Blog Stuff

Nalates’ Stuff Update 2026

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For some time—years, actually—I’ve been ignoring the tech side of my blog. Work-wise, I’m doing less and less WordPress (WP) coding. I find I’m forgetting how the inner workings of WP function and how the pieces fit together. Fixing the custom pages on the site has been a major pain in the ass (PITA), so I kept putting it off.

As I’ve been using AI more and more, I decided to try Claude.ai for the update. I’ve used Grok on some other projects, but the more complex the project and the pickier I am about appearance, the worse Grok performs. So, I’m really pleased with how well Claude handled this.

I’d heard that Claude is exceptional at coding. Some people working with Second Life™ (SL) code are using it too. I had Claude revise my Concurrent User Tracking script in SL, and it went very nicely. I like the result a lot.

Revising the blog was easy with Claude. I’m happy with how it turned out.

What this means for you:

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Site Redesign

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You’ve probably noticed the site is changing—again. I’m experimenting with using AI to help with design, and this site has turned into my testing ground. It’s been both fascinating and occasionally frustrating (sometimes very frustrating).

Some pages are still broken—I just haven’t made it to them yet. The biggest challenge right now is mobile. The site does include mobile support, but what I’m discovering is that AI only knows what you explicitly tell it… and I don’t always know what to tell it. My design process evolves as I go, and that makes things a bit messy when the AI doesn’t quite keep up.

So if you’re visiting on a phone, thanks for bearing with me. The desktop version is my first focus, and mobile improvements (like a working nav menu) will follow once the main structure is solid.

Appreciate your patience while I figure this out.
– Nal

Problems…

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2/4/2025 – Update. I finally took time to make a quick patch. There is more left to do. Basically PHP and Python updates make my thyme obsolete. I’ll have to decide if I keep the blog and update the thyme or move on. Decisions, decisions…

I don’t blog as much as I used to. So, I don’t keep the back side of this site updated as well as I should. Go Daddy hosting has an incentive to get customers to update. They charge more to let one run older versions.

So this is a quick update to avoid additional charges. I am not particularly happy with the look and most of my plugins no longer work. But the articles are readable. I can post new stuff… if I get round to it.

The problem is in the PHP version I was running. Also, I have some custom pages I built that need some code updates. Seems the new PHP (the software language that the site operates on) has some language differences to improve security. It has been long enough since I wrote my custom pages the less secure commands have progressed from ‘depreciated’ to ‘deleted’. Ouch!

I’ll be working on the site. Getting new versions of my plugins working and eliminating whichever one was crashing my site.

This will take some time.

You can find me in SL and on the SL Forum. I often post in Your Avatar. I think it would be fun to meet you there.

Christmas Shopping 2024

And so…

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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.

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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.

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