and cause lag, even if you have just 1 or 2 sims, Opensim.exe will choke.

This is why experienced grid admins like me, Tim and afew others always strongly suggest opening a grid with Robust.exe cuz that can handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts allowing Opensim.exe to just handle all the actual region stuff. Granted Opensim.exe still has to do alot and still chokes and lags when in Robust mode but its less compared to when its in Standalone mode because it doesn't have to deal with everything else that Robust can do.

Also with Robust, you can get as many servers you can afford and host tons of sims across those servers that can connect to your one robust server acting as 1 grid. That's how Linden Labs does it with Second Life, and it's how other big grids like InWorlds, 3rd Rock Grid and Metro does it.
With Standalone, you can only have 1 server hosting everything off of 1 Opensim.exe

So next time you want to boot up a standalone, please remember this blog and go with Robust.

new found hope

Just when i was starting to think i suck at making websites and i should just give up, some moron comes around and says more, what they would think, hurtful things to me which actually made me realize the bright side of my situation.
I R SMARTZ.
Atek grid attacked me on G+ and said they are going to inform the FBI that im a hacker.
Ok first off, good luck, ill be over here in CANADA laughing my ass off.
Secondly, ill be here laughing while the fbi sees that i make secured websites.
Third, laughing over all cuz Atek has made me realize that I am good at php and lsl. I have a very secured website that uses php and mysql in a secured way. The cookies for users are encrypted (even the user ID in the cookie is hashed), my lsl sends and receives secured POST data, i use the latest recaptcha to prevent bots from joining my site, i use bitcoins as a form of premium membership payment (dont worry im looking, researching and testing ways to pay with in world currency as well), only iframes i use is for the recaptcha so no loading external websites, i have drop support for gravatar, and my site is mobile friendly which means the site will load and resize automatically to fit any window/screen size.
What does Atek website have? Lets do a compare on this.

Feature - Vampire City - Atek
Legit SSL (HTTPS) - Yes - No
Secured Cookies and Sessions - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Encrypted transmission of data - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Use of iFrame - only for recaptcha by google - all over the place
Use of latest software - Yes (php 5.4) - No (outdated old ColdFusion)
Is the site for a grid - No - Yes (Vampire City is NOT a grid)
Multi Grid support - Yes - No
Multi Avatar support - Yes - No
Mobile friendly - Yes - No
Does it violate privacy policy laws? - No (well i hope not) - Looks like the registration page does
Website engine - Nginx Community Edition - Apache
Obey Cookie Laws? - Yes - NOPE! (Atek places 2 cookies for just viewing the site without informing the visitor, Vampire City only places 1 for visitors and 3 more at login but users are informed)

So the question here is, which site is better? Ignore the fact that Vampire City is my site and just look at that over all and tell me which site you rather visit? Then ask yourself, is Chris a hacker or just a guy who really knows his stuff?

I did this blog because it was actually bugging me that someone from the Atek grid would say things to me and call me a hacker all because I found some problems with their website that could pose a security threat to their site. In fact it is the same problems as i found with the CloudServ website. Now im not going to make the problems public but i do hope Atek fixes the problems that i found and quit calling me a hacker. I spent 5 years as a real life security guard so i bring my experience from that plus doing websites for 15 years to the metaverse. I will admit i have had my ups and downs, Vampire City was hacked, SQL injected and DDOS'd in the past but those mistakes has helped me learn how to protect the site from attacks.
And i gotta say, looking back at the past history of Vampire City, compared with Atek, i gotta say i am doing a fantastic job now.
So heres to a bright future of making a site i been wanting to make for years. A social networking and role playing website for vampire and lycan lovers.

12 steps to add a sim in opensim

This is just a quick way to add a new sim to a opensim standalone/grid. Mostly for those who dont know how to do it.
Hope it helps.

1. copy the Regions.ini file from one folder to another
2. in the new copy open the ini file and change the sim name that is in brackets.
Example: [Sim name here]
3. change the RegionUUID, can get a UUID from https://www.uuidgenerator.net/
4. change the location to where on the map you want the new sim to be at. Remember it can NOT be the same location as another sim.

5. ignore InternalAddress but change InternalPort to any port that is available on that server. I personally like to do 9000 for the first sim then increase the port number by 1 for each sim after so i can just look at the last created sim, get its port and add 1 to it.

[optional for varregions]

ignore 6 and go right to 7 if you are making SL size sims. Default is 256 which is SL like.

6. change SizeX and SizeY to the size desired/requested for var's. Ignore SizeZ since that is useless.7. save the new ini and close it then go to the console.

8. If the console for the sim is already going, go to it and type shutdown then hit enter. Once shut down start it back up.

9. Once back up the console will see the new sim, if this is a new instance for the sim itself then go to 10.

10. if its the first time for this console it usually will create the database tables IF the Opensim.ini in another folder is set correctly. Let the console do its thing.

11. Once the console is done and it sees a new sim it will ask questions like if you want to hook up the sim to a existing estate or to create a new one. This is up to you.
12. The console will then ask for the first name of the avatar who will own this new sim, enter the person's avatar first name, it will then ask for the last name. once done the sim loads up in world and that owner can do whatever he wants and you can go about your day again.

I quit Zetamex

For the past year before joining Zetamex i been fighting suicide and depression. I joined thinking that it would help me but instead it has been nothing but bullshit after bullshit from the opensim community. Not only has Zetamex been vocally attacked by others on Hypergrid Business and Google Plus community's but also by support tickets. My problem is that I have a mental problem of taking it personally and effects me, on top of it, i wasn't getting paid at all for what i was doing and putting up with. Not one Canadian penny.

