Mortal Mist
Community Boards => Guild Hall - general Guild discussion => : pj April 16, 2008, 07:24:04 AM
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The Tomorrow File was a brilliant and disturbing sci-fi novel by Lawrence Sanders, written back in the 1970's. An ongoing theme in the book was a file of ideas that were great but beyond current technology at the time.
This is our Tomorrow File. Ideas for this list will come from your suggestions. These first few are from the If You Could Have Anything You Want thread and from PM'd suggestions we've received. If you have made a suggestion that isn't here, that means it is probably within much easier reach and has made it on to a current ToDo list.
The Mortal Mist Tomorrow File
- An Instant Messenger-style messaging/chat system
Some means of gathering and publishing lucidity statistics- User-defined macro buttons to assist in formatting Dream Journal entries
- Make arrangements for "live" seminars, interviews, etc.
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a dream recorder would be quite nifty. :P
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How about a reality check feature? If the feature was enabled, every once in a while while on Mortal Mist an image would flash on the screen to remind you to do a reality check. People could change how often the image appears (3 settings, never, random, or a user-defined time period), how many seconds it stays on the screen, and what image to use. The default image would just be the words "Are you dreaming?" with a transparent background.
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Agreed - I like it! A good one for the Tomorrow File.
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I think it would be useful if the forum search could make use of the Dream Catcher system, so if you wanted, you could do things like search for posts that contain lucid dreams and the word fire, or search for all posts containing exactly five lucid dreams, or search for posts containing 0 lucids, dreams, or fragments in order to get only results that aren't dreams.
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Good suggestions. Thank you.
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How about a reality check feature? If the feature was enabled, every once in a while while on Mortal Mist an image would flash on the screen to remind you to do a reality check. People could change how often the image appears (3 settings, never, random, or a user-defined time period), how many seconds it stays on the screen, and what image to use. The default image would just be the words "Are you dreaming?" with a transparent background.
How about a reality check feature that works on your desktop, so that when you are working at your computer it pops up at random intervals (I think it would have to incorporate a sound that could be turned off if necessary - if you work in an office for example). The would also be good to have on your mobile phone or pager. I for one, need something to slap me into awareness, I tend to drift off at every possible opportunity. Sometimes I wonder if I am ever awake in any state?
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Worldbridger, I think there is something like that out there somewhere, I'm sure I've read something about it in Dreamviews somewhere.
I did a search and here it is: http://bytered.com/software-realitycheck.html (http://bytered.com/software-realitycheck.html).
I don't want something like that running all the time, which is why I'd prefer one that functions only within Mortal Mist, but that program should do what you want.
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Thanks for the link. Unfortunately it doesn't work on a Mac. I would like something that works with a sound that you could also use through the night. Just think, you have this reality check reminder sound going off at random intervals during the day and then you run it through the night so that it comes into your dreaming. Would this not act as a good link/reminder?
Problem for me, if it is only on Mortal Mist, I'm not browsing the site when I am dreaming, (at least I don't think I am), or during the day when I am wandering around in my usual self-imposed trance.
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(at least I don't think I am)
Ha!
I spend quite a bit of time browsing MM in my dreams. You'd think I'd figure it out eventually.
A good suggestion, and worthy of the Tomorrow File.
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*Cough* Ahem. Is it tomorrow yet?
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Tomorrow never comes, you know.
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Sounds like my kind of book.
What exactly is the chat/IM thing? Has a non-AJAX chat ever been considered here, using something like XMMP (http://xmpp.org/about/)? (Which could be used to implement IMs and a chat room.)
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Sounds like my kind of book.
What exactly is the chat/IM thing? Has a non-AJAX chat ever been considered here, using something like XMMP (http://xmpp.org/about/)? (Which could be used to implement IMs and a chat room.)
I popup instant message window, similar to how the PM a member works now, but an IM instead.
Click it, it asks the member if they want to chat, then away you go. Would be nice if you were able to pull in three, four, as many as you would like to invite for a nice cozy PRIVATE chat
The macro system doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to implement. The biggest problem would be tying it into the system so that it would be driven by a menu system somehow.
