General News

Interesting Things in Second Life

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During the run up to Second Life’s birthdays we see some blogging about the past, present, and future. This 10th birthday (SL10B) is no different. There are funny, interesting, sad, New, and a whole range of other things turning up.

Blender-Avastar

Iris Ophelia on Hamlet’s New World Notes has an article about the Avastar plug-in for Blender. Iris is suggesting that Avastar be used by designers to create a better SL avatar.

[youtube FyJk3F0kgPY]

Well, it is possible. But, that still leaves lots of problems unanswered. However, I do think Avastar is currently the best answer available for many of the challenges we have in making clothes, avatars, and animations. 

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SL10B Announced

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Daniel Voyager has an article out about the coming 10th birthday of Second Life™, SL10B.

The ‘official’ announcement is here: The SL10B Community Event is coming!

Second Life 10th Brithday
SL10B Banner

The domain sl10b.com is owned by someone in Scottsdale, Arizona. The registration is classed as private, so no company or individual’s name shows up, that sort of makes sense for a resident sponsored group. But, it is also not very transparent. I don’t see anything on the SL Blog yet. 

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Gwyneth Llewelyn’s mADness

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I like Gwyneth’s writing because; her ideas are clearly expressed and her thinking rational. Her latest is about Linden Lab starting to use Google’s Adsense advertising and people’s reactions. It ranges from estimates of how much the Lab may be making to the psychological aspects of SL and the freedom available in SL that IS NOT available in other social sites/games/networks.

Gwyneth points out the details of how the Lab is using the advertising. She compares it to how other services use advertising. The Lab is certainly atypical in their use of Adsense.

The basic idea many people have is that paid services do NOT have advertising. But, that is not accurate. Consider cable and satellite TV. Those are paid services that have a load of advertising. Newspapers and magazine that we purchase have a load of advertising too. We pay to go into a movie and then sit through ads for coming movies and local services and products.

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Metareality 2013-8

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I missed this podcast… dang. Well, lots going on this last weekend. Family and friends were planning for NASCAR’s Daytona-500… a big thing. I am a Danica Patrick fan. She came in 8th, which is a big deal in my circle of friends.

Metareality’s podcast is titled J-J-Jaded. They talk a bit about the Unreal 4 Game Egine. So, check out the video showing it. There are a load of these.

[youtube OZmRt8gCsC0]

This is time I have written more of just an index than a summary.

The video is a demo of the Unreal 4 Game Engine, which is just awesome. 

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JIRA Change Follow Up

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Back in September how the JIRA works changed. Now we can’t really know what’s going on with bugs and other problems in Second Life™ because most of us cannot read the JIRA. We cannot browse or search the JIRA to see if a problem we are encountering has been reported. So, we just report our problem.

Nor do we know if a problem is fixed. Unless the problem is something we experience almost daily and one Tuesday or Wednesday it suddenly starts working. For users the JIRA Change is a pain.

SL JIRA 30 Day BUG Stats
SL JIRA 30 Day BUG Stats

Various parts of the JIRA work different ways. Some projects are open and anyone can read and comment on the items filed in those projects. Others are closed, like BUG, and people can only read and comment on the items they file and only until they are triaged. Only a few can read most of the JIRA projects. You can read my initial announcement here: Oh CRAP! JIRA Change (Sept 7, 2012).

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