I was going to seek help just after my 30th bday (jan 16) but then was hired by Tim as a volunteer so I was focused on that and it was good for while, then negative stuff and drama started and my stress kept rising. I started to feel like what Tim and I were doing was not good enough. Then Tim gave the company on the same day for the same reason as Notch selling Minecraft to Microsoft. It was that day i was going to quit and take care of myself but i held on.

Yesterday (Oct 24) someone posted a private convo i had with him. Now i have not read it and im sure some of it is lies because he said in the convo with me that i was threatening him. I never once did. Yes i told him the truth about AviWorlds because, well, its out in the open what Alex does when things go bad for his grid. I also informed this guy that i still live with my parents and they were sleeping so i couldnt talk on mic but the guy kept calling me so yea i got pissed off, thats when he went all paranoid and threaten to call the police on me. What you dont know is that he kept harrassing me by email till i blocked him. All of that was the night of Oct. 23. He then posted some of it the next morning. I found out through a dear friend and that triggered my anxiety which then triggered urges of throwing myself out of my bedroom window to 6 floors down to the ground and landing on a parked car. Instant death. That was then i decided that enough is enough and i need to guit Zetamex and get help and thats what i did. I told him that i quit and why then called the police who then later arrived and escorted me down to the hospital.

I do wish all the best to Tim and the Zetamex team and really hope they continue on making great products for opensim using php and what i wrote for them.
Now if you could excuse me, I have weight to lose, mental problems to deal with and a gay relationship to fix with my high school sweetheart.

Sincerely Christopher Strachan aka Chrisx84
Christina Vortex - Opensim grids.
VenumusVortex Resident - SL
Venumus - most World of Warcraft private servers and blizzard servers.

is this rollercoaster over with yet?

Its been a hella of a ride for me these past few months since coming on as just to make a vendor and rental system for Zetamex.
What was suppose to be a 1 month thing has end up putting me as 2nd lead website developer and CTO for Zetamex. Tim is always first even though he is learning php, html, jquery and bootstrap off of me.
Now with MyZetamex near completion and ZetamexTech only has about 1 month of testings, i have decided to announce here as to what is about to happen with me.
No im not leaving Zetamex, sorry to disappoint all you haters.

First off, I got opensim.directory to finish, zetamextech to launch, zetamexstatus.com to finish rewriting THEN, AND THEN!
I will be rewriting the following websites,
zetamex.com
gridpress.com
zadaroo.com
and zetamexlabs.com
As for the zadaroo site, will just be making it easier to navigate the website on any device, making API friendly calls and giving tim more control to do what he wants with it.
While i was working on the ZetamexWeb (formally OpensimWeb) i decided to test a theory to see if I could convert a copy of ZmW and turn it into a simple website system and sure enough i did as you will see with zetamexstatus.com
So all of the above sites, since they dont need so much security will be rewriten with zmws (zetamex web service).

As for projects outside of zetamex.
I will be getting back to my number 1 passion. /gasp OMG php is not my number 1 passion?
Music has always been my first passion with php as my second.
I plan to get back to finishing my 2nd album titled Spacial Radiation. It, as with my first failed album title Nebula, it will be alien techno. Basicly its music as if a alien from another planet was doing human music.
Also been thinking, and will talk to Tim about this, do Zetamex Radio.
That way with any future meetings/presentations we do on our office sim, we can do by voice via the radio channel instead of relying on vivox.
Yes it will have a auto dj but also would like to get some live shows and some news too. And as always Dj ChrisX (thats me btw) will return to the cyber air waves after a long 2 year absence since leaving a few Star Trek Online radio stations.
ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT!
I am also planning on getting back to making YouTube videos. I have returned to Minecraft but i still refuse to play anything past 1.7, and certainly not offical Minecraft. I been playing a Feed The Beast mod pack called Mindcrack which is a modified version of 1.4.5, when the game was perfect.
Anyways I will release a video soon about some stuff that all you Zetamex fans will be interested in ;)
Till then keep calm & party hard-core.

Prices are way to high

I get that the price to create, package and ship is costly but come on. $6 for a jar of coffee, $2 for a pack of halls, $3 for a loaf of locally made bread.
Or how about this. $169 for a simple android tablet or $1,099 for a Dell desktop computer.
For someone on disability those prices are just way to high.
I actually had to cancel my sim with Zetamex yesterday, not because of the recent drama with that company, its because after buying all i needed to survive for the month i had no money left.
Some of you may think that $15 is nothing but to me its alot since that is like 1 McDonalds value hamburger per day for 10 days.
Prices for food is just way to expensive for those on a small fixed income by their government.
Then all these tech company's tempt you with all these good gadgets and at first they are very nice and you want one but cant afford it.
"Everyone has a tablet" not really. If you look at the majority of Canadians and Americans. Most of them cant afford a cheap tablet because they either have no job or on a fixed government income that is very tiny.
I would love to have a windows 8 tablet but it's either that or food for the month. Clearly im not going to let myself die from starvation all because i want a tablet.
Same with cars. My parents car is falling apart and is close to being sent to the scrap yard but they cant afford a new car, not even a used one.

