Nalates' Things & