General News

Second Life Bits 2018 w05

by

The rent is too damn high… a popular exclamation in Second Life™. For relief check out Penny Patton’s article Reducing the Cost of Land by Scaling Down.

This is not her only article on reducing land cost or making more efficient use of Second Life. So, you may want to browse her blog.

I’ll point out here that Penny’s ideas on the ‘Default Camera Position’ are being adopted by the Lab. We will soon have “Preset Default Camera Positions” as a feature of the Linden Viewer.

Doors – Another thing with Penny and her building to scale. In another article, Smaller Doors Anyone Can Fit Through, she on about making doors into SL building to scale.

The handy knowledge in this article is for those that have bought homes/building other have made. How does one scale down a building and still fit through the door? Penny has the answer.

Animations – I came across this video from a post in a Plurk.

Notice the hand and face animations.

On Plurk Dutchie® has been promoting the ‘dance’ chair. There are some NSFW images from the dances. 

Read more

Better Skies Are Here

by

Skies – Hamlet has been following Stevie Davros’ development of improved sky textures for Second Life’s Windlight™. Today Hamlet is writing about their release. Seems they are now available in the SL Marketplace.

Below is the installation tutorial for Mac and the Linden viewer. I highly recommend using the package with Firestorm. But, while tedious they are usable with the Linden viewer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=40&v=ZykmGCpVG7c

This installation information for the viewers will be good until the release of EEP, Enhanced Environment Project, a Linden developed enhancement. There is no ETA for the release. I definitely expect it to release in the first half of 2018. But, I could be wrong.

You’ll find some free cartoon clouds. Other artistic clouds sell from L$99 to L$599. The Natural Clouds package sells for L$599 and has 8 cloud textures and comes with 60 Windlight settings files. You can see the effect of the package in a Flickr collection. Very awesome. A more organized collection showing the clouds in the various packages is here.

Warning: Changing the cloud textures requires some basic file handling. Also, clouds must be chosen before the viewer is launched. For the Linden viewer, this means going in and renaming a couple of files each time you change clouds. With Firestorm, it is a matter of a one time install and a menu selection before logging in. (Preferences->Firestorm->Windlight (tab)->Cloud Texture (drop))

Also, see my earlier article New Skies for Firestorm for a bit more information. There is a link to Juicy Bomb’s 2013 tutorial there too.

New Skies for Firestorm

by

Hamlet has an article about Stevie Davros’ enhanced skies. In 2011 Firestorm added a feature that allows replacement of Second Life™ clouds. Thank you for the computer code, Cinder Roxley. Back then Vincent Nacon was creating new cloud images for this feature.

Stevie Davros Dramatic Skies

So, this feature is not new nor limited to Firestorm. JuicyBomb wrote a tutorial NEW CLOUDS FOR SECOND LIFE, May 2013, for those using the Linden Viewer. The instructions are good for any viewer.

Not much has changed since then. I just checked in the Linden Viewer 5.1.0 and there is still no provision for selecting a different cloud texture. So, it is still a manual change.

Read more

OpenCollar No Longer OpenCollar?

by

More SL drama. Unfortunately, about 100,000 SL users will be affected. It seems in November 2017 there was a sudden change in the OpenCollar programming team. Wendy Starfall and Garvin Twine were doing most of the work, programming, marketing, support, etc. for the last 6 years.

The early founders, from the history I can find, are Nandana Singh (now Nirea Resident) and Athaliah Opus. Several involved in the OC Project say they have ignored the project for the last 6 years or so. Leaving it to Wendy, Gaven, and others in the team to do the work and pay for websites and land (regions). But, we would have to define what the speaker means by ‘ignored’.

A point came when Nirea and Athaliah decided the OC project was going the wrong way. It seems that while the open source OC code was being maintained with no income for the programmers from it when the active programmers decided to sell an add-on under a brand name called Virtual Disgrace and some other things based on OC open source code.

“You can't stop the future You can't rewind the past The only way to learn the secret ...is to press play.” ― Jay Asher
You can’t stop the future You can’t rewind the past The only way to learn the secret …is to press play

The entitlement mindset folks decided it was an outrage that programmers working for free should even consider working for a profit and not giving them everything free… So, the great divide opened. The eventual result Nirea and Athaliah reclaimed the OpenCollar in-world group and kicked Wendy and others on the new path out of the group.

OpenCollar remained fee. But, the programmers were making other toys and selling them on their own. I could use the OpenCollar code and make a toy and sell it. But, you would still be able to get the free OpenCollar code and made your toys and sell them.

Read more

Happy New Year 2018

by

Wish you all the best for this year… may you find gorgeous shoes on sale everywhere you go, may the lovers in your life treat you as royalty, may the chocolate you eat not add pounds…

Happy New Year 2018
Happy New Year 2018

There are many sources of fake news and abusive people being revealed. Politicians of all parties are revealing themselves as members of the establishment party. More and more often it is the Establishment against the people. THEY are interested in power and control. We struggle to stay free.

For 2018 you will need a variety of news sources to be able to see the chess game of propaganda in play. Every October outrageous allegations are made. October is the time for them because it leaves no times for court cases to determine facts before the election. The American ideal of innocent until proven guilty is systematically being destroyed and allegations are decided in the court of public opinion.

Read more