In short, price of things are just way to high for most people right now and i really wish company's would lower their prices before it gets really bad and out of control. I fear if life continues like this, there are going to be alot of suicides. People will become so depressed wanting and needed things that they just cant afford that they will kill themselves instead just to end the pain.
Don't worry im not going to kill myself but it is depressing me.
I'm just posting this so people in the same situation as I am in can know that they are not alone.
If you are feeling suicidal because of the way prices for things are to high for you to afford please take a look at this website i found. http://www.suicide.org/suicide-hotlines.html or just google suicide hotline

Anyways thats it for this blog. Thanks for reading it. And remember you are not alone.

Rebirth of a developer

Few months ago when i was still on the Littlefield Grid, i created a vendor system that records buyers to a external database website and called it LittleVend. The website and domain was LittleTech.net
It was a simple system that gave inventory but didnt accept any money. However i did plan to release this to other grids that did have money so i wrote code to only accept money if the amount for a product was more then zero and allow direct BUY from a dialog window if the price was zero. Example: If a smellagram was set to L$0 then the buyer would only need to touch the sign and a menu would pop up with the option button called BUY, when the buyer presses that it gives the inventory directly to them avoiding the whole money() event.
I also had other plans for this for LFG such as a drop box since giveinventory was working across sims on LFG.
However LittleTech died when i was banned from LFG for saying something (rather not get into that again)

Fast forward 3 months later and i saw a comment by the owner of Zetamex saying he was going to do a vendor system. I then left a comment basicly saying that i would give him what i wrote so far. Meaning he takes it with no strings attached and do whatever he wanted with the scripts. Even had a website in the works for him to.
About a day after leaving that comment, he got a hold of me and offered me a job on the spot doing the vendor system for him. Now i was shocked since i been learning php and lsl on my own. Then he told me why he wanted me was because exactly that. Learning on your own with no schooling on the languages was what convinced him to hire me. I didnt even submit a resume, i just offered code to help him get started.
So of course i said yes. And thats when it all changed.

Fast forward another 3 months and WOW what a trip.
Right after i was offically hired i got to work on what he hired me to do. GridVend!
With a newly lit fire under my ass and a server to work on at my finger tips i started writing away.
Hammering at my keyboard typing code, hammering at my brain when lines of that code dont work.
In the end i have made it. GridVend and GridRent! Two powerful systems that wont cause grids to freak out.
Web base settings so no need to play with notecard configs.
llResetScript() is triggered every time the prim the scripts are in are re-rezzed so no save state.
Dropbox system for both vend and rent so no need placing product in every rezzed vendor system.
You can have the same product show up on multiple vendor prims around your grid without having to put your product in every rezzed vendor.
No need to put the same notecards in every rezzed rental box. Just drop 1 copy of rented and available into the same dropbox, set each rental box to those notecards on the site and away you go.
Website uses Bootstrap 3.x so you can edit your products, vendors and rentals right from your smartphone's browser while on the go.
Website also uses a Quadodo Login System for managing logins and registration. And i have also added a system so you can link all your avatars to one account (where ever GridVend/GridRent is supported). So no need making multiple accounts to manage your gridvend/gridrent on multiple grids.
API friendly for both in world and on the website. Start writing your own products that will work seemlessly with our systems or create a buyer's list for your website/records.

Now enough of how uber leet my LittleVend idea has turned out to be and onto working at Zetamex.
One word can only describe it. AWESOME!
Or how about two. F***ING AWESOME!
It's been more like working WITH Timothy instead of working FOR Timothy.
When i was doing Little Tech, it was just me and me alone to do everything. Website, lsl, testings, marketing, sales, etc.
With Zetamex. Well lets just say at this legit company, there is no I in team and it is really felt here :D
When Tim needs my help, i help him the best i can. When I need tim's help, he helps me the best he can.

And now with Vend and Rent almost done with final testings I can finally move onto what i was thinking of doing when Tim offered me the job so many months ago.
Role Playing combat system.
Vampire Bloodbyte system simular to Bloodlines in SL.
And now with avatars able to cross sims while in a vehicle on a bulletsim region i plan to take full advantage of this and do a train and bus system. Meaning vehicles follow a set path on its own. To get a idea of this go check out SLRR (Second Life RailRoad). Or think of it as JohnnyCab from the 1990 movie Total Recall. In the movie he to followed a set path to Douglas Quaid's destination.

Anyways my hands now hurt from typing this so back to watching netflix and youtube.
This was just me blogging about what my life as a scripter has been these past 9 months.
Be sure to check out www.gridvend.com for all the latest info on GridVend, GridRent, GridCombat and GridRails.
Live long and prosper.

How far we have come

I been looking around lately and been thinking and amazed of how far we as humans have gone in the way of technology.

It was only roughly 14 years ago when Windows XP first hit store selves and people are rushing to get a copy just to get away from that boring grey toolbar. 14 years later we can colorize our toolbar and we have touch screen.

It was only roughly 16 years ago when Google was born which spent all their time, money and effort on improving the internet for everyone. Now Google can be accessed on any device that has a internet connection.

It was only roughly 31 years ago when the first .com domain was registered. Now there's billions of domains registered all around the world.

But that was just the internet. It feels like only afew years ago when cell phones were just black pixels on a pukie green screen. Now cell phones are more then just to make a call. They are full HD colour, can play games, access the internet, send text, pictures and video to friends and social media sites. I once saw a video on YouTube that was made in the 1960's, or 50's, predicting the future and the narrator said something about the average american will have his or her music player, camcorder, phone and tv all in 1 device with a spot for their money, and i grabbed my android smartphone and said "yea its called a smart phone".

