General News

Second Life Bits 2014-23 #2

by

Groups

Ciaran Laval has an article up that covers the history of Second Life™ groups and his suggestion that things change to break a pattern present in SL since it started. See: Second Life Group System Still Needs An Overhaul.

SL users always want more groups. We are limited to 42 now. Originally it was 10, before my time. I started with the 25 limit.

MOLiCHiNO - Fifty Linden Friday
MOLiCHiNO – Fifty Linden Friday

A major part of groups is chat. Adding more groups increases the server load exponentially. Chat lag and not being able to post to a group are common problems we all deal with now as we use groups. I have no idea how many times I have had to send an IM to someone in the group because I could not get a comment into a group chat, connection fail…

Ciaran is suggesting that we shift from the chat we have now to something web based. I suppose something more like IRC, but with more persistence.

Read more

Drax Files Radio #21

by

Dxax announced in this show that this is the last live show of the first season. Shows will continue each Friday but, they will apparently be pre-recorded and are cued for the summer. Live shows will return mid August. We’ll have to see if they sound much different. I suspect the real difference will be a looser tie to current events.

Also, Drax and Jo are looking for funding. We can subscribe to the show for L$100/month (US$0.41 or about $0.10/show). The plan is a bit trick. To subscribe IM Drax and request a ‘subscription device’, in this case an on-air sign and microphone. They will apparently work like a land, house, or shop rental box. You pay the box. The on-air sign lights up. A month later it turns off and sends you a couple of notices presumably reminding you to pay the monthly support. The money raised will go toward supporting the show.

Read more

1920’s Berlin Birthday

by

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

by

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. 

Read more

Second Life Bits & Pieces 2014-21

by

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. 

Read more