General News

1920’s Berlin Birthday

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Jo Yardley has a post up reminding us this coming May 30 will be the fifth anniversary of her 1920’s Berlin project. See: The 1920s Berlin Project celebrates its 5th anniversary!

For the Open Door Day (May 29 – Thursday) Jo is saying that any attire will be permitted in Berlin. So, if you have put off visiting because you play as a furry, other non-human, or just do not have 1920’s era clothes then this is your opportunity to visit.

Also, on Open Door Day you will find Open House signs on some areas that are normally private. This means places we cannot normally visit will be open.

See the full schedule of events on Jo’s site here: 1920’s Berlin Project.

Visit 1920’s Berlin (SLURL) – Remember. Any day other than May 29 requires conforming to the region dress code; human only and 1920’s attire… and that is  not the Roaring 1920’s styles I think most Americans associate with the era. There are free clothes and retail shops with era clothes at the landing point outside the main project area.

 

More Bits & News 2014-21

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Unscheduled Maintenance

Today there was a problem and the Lindens pulled maintenance on the SL system to fix something. Logins were failing for a time Tuesday. The Lindens thought they had it fixed by about 12:30 noon. I wasn’t trying to login until late today, so I don’t know. But, they did not post an All Clear until about 2:30 PM PDT.

See: Grid Status Reports. This is a good report to read as it has advice about logging in after system wide problem.

Server Rolls

Because of the system problem the Tuesday roll outs to the main grid did not complete. Those will be restarted for the main channel tomorrow at 9:00 AM PDT/SLT. The Lindens say more information will be in the Grid Status Reports.

The Wednesday rollouts are being moved to Thursday.

Thursday Down Time

I haven’t seen anything about rescheduling the planned maintenance for Thursday. My assumption is it will still happen as planned… I suppose they can roll region servers and do maintenance at the same time. 

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Second Life Bits & Pieces 2014-21

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The basic SL News is here; servers and viewers. But, there isn’t much to say about those so I’ve mixed in the bits an pieces of news from around the grid.

Second Life will be down for an hour on Thursday, 22 May beginning at 7am PDT. If you are in-world you won’t be ejected. But, you won’t be able to do much. Avoid pulling things out of inventory or changing outfits. Of course don’t attempt any Linden$ transactions. Building is probably out of the question.

This has something to do with the assets database and backend systems.  Firestorm will have the grid status on screen as usual. I’m not sure how many people will notice. I’ll have to see if the SL Viewer’s splash says anything about it.

If the SL Forum is working (I suspect it will be), we’ll see a load of people asking why they cannot login.

Server Rolls
The main channel will get a roll Tuesday. This will be the maintenance release that was running in Magnum this past week. This is a fix for a network issue occurring in busy simulators.

Server RC’s
The Blue Steel and Le Tigre channels will continue to run the AISv3 update package for Server Side Avatar baking. The Sunshine viewer is getting updates and hopefully went into QA today. 

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Is Blocking XP SP2 Bizarre?

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You know that Linden Lab announced they are changing the system requirements to run SL. Ciaran Laval has an article up titled: Linden Lab’s Bizarre System Requirements Move. Now why does he think it is a bizarre move?

Server Scripting Meeting 2014-18
Server Scripting Meeting 2014-18

It is a sort article, so finding Ciaran’s reasoning is easy. The key point I dispute and that changes how I see the move is contained in this paragraph:

This is a very bizarre move considering the client will happily run on Windows XP SP2. There are numerous reasons why clients crash on systems, people running Windows XP are likely to be running older hardware and have less RAM than modern systems, for example, but upgrading to a new OS or Service Pack is not likely to improve their performance to any great degree in terms of Second Life.

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Drax Radio Show #17

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Drax Files Radio
Drax Files Radio

This show covers some VR news, which inspired my DIY article. They touch on Fantasy Fair, which is on going now – May 1 to 11. Then the remainder of the audio is interviews with more Lindens.

Drax and Jo have been talking about the first time user experience. There is no doubt these experiences are a significant contributor to player retention rates… or lack of them. People are adding their ideas to the comments about how the experience may be improved on the Radio Show blog: Drax Files Radio Hour.

Jo suggests that a RL model be used. In many countries people arrive by train, boat, or air. At the arrival points are information kiosks so people can find out how to get wherever they want to go next. Her idea is something like that would work for Second Life. 

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