I look back at how we humans were before Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Gene Roddenberry and am just amazed of how those two people really change the world. Back then people didn't have proper long distance communication, they were only able to talk with their neighbors. When they needed to send a message or invoice to someone on the other side of the country, they sent it by postal "snail" mail. Kids played outside with others.

Now we can chat and interact with people all around the world while at our computer devices while laying in bed or at the office. Programmers no longer need to be at a office to do work, they can work with their team from home. Kids play video games with other kids online.

When I was a kid (oh boy showing my age now) computers and the internet wasn't as popular as it is today so most people didn't know about it. I did because my dad had a windows 95 computer for his work and i remember playing afew simple games on it. When i got my first computer at home (parents were divorced) I was 16 and cable internet was just slowly coming out but wasn't yet available in the area where i lived with my mom so we were still on dial up, also the computer was really old, could only handle dial up.
Now there is cable internet, fiber optics and LTE for mobile devices like smart phones, smart watches and tablets.

Now I wonder what our technology would be like in another 10 to 20 years. Will we be even more closer to Star Trek than we are now? Will we be able to use our advancement in computer science to finally travel outside our solar system and meet other species? Only the future will know.

So with all that said I like to now say thank you to afew people. First off to you for reading this.
Steve Jobs for inventing the micro computer now known as Personal Computer, the spark of mobile computing starting with the iPod and iPad.
Bill Gates for inventing the best operating system which helped greatly on our revolution in computers.
Gene Roddenberry for imagining of what our future could look like through Star Trek which sparked those ideas in Bill and Steve.
wikipedia.com for history information of the internet.

Heres to another 10 to 20 years of new inventions and improvements in computer science.
Bye for now.

Canada eh

The true north, not strong and for sure not free. Or so the rest of the world thinks.

We pay taxes on EVERYTHING! Well almost everything, only afew items are not taxed. Not sure about other provinces but here in Ontario our tax rate is 14% HST. Not GST or PST but HST. Which is both PST and GST in 1.
PST = Provincial Sales Tax
GST = Government Sales Tax (Federal)
HST = Harmonized Sales Tax (PST and GST in one tax)
And what do they do for it? NOTHING! Our healthcare is still shit, our roads are still shit, our crime rate is still high and unemployment is still high.

Healthcare
Our premier says that wait times in ER's are at a all time low, people are waiting less to see a doctor.
That is a bullshit lie. I wait an hour to see my family doctor and just recently i had to go to the hospital's ER because i couldn't stop twitching. I waited 2 hours just for a doctor to see me and say i have psychogenic tremors. Then waited another 30 minutes just for 1 pill to take to help calm down the twitches until i could talk to my family doctor who at the time was on holiday's so i had to wait 2 weeks to see her. That is just a example of our healthcare wait time. Other parts of it i will say is great. Got afew doctors out of McMaster that seem to not know what they are doing and others wont prescript helpful medication. For example, i use to get amoxicillin for my ears since i was 3 when the tubes in my ears collapsed and had fake ones put in to reopen my own tubes. But since then i keep getting infections. Amoxicillin helped alot with that. Now my new family doctor wont give it to me so now i have to suffer.

But enough of that. Now for roads.
All they do to fix the roads is either patch them or replace them with fresh ash vault. Like seriously? Heavy transport trucks ruins those almost instantly. All we need is a good heat wave and bam, freshly paved road ruined again. The only road here in Hamilton that hasn't need repairs is Parkdale Ave. since that is all cement which i think is a great idea and all roads should be cemented.

Our crime rate here needs help too. In just 1 week this year this city has had 2 murders. Thats pretty sad since today is only Jan 07 2014. And all last year there was lots of murders, robberies, drunk drivers, people not wearing seat belts, morons using their cellphone while driving and people dealing drugs. Police i think are doing a great job doing their best to fight crime but i think their should be more officers on the streets.
Also another improvement is we need tougher penalties and possibly bring back the death sentence. Maybe then these criminals will think twice before doing a crime.

Unemployment is still high with more and more companies closing because taxes and cost of operations are higher here then China. Those who are here have right high rates. Take cell phone providers for example. We Canadians pay through the noise for service. Even though im very happy with service and price with Fido, other Canadians are not with their provider. Cable and Fiber optics internet and TV service is the same way. High prices for shit service. Hell i think that goes for everything here.

Our government needs a good stiff kick in the common sense head. They lie to win a election then they lie to us after. The healthcare thing is a great example of that. Some of us Canadians like myself feel that we just vote in a mascot and the country is actually controlled by the banks. The saying "Voted by the people for the people" for the past few decades has been a load of bullshit.

So theres today's Canada in a nutshell. If anyone got any more questions about Canada please feel free to ask me on g+ or on the Great Canadian Grid, avatar name is Christina Vortex or watch the Rick Mercer Report on YouTube and on CBC. He tells all about today's Canada in the most funniest way possible :)

My observations of Walter

And i dont give a shit if the majority of Littlefield grid hates me for this but it needs to be said NOW.
What is said here is true. I don't find the point in lying at all.
For almost a year i have raised my eyebrow in real life alot over how this fool reacts to everything.
First thing is how he responds to anything related to children. He reacts to these situations very unprofessional. For example afew of us were chatting with him one night and he said that a gay couple wanted to have a baby. First off what is the problem with that other then the fact that no child avatars allowed. He went on in a anger voice saying "just don't let me see it" like wtf. So if i got with someone on lfg and we wanted to play family, we can't even have a prim baby or he will have a rage fit?
Another situation that he stupidly blabbed about is that he recently banned a pedophile. First off how would he have know that the newly joined person was a pedophile and why ban that person since, and here is where i started to question about him. There is no one under 18 allowed on the grid and no child avatars so there be no way for that pedophile to have "his fun". Maybe he just wanted to build, script and have adult only fun. After all the grid is adult only fun, great grid for registered sex offenders to go have fun without violating their parole.

Now onto his anger. Heads up, its way worst than mine surprisingly.
Starting with the recent bs.
I recently said on a hypergrid business post "finally a place i can call home" in response to the great canadian grid. I was referring to the fact that im Canadian and the grid is Canadian. I was planning to have LFG as my work place since Omen and I have tons of work to do that needed to be done by Jan 16, my 30th bday. Walter saw it last night and gave me one huge bitchfest rage fit and deleted my sim that I had paid for. I paid $80 for 4 sims in November that were taken down shortly after because i cant afford them, never got a refund, i had just 1 sim up and was moved, i figure that $80 went to pay off this 1 sim, guess his anger is affecting his judgement because he deleted it without issueing me a refund. Any mature person would of calmly ask me what i ment by that and ask what i plan on leaving LFG. I would of been more then happy to explain my plans to still stay on LFG as a job grid since thats where little tech first started. But after him going off on me last night, hell no.
Another rage fit from walter was Dec 26 when my friend Omen didnt do his dj show. First off, Omen is a nice guy and is has some rl issues to deal with, also its the day after christmas and the grid was dead when we were on so Omen didnt do his show. You think no biggy since its was the holiday's. Walter raged on him for a no show. Like fucking seriously? It was the fucking holiday's. Give the guy a break.
Theres been more times of walter not handling situations as a mature professional adult but i forgot them sorry.

So theres my view of Walter Balazic from my own eyes without influance from anyone else.
Everyone else on LFG i dont got a problem with, well except for Bubbles Journey only because i find her to be very bossy and more dummer then my ex stacy. In fact Bubbles makes my ex look smart. But thats the only problem i have with bubbles. Everyone else on LFG i love and will miss dearly. I really hope to see them soon on the Great Canadian Grid.
Sincerely Christina Vortex aka Chrisx84

P.S. Just been thinking about this more and like to add something about couples having a virtual family. I personally don't really like to be around kids ONLY because of past history when i was a kid and so i dont really know how to act or say around them but i am learning. But i would never EVER make others suffer in a virtual world because of my own past.

its been so long

Wow almost dec and i haven't done a blog yet. Well heres one, probably the last for 2013 so shall we begin. (yea i quoted the new khan)

This past wednesday i got myself a Samsung Galaxy S3 mini and been madly in love with it. The Android Operating System really kicks ass and i really hope it becomes a OS for ALL computing devices including laptops and desktop computers. Because of my new droid i been mad busy with in world scripting and making my Little Tech website droid friendly.
However my phone bill for this month is insanely high but gotta call Fido anyways about it. (here comes the rage) I noticed that there is a charge of $5 that i did NOT authorize on my bill from Gameloft. WELL FUCK ME SIDE WAYS! I know damn well i didnt allow that because i never heard of these assholes till tonight so im now sitting at my desk and parked my avi on the phoenix rising sim on the littlefield grid to calm the fuck down, tis helping but im still fucking pissed off that these fucking assholes can do this bullshit and think they can get away with it. GUESS WHAT JERK FACES! You just fucked with the wrong asshole. I will do what i can to have your company thrown in jail! And let that be a warning for anyone else who are planning to screw me over.
I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF PEOPLE TREATING ME LIKE IM A FUCKING RETARD AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ME!
(alot of other people have used me in the past so now im snapping)
Another rage is that the Hamilton Ti Cats (Canadian Football team) really needs to fire their Quarterback and get a new one because Burris sucks balls as a QB. He either over throws the ball or under throws it. I can be a better QB then this moron and last time i played football was in high school.
Anyways even though the cats lost this years Grey Cup (Canadian version of the Super Bowl) im very glad that the cats finally got to the final game after 14 seasons of failures. Last time we won the cup was 1999.

Now for some good stuff.

I LOVE LITTLEFIELD GRID!
Ok enough sucking up to the admins. Got my vending system out for all to use. It does hook up to my server but only stores prim key and the prim's owner name as well as names of buyers and am now working on a market place website for the system, wont be like SL's market place because of the llGiveInventory not giving to avatars on other sims and the fact that i cant send data into the grid because the email() event and functions are turned off in LFG (which is perfectly fine and understandable by me so not complaining) so the market place would just be kinda like window shopping and since its phone browser friendly thnx to bootstrap V3 you can shop while shopping in RL, just please try not to walk into any walls, shelves, poles or other shoppers.
To sweeten off this service, i will soon be working on other great services like kick ass teleport pads, thinking of a advertising system, tv, radio and more all only for the Littlefield grid.

Anyways enough typing for now. Hopefully this wont be the last blog for 2013 but if it is Merry Christmas and a happy new year. And for my fellow atheists, merry meh!

Nerd update

Well this is lovely. Not only did i forget to do this today but its been 2 weeks since i did a blog and alot has happened. Even today alot of shit went down so here it all is.

Today I lost a friend but good riddance :D that idiot was nothing but a major pain in my ass and he lives in Denmark. For the past week I been helping him with his own php based cms but during the weekend not only did he make 2 different repo's that i didnt have access to with my code but he also deleted afew lines and modifed other lines to the point that what i did either didnt exist or didnt work the way i ment for them to. So that was the start of me getting pissed with him. MONDAY was my day off cuz it was canadian thanks giving. Did i get any kind of nerd break? NOOOOOOO! He wanted to install this facebook like chat but was having a hard time integrating it even though it says how to on its website. So i told him to put the code up and ill do it the next day. Well fuck me side ways afew hours later he said he was going to pay someone to do it for him. WELL FUCK ME UP THE MOTHER FUCKING ASS! So today i was still trying to not rage on him and he starts on me again today saying that i treat him like a pet and he was sick of it. Could the bullshit get any worst? Probably if i didnt block him after telling him a piece of my rage. For years this fucking idiot has treated me like a fucking pet and always undid all my work all because i did it better then him. I had afew people tell me that this danish guy is a idiot and now i fully agree with them. One person that said he is a idiot is my mother. She said that after i told her all what has happened. Gray, you are 100% right and im 1 million percent sorry.

So theres that!
Now for my past idea. Well that went to shit just like all my other ideas. Unix C Hosting fucked me for a dedicated server and now wont return my $100 CAD and theres no way for me to get it back or alert Paypal. So im pretty well fucked for that money till my next pay at the end of this month. But Unix C aint the first to fuck me over but i hope they are the last cuz im tired of dishin out money and not get the proper service with no refund.
As for Vampire City the game. I still really much want to do it and been meshing and texturing like crazy using Littlefield Grid as my test engine to go over each mesh. The only problem im having right now is settling on a game engine / editor to use. I got unity installed but its so very limited and really shitty. Also its from Denmark and well, thanks to the idiot that i raged about above, i kinda dont want to deal with anything denmark related right now. Cry Engine is awesome but again limited with the free version in the way that all test players need to be registered on the crydev.net website. UDK keeps crashing for me whenever i work with the assets so ill wait till UDK 4 is out before i try that again.

As for OpenSim related work. Met a really nice and awesome person named Artemis Tesla on the Littlefield grid that has been helping me alot with scripts and got a cool telepad working with more on the way, radio is actually done to so that also will be released once i get a store.
As for my sims. 5 sims in total are planned. Dev Island and Vampire City are already up, im just redoing VC as a shopping sim. Other 3 will hopefully be a race track, friendly pvp, probably just lazer tag. and still thinking of the third one.

So if you all want to come see what i been doing stop by the Littlefield grid, Vampire City sim.
lfgrid.com:8002:Vampire City
My name on that grid is Christina Vortex.

Thanks for reading this and hope to see you in world soon.

P.S. At the end of this month i will hand over all my L$ to one of the LFG admins that is still some what active in SL then going to clean out my inv, and do something funny right before i delete my SL account so stay tuned for pics for that :D

Later!

Game Conventions for November 2013

(two blogs in one hour :D)

Starting November 2 2013 to November 10 2013 (not including the weekdays) 2 big time gaming conventions will begin both in the United States of America.

First up... Nov 2nd and 3rd.
MINECON!
Held at the Orlando Convention Center in Orlando Florida. I just looked on google maps of the place and its HUGE!!!!!! Go to maps.google.com zoom into Orlando Florida and then search for International Drive. If his holiness Notch reserve the whole place then it for sure will fix triple the amount of people that showed up for the last minecon. I just hope they did what they did the last time and broadcast the whole event for free over a live stream for those who couldn't go. If they do i for sure will be watching while mining for diamonds like i did last year.

Second up and last convention.... Nov 9 and 10.
BLIZZCON!!!!!!
Held at the usual Anaheim California convention center. As usual Blizz will spill the beans on the next expansion. This time in hopes of getting back all the subscribers that have been leaving since Cataclysm. The convention was skipped last year so they can focus on finishing Mist of Pandaria so it wouldn't be such a shitty release. NEWS FLASH! You can't undo your fuck up by releasing another XPack. Only way to undo Cataclysm is by deleting that shit as a expansion. Anyways unlike Minecon, the live stream will not be free so I wont be able to watch it. So F U Blizzard and F WoW. Ok this was more of a rant of how shitty WoW has become.

Well regardless of how much i now hate WoW I am actually looking forward to Minecon live and Blizzcon to pop up on YouTube days later and will do a blog after about both conventions of what i thought about them.

Now if you could excuse me, i really must find some diamonds for a crafting table.

RIP SL

As most users know, Linden Labs "revised" their Terms of Service again. No surprise there. Also no surprise again they fuck up and pissed off their residence AGAIN!
However this time i think they went way to far. Not sure exactly what the TOS says this time but from what i read on Hypergrid Business website they made it so Linden Labs can do whatever they want with the content uploaded to Second Life without prior permission by the owner of that content. Now some people in SL may find this alright but others like me think that LL has gone way to far now.
We content creators like to create stuff for people to enjoy and possibly make money off of it. For LL to just come in and take whatever they want to do with whatever they want is totally wrong and i'm pretty sure violates afew IP rights. They say they will still respect IP rights so if they do respect and honor that then why the F for the change? Could of left the ToS the way it was. This change from my understanding not only violates IP rights but makes me personally feel like im creating stuff for LL for free and thats not right. Yea i create stuff for free on LFGrid for others to use and enjoy but LL has become a big name company with loads of money to give to creators so why this change and why am i pissed (dear ADHD, piss off)? its because with this change gives LL the right to basicly steal anything they want to use in advertisements and other ways without asking for permission by the creator or give the creator any money for it. Before the change LL could of still used other peoples works for advertisement but would have to either ask for permission or buy the item(s) from the creator.
But chris why would you give a shit about SL, your hiding on the Littlefield Grid again.
I give a shit for those who are about to be screwed over again by Linden Labs and therefore am still boycotting SL and encourage others to join with me.
If anyone of you are thinking of leaving SL and wondering about OpenSim. Its a great, better, cheaper life. And bigger. Their are way more opensim grids with lots more sims with cheap sim rental compared to SL. The total amount of sims and people throughout the opensim community is way bigger now then SL. Why? Because people like me have had enough of SL and are leaving for a better virtual life.
So join me in boycotting Second Life and Linden Labs. If you care to actually join me on a OS grid, join or hyper jump over to lfgrid.com:8002 and ask or look for Christina Vortex.
Please let me know you like to also boycott SL, if there are enough people i may make a group on LFG and OSG called "Boycotting SL"

So Rest In Peace Second Life. You where great back 10 years ago BEFORE your owner(s) became obsessed with greed.

Nerd time again

Ok here is some ideas im throwing out there that i am planning on doing for the Littlefield grid and opensim.

First off for LFG exclusively.

1. Little Tech which will provide LFG residence with tv, radio, vendor, rental service. Of course all for free, no money transaction at all since LFG is 100% free commerce grid.
LT will also provide other script stuff. For example i just did a quick script box that when you say "this is madness" close to the box it will say in chat "THIS... IS... SPARTA!" and play the sound clip from the 300 movie. Also plan on doing a Evil Title script and the Fart-O-Matic.
LT will also be my new mesh and prim work store/company as well as any crappy textures i do.

2. a town with rentable shops called Vampire City. (yes im going somewhere with this so keep reading)
3. since im actually thinking of hosting my own sims, all my sims will use the bulletsim physics so another sim i like to do will be a first person shooter sim where residence can rp as a vampire and shoot mortals, zombies and werewolves.
4. Since Walter's Memory Alpha is going to be the tele hub to all sci-fi museums i like to do a star trek museum and probably call the sim Earth Space Dock.

Now before i get into hypergrid stuff let me explain some planned changes.

You can kiss V Life Online goodbye. I actually always hated that name from the start since my gf at the time help me decide on a name for a website. Now that she is out of my life for good i think its time to fully get rid of her by getting rid of that name. So goodbye V Life and say hello to Little Tech.

LT wont be just LFG exclusive "play" company but i hope a legit free company for all hypergrid enabled grids. With that said lets move on.

Remember my idea before for hypergrid? yea im still going to do it. If you dont know wtf im talking about, let me do a quick run down of what i was working on before.

1. Hypergrid wide advertising aka HyperAds. This will include multiple ad boards that will display ads from other grids. These ads will only be placed into the system by the company/parcel's owner, not by me.
2. HyperRings. Rez a hyperring to have others tp to your place and be able to hypergrid tp to other rings.
3. HyperVote. You know all those voting boxes? Same deal but hypergrid wide with anti-cheating.

So what will make my plans better then whats already out there? I really don't know and i really don't care if no one uses my products. Im doing it because i want to and not ask for money to use my stuff. I guess the 100% FREE is the only diff. I will however have a small paypal donate button on the site for those that do want to donate money but im not going to force people to pay or beg for donations.
Little Tech will always be 100% not-for-profit / free comapny for as long as i live.
Oh also some scripts that i do for LFG and HG will be open source and up on my github repo for others to use and mod and/or to use as a example for learning LSL/OSSL.

Stay tuned for more info and a progress update since this will take me some time to do and money i barely have.

Homeless in Hamilton Ontario Canada

First off I'm not homeless yet thankfully but it just dawned on me that while this city takes down old buildings to put up new ones there is still the main problem of people living on the streets without a proper home. Like WTF city hall? How about putting that money into helping these people out instead of helping those that already have money.
"they chose to be homeless"
Excuse me but since when is it the homeless's fault for high price taxes and no jobs?
"What can we as city hall do to help?"
EASY!
Tell those rich basters to fuck off and build homeless shelters and programs to help those people get off the street and into a job and a apartment.

There are so many empty and abandoned places around this city that can very easily be converted into a shelter and/or affordable apartment buildings for the homeless / very low income people.

And if you think bringing in more business will help them, trust me it wont. All these new companies require grade 12 or higher and i can bet money that the majority of homeless people in our city don't have a grade 12 graduate, i know i sure don't and can't afford to go back to school. I'm just lucky that i companies like Sheprott K-9 Security and Guarda took me on as a security guard when they did but I couldn't get hired by any other security company because of my lack of education. Same goes for those that don't even have a income.

Anyways i think it would be nice to at least see some kind of effort by city council doing something about helping the homeless.

Did this blog and the tweet i sent to #hamont because every time i go downtime i feel bad when i see people walking around that don't have a home to go to and have to depend on extra change dropped by the kind people just so they can have a chocolate bar for the day.

And theres my rant for today. Tomorrow's blog will be a nerd related blog about what i got planned on a opensim grid called Littlefield Grid.

The truth about Canada

I recently went out to walmart and notice the huge increase of selfishness, ignorance and disrespect and thought WTF!

