Baking
There is a quick little tutorial on how to bake a specular highlight into a texture on YouTube. I like it because it uses the Blender Nodes.
SL Fashion Blog
This is a blog with great images taken from Second Life. It is, as the name suggests, about fashion. But, the images are gorgeous. See: SL Fashion.
Check Lada L-roy’s review policy. Nice philosophy.
Avastar 1.1-947
A new RC version of Avastar is out. Check your download page in Test Versions.
Fitted Mesh
Oz Linden says there are no open issues with the Fitted Mesh Viewer as of today (1/8). A new version of the project viewer will be out Real Soon…
Zindra Help Vortex
You may know that adult rated sandboxes are few and often griefed to the point of being unusable. The Zindra Help Vortex has had problems forever. Now Ginette tells us a new ban list has been put in place by the Lab for the Vortex. This may be the start of better times in adult sandboxes.
DNS problems at login – a possible solution
Monty Linden has a post up on the SL Forum: DNS Problems. He is asking for people with DNS problems to test the new Project HTTP Viewer 3.6.13.284698 to see how it behaves with your DNS service.
The problem with most recommended fixes is they recommend changing your service from the ISP provided DNS to another service like Google’s DNS servers. I believe that is a poor choice and problem prone. ISP’s do some odd things with their DNS services. Abandoning their DNS may remove features you need to work with your ISP. In Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection I point out how to blend DNS service to get the best of both.
Profile Snapshots
This problem is being worked on. See: Scheduled Profile Maintenance, per Maestro Linden.
Wind Energy
Many have not noticed governments pulling funding for wind generation of energy. To many it seems crazy. But, governments often know things they will not tell their citizens. In the case of wind generation that is certainly true.
Industrial wind turbines are designed to last about 25 years. Manufactures only guarantee the turbines for 5 years, which for a large machine is a pretty good guarantee. But, the gear boxes in the generators fails in 5 to 7 years. Having to pull the generators apart and take them out of service for months to rebuild or replace the gear boxes every 5 to 7 years is destroying the budgets for wind generation companies. Doing a major rebuild every 5 years verses every 25 years is a big hit.
The only choice to keep those companies profitable is government subsidies or higher energy prices. Either way we, the people, pay for another government sponsored failure. These things should be left to the free market to sort out.
See: Wind Turbines: The Ghost in the Gearbox.
FUKUSHIMA
If you have watched much YouTube recently and/or participate in social media you have probably heard, or will hear, the west coast of North America is just now being fried by radiation released from the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant destroyed by a tsunami in 2011. As best I can tell this is another Chicken Little story. But, at the local bar & grill someone was talking about how depressed they were they would have to give up ocean fish and going to the beach… 
It is human nature to fear what we do not understand. It is a basic human survival mechanism based on better safe than sorry. The unknown in this case is radiation. We can’t see it and describing radiation and measuring it complex. Then figuring out which radiation is more dangerous is even more complex.
Consider. Being shot by a 22 caliber weapon (less than ¼ inch diameter – 0.6cm) while possibly deadly is nowhere near as dangerous or deadly as being shot by a 50 caliber weapon (1/2 inch – 1.3cm). Whether either bullet is a hollow point, a bullet that breaks up on impact, or not also changes the damage either can cause. The velocity of the bullet at impact, total weight, and other factors determine how deadly either bullet can be.
Radiation is similar to bullets. So, running around yelling ‘OMG!’ there is radiation means nothing. But, it is still a warning and humans pay attention to warning that can affect whether they live comfortably or be harmed. I think they should.
To understand radiation measurements and what is happening on the west coast of North America read: True facts about ocean radiation and the Fukushima disaster.