Wondering Around Second Life and the Web

This Sunday morning I am going reading blogs and forums to see what is going on in Second Life. The interesting things I am finding follow:

Nice Places

Honour has images of Alice is Wonderland [SIC]. See: SL10BCC, Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole in Second Life. It is a region that is as strange and odd as the original story conveys and Honour does a good job of capturing that in her photos.

L$ Exchange

Maria Korolov on Hypergrid Business post more about the ongoing saga of the L$ Exchanges. See: Linden Lab allows third-party currency sales. Maria sees this as the Lab reversing their position. I don’t.

All exchanges MUST buy their Lindens from the LindeX. People can then buy those L$ from the Exchanges. But, in reality these will no longer be ‘exchanges’ as no one will be able to take money out of SL EXCEPT through the LindeX.

So, the exchanges are now only retailers of L$. It looks like many people will still have a significant problem getting money out of SL. This is of course the whole point of FinCEN regulations.

Forum Discussion

There is a question and discussion in the SL Forum about: Any solution for cashing out in Euro with LindeX? 

SL News

I started my usual article on ‘news’ but RL has distracted me. Check out Inara’s coverage: SL projects update week 20 (2): materials beta, SSB/A. I covered the JSON news days ago in: JSON Comes to Second Life. Nothing has changed other than the Lindens acknowledging that there are ‘quoting’ problems that need to be fixed before rolling the change to main channel.

There is new news on SSA – Server Side Appearance (blaking). Inara covers it.

Rumor & Fact

The forums are good places to find rumors and unfounded speculation. SLUniverse had a post where someone was asking if the Lab was buying up regions and converting them to open space. They were seeing regions they thought had builds changing to open sea.

Tyche Shepherd posted that it is possible to use a feature of Gridsurvey.com to look at the history of a region back to 2009. There is a button labeled “Display Map UUID history for Region”.

To find that button visit Gridsurvey.com. Scroll down and search for a region. When it comes up click the region name. A page comes up with detailed information on the region. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll find the map history button. That will provide you a huge list of map image selections. Click on the magnifying glass. It won’t show as a link if you cursor over it. But, clicking it will bring up the map tile.

Intelligent Debate

The rational examination of ideas advances civilization. Whisky Day has a post on her blog Whisky Shots: Pig-Headed People. It is worth the read.

I am finding there is fewer and fewer people that know how to intelligently debate. It is a skill worth learning.

I disagree that keeping pig-headed ideas to one’s self is the correct choice. It is when we air those ideas that people challenge us. It is when we are intellectually honest that our minds and those of others can be changed and civilization advances.

New Clouds

JuicyBomb has an article on the new clouds available in Second Life, sky clouds. This is a Firestorm viewer feature. It changes what you see. It doesn’t affect other people.

There is a link to a tutorial on how to use them.

It is possible to use the new clouds in the SL Viewers. It is a manual process. You have to change a viewer file. It’s easy. The tutorial explains.

If you like the feature and want something similar to the Firestorm Viewer’s menu driven cloud changes, file a JIRA feature request, which is a standard bug report with the words ‘feature request’ in the title and a description of the feature you want.

If your not following JuicyBomb, check out her other articles. I love the photography.

WindlightUseAtmosShaders

Strawberry Singh has an article that mentions the Debug Setting windlightUseAtmosShaders. Her friend Ghosty Kip recommends using this setting to force render small jewelry items that seem to not want to render.

See: White Gold and Sapphire.

Yahoo Buying Tumbler

The news is out and the deal is pretty well done. I am not sure what Yahoo has done, But, many Tumbler users are upset about the deal and plan to walk away from Tumbler when the deal completes. Whether is talk only or will be followed by actual walking is yet to be seen.

Yahoo Board Has Approved A $1.1 Billion Cash Deal For Tumblr, WSJ Reports

Hell No, Tumblr Users Won’t Go To Yahoo!

The Math of Joy

I’m big on objective quantification. Tech Crunch has an interesting article on how Helena Roeber and Rachel Garb, Android lead designers, have started to design using measured experiences to quantify what works to enchant, simplify, and amaze people in an apps user interface.

See: Android’s Design Principles And The Calculus Of The Human Pleasure Response

One thought on “Wondering Around Second Life and the Web

  1. Just let you know, it was my cloud textures that I provided to Firestorm. Even though Torley Linden knew about my cloud and had been pestering LL to add it in. It’s good to see that happening. 🙂
    So yeah, they’re the same clouds from myself, thanks to JuicyBomb for mention it as well.

    Those who can’t wait, you can manual install yourself.
    http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Machinima-Forum/Enhance-your-sky-with-Natural-clouds/td-p/754835

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