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Thanks wolve.
That sounds like exactly the kind of thing XMMP is designed for. I'm not all that familiar with it, but I was actually looking at it the other day, when I got disgusted over the flash thing.
It could probably also be used for this one:
- Make arrangements for "live" seminars, interviews, etc.
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The macro system doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to implement. The biggest problem would be tying it into the system so that it would be driven by a menu system somehow.
Exactly. That often seems to be the case with modifications here--the actual functionality is the easy part. If someone comes up with a clear idea on how it should work I'd have a go at it.
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You mean you need to know a manner in which it should be presented?
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The macro system doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to implement. The biggest problem would be tying it into the system so that it would be driven by a menu system somehow.
Exactly. That often seems to be the case with modifications here--the actual functionality is the easy part. If someone comes up with a clear idea on how it should work I'd have a go at it.
Well, I can do that. The macro system should input user formatting and other data at the push of a button into the text field for easy DJ formatting. This would start out with the user initially inputting the data somehow, perhaps the same basic way that you input news into the ticker, if possible, and on the user initiating the macro function it would draw that data, process it (perhaps to insert date information or other basic variables), and insert it into the text field, perhaps in the same way smilies are inserted when you click on them.
As for the storing of the data, perhaps it would be possible to store it in a database somewhere and have a php function draw it and generate a js script with that information inside of variables? I don't know what the limitations of the forum system are, so I can't give an exact thing.
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Thanks wolve.
That sounds like exactly the kind of thing XMMP is designed for. I'm not all that familiar with it, but I was actually looking at it the other day, when I got disgusted over the flash thing.
So, would the XMMP be able to serve as a more capable system to replace the AJAX chat at some future point? Most importantly, would it, without imposing significant load on the server, operate under high chat loads without lagging, and would it be easily extensible for our chat mods?
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You mean you need to know a manner in which it should be presented?
Yes, the user interface. The underlying idea; text macros as are seen in most decent text editors is straightforward enough. Figuring out how to lay the thing out on the page so it's intuitive, unobtrusive and maximally useful is more challenging IMO.
Well, I can do that. The macro system should input user formatting and other data at the push of a button into the text field for easy DJ formatting. This would start out with the user initially inputting the data somehow, perhaps the same basic way that you input news into the ticker, if possible, and on the user initiating the macro function it would draw that data, process it (perhaps to insert date information or other basic variables), and insert it into the text field, perhaps in the same way smilies are inserted when you click on them.
As for the storing of the data, perhaps it would be possible to store it in a database somewhere and have a php function draw it and generate a js script with that information inside of variables? I don't know what the limitations of the forum system are, so I can't give an exact thing.
That's more or less how it has to be done--there is a difference from smilies and bbcode however--some (but not all) of that is stored in the database as is (I mean the uninterpreted text from the post) and the interpretation actually done when someone views the post. (Which is why you can quote and still see the tags.) In this case the interpretation would have to be done first--because not everyone would "speak" the same tags.
In other words we're speaking of something like a preprocessor here, which is unique to each user. But regardless, the main challenge is still figuring how to lay out the GUI.
So, would the XMMP be able to serve as a more capable system to replace the AJAX chat at some future point? Most importantly, would it, without imposing significant load on the server, operate under high chat loads without lagging, and would it be easily extensible for our chat mods?
Indeed--on all counts; that is specifically what it was designed for. It's a real-time messaging protocol that should be blazingly fast and light on resources. In addition, there are many free external clients members could use to more conveniently chat on mobile devices (or simply to have chat in a separate program on their PCs.) One could instantly start a private chat with one or more members, or join a public room.
The only thing I'm not sure of is how easily mods can be created for it. I need to do more reading, but it sounds like it's readily extensible. Don't get your hopes up too much yet--it might be awhile.
Edit: It's XMPP, by the way; not XMMP. My fault. :shakehead: Although maybe it should be the later here.. :thinking:
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I could possibly integrate those buttons into the Dreamcatcher GUI - its already pretty all encompassing as it is.