Most people around the world think they we Canadians are so nice and polite but the truth is we aren't any more. We seem to only keep pretending to be nice and polite when it comes to other countries but truth be told we as a nation have become nothing more than a selfish, self center, arrogant, ignorant, disrespecting, greedy people. Seems like people these days don't give a s about the law or each other and i am getting very tired of it.

We Canadians at one time (like 10 years ago) use to be nice, polite and respectful of others and i fear that we are spiralling into anarchy if we don't revert back to the way we use to be.

I love this country and the people but I'm also scared for everyone and this great beautiful land at the same time.

So there is my rant for today. Sorry that it's been a week since my last blog. Was still recovering from my surgery.
New blog tomorrow or tonight about something else.

My recap of the first annual Open Simulator Community Conference

Well the first annual opensim community conference is over and even though the first day was hella boring today was alright.

I personally am very picky of which seminar i attend but i did go to two. First one was about Virtual Currency and learned alot there. Mostly becoming scared as shit to sell anything virtual thanks to the new law in the USA. I can understand why the americans made that law but it now scares those on a government pension who are looking for a easy quick way to become self employed with a steady income to get off of the pension.

Second one was the great and mighty Justin Clark-Casey talking about the ever confusing config ini files for Open Sim which cleared up alot of confusion for me. So thank you JC for un-confusing me with the config.

Anyways during the break i was not only able to take some pics but met up with some old friends and thanks to them clearing up a misunderstanding which led to me leaving i will be making my return to the virtual opensim world. This time with a new idea hopefully exclusively for LFGrid. (LFG is HG enable so you all can jump on over to see my work). Anyways heres some cool parcel designs of sponsor grids.

Can't wait till next year. Am thinking however of donating a full sim just to make a all gaming sim for all the gamers that uses opensim. Games like casino's, amusement park stuff, and other games all of course would be free to demonstrate that you can still have fun in any virtual world powered by opensim.

Thanks for reading this. Won't be blogging for afew days because of my surgery in afew hours which i have to be put to sleep for and got alot of catching up to do since i have not done any dev work since thursday.

Bye.

OpenSim over Second Life

As some people know Second Life is a virtual reality environment, NOT A GAME, that lets its users create their own world and life, hence the name Second Life. HOWEVER a few years ago a few people started to develop a off shoot of the SL server and called it Open Simulator and made the code free open source, hence that name OPEN SIM.

(if you want to know more about SL and OS please google "What is Second Life")

Lately there has been alot of SL vs OS fighting on the interwebz with socialist like me.
Well I'm doing this blog to put in my 2 cents why I think OS is better for the 3d virtual world experience.

In just the past few months Linden Labs, who owns Second Life, has screwed over 3rd party linden exchanges and european residence at the same time by making the exchanges "illegal". Even though I was not screwed over for this in any way because I'm Canadian I still made a huge boycott stand against this action by LL. Mostly in favor of those who live in countries that can't buy L$ directly from Linden Labs and have to buy from a 3rd party like VirWox and AnshiX. My second reason for the boycott was because I found it unfair that all these 3rd party exchanges have been in business for years buying and selling Linden dollars to SL residence and their owners were living off of that money. So for LL to do that right out of the blue without prior notice or warning was total BS.
Well what you know about 2 weeks later the noobs at LL created a "authorized reseller" program so residence can still buy LL. However these 3rd parties couldn't buy L$. Well how the F do you expect them to sell L$ if they can't stock up on them from buying. Yea sure AnshiX is stocking up by selling parcels, but what about VirWox and others that only exchange currency? Anyways i boycott on that is still kinda going. And thats reason one why SL sucks.
Reason 2 is that lately they been releasing alot of laggy updates to their servers, mostly due to the new server side baking. Yea its great and all, fast loading of my avi, but thats on a completely diffrent server. So if that server ever crashed or went into maintance we all be a cloud. Nice going LL.

Reason 3! There is absolutely NOTHING to do in SL without money. Can't have your own piece of land, can't go explore SL, can't do jack s**t without spending money in some way. Oh ya there are social spots but that gets boring and full of drama which brings me to reason 4.
4. There are way to many ADULTS that act like children in SL. Like come on. If your 50, ACT FIFTY, NOT FIFTEEN! "he cheated on me with some blonde in rl." so? aren't you married in real life? So its ok for you to cheat on your husband with some guy in a virtual world but not ok for your virtual bf to cheat on you with someone in real life? "its not the same thing." Really? Rethink that please.

So yea theres SL. OpenSim kinda still has number 4 but they more spread out throughout the grids. Thats right i said gridS. Not one world owned by 1 fat big wig like SL, but by multiple owners owning their own version of a virtual world. And even though some of them may be over weight (dont worry so am i) they sure as hell ain't doing it for the money. These owners are either helping out with the Open Sim project or have staff that are.
In a way, everyone who uses OpenSim is contributing to the project. By either in world designs like meshing, texturing, sound, scripting. Or by helping out with the coding by contributing their work to the project.
Furthermore, with the help of Hypergrid (exclusively to OpenSim) all those grids become 1 by allowing residence to teleport from one grid to another. Like I can teleport from the offical OpenSim grid to End of the Metaverse grid by either using my in world map or in world landmark. SL is just one private grid where you can not teleport in from a OS grid or to a OS grid.

Anyways thanks to my ADHD i totally lost focus on this xD anyways the first annual Open Sim Conference is this weekend so i will do a blog about it sunday night before my surgery.