This is my 4,200th post since March 3, 2009, which is about 10 years and 8 months ago… I came into Second Life™ March 8th, 2008. So, most of my life in SL I have been a blogger.
I am a bit burned out on blogging. When I started in SL I scrambled to keep up with what was happening in viewer development. Blogging about viewers was useful to people and there was lots to write about.
The Linden viewer was version 1.23.0… We had Gemini, Meercat, GreenLife Emerald, and a few other viewers.
Vampires were thick enough we bought cases of Vampire OFF and ate raw garlic.
Things have changed. Now the Linden viewer is the cutting-edge viewer for new SL features. Black Dragon, Catznip, and Firestorm still add neat features but we see the big features like BOM and EEP in the Linden viewer first. Cool VL Viewer is best for viewer-side bug fixes, IMO.
The user interface has stabilized in most viewers. Cool and Singularity have stayed with the version 1.x UI. Others stay with the Linden 6.x UI or very close to it. So, a user can update to the latest version of their favorite viewer and have almost nothing to learn. So, I have little to write about. Black Dragon is an exception.
Firestorm updates maybe twice a year these days. Inara works with the dev team and provides good information and how-to coverage on those updates.
So, the tech news that interests me is a trickle. It also isn’t likely to change for some time to come. It isn’t that the Lindens are doing less or telling us less. They are even hiring people to get more done. They have just found that they get better error reporting when the SL population is less aware of what is changing… or maybe more accurately when it is changing.
We have a mix now of things that the Lindens have opened up and other things they have closed us out of. The server release notes have improved. Viewer information is reported well. But, the move to the cloud is secret until after the part currently moving is moved and working well.
In some development areas, the decision has been made to provide residents less information on what is changing. The result is less extraneous noise in the bug reports. But we sort of have to fend for ourselves in figuring out if a problem is us, our computer, or the SL System.
While there is an effort to get more information out, it seems to me there is a shift in what that information is. I am finding it more generalized …that may be a good thing.
An example that strains my attention is the return of last names. We have been hearing about that for a couple of years now. Thursday the Lab has posted The Return of Last Names and Changes to Marketplace, Events & Premium. This is one of those things where residents have asked and asked for years. The Lindens decided to do it. They thought it would be really easy. Turns out it was really WAY hard. So, a part of the Linden effort has been tied up in getting last names working. Reporting ‘real soon now’ for the same feature for a couple of years gets old.
There is nothing to be done about it. The Lindens have worked hard and provided as much information as they could without helping griefers. But, there is little of the stuff I like to report.
EEP is similar. They have run into problems with the render engine handling of EEP. They are working to fix those. The bugs to be fixed have been the same ones for months. Makes for dull reporting.
When I started blogging, I reported the things that interested me. Recently I have been just reporting what seems to be getting repetitive. So… I feel a bit burnt out.
I like blogging. So, I’ll blog from time to time. Expect it to be irregular. I think I’ll revert to just those things that interest me. I’ll see how that shakes out and evolves.
I want to thank you for all the work you have put in to keep us informed. I know that is a lot of work. You report on meetings as well as programs and really, anything of interest to Second Life for us. It’s has been appreciated. Enjoy your rest and we will read you down the line.
I second that !
“The Linden viewer was version 1.23.0… We had Gemini, Meercat, GreenLife Emerald, and a few other viewers.”
Among which the Cool SL Viewer (former name of the Cool VL Viewer), which was first based off SL’s viewer v1.18 (i.e. it existed long before Emerald and most others did) and Nicholaz Beresford’s viewer was one of the very few that was publicly released before mine was.
For history, here is the archive of my first public release announcement:
http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/263/e0/223796/1.html
😀
“Things have changed. Now the Linden viewer is the cutting-edge viewer for new SL features. Black Dragon, Catznip, and Firestorm still add neat features but we see the big features like BOM and EEP in the Linden viewer first.”
Well, this is not exactly the case… I do backport to the Cool VL Viewer most of the features that exist only in LL’s RC viewers, most often in the Cool VL Viewer “experimental” branches, but the features immediately become available in the stable branch in the week that follows LL’s official promotion to the release status.
Right now, the Cool VL Viewer v1.26.24.1 is capable of dealing with and editing the EEP settings (i.e. inventory and parcel/region support is fully implemented), and does even convert EEP settings into their Windlight equivalent to render them (this is unique to my viewer, for now, and makes for the fact that backporting the EEP renderer in the poor state it is right now is out of question for me).
It also had BOM implemented in the stable branch for over a year before LL released BOM officially (the new Universal wearable support was implemented too, but was kept disabled till LL released BOM officially, for obvious compatibility reasons).
Nalates,
my advise on blogger burn out is this:
Start a brand new blog. From scratch. Nothing technical at all.
Just something fun. Try the wild side of SL (slex) and write about the experience.
It will be very liberating, fun and sexy. You will as a side effect come accross stories and information suitable for the main blog
If you want to monetize it as well, get in touch with me, I can advise on profiatble affiliate advertisers.
Don’t know how to get started? Ask me , I have a bit of experience in the subject matter.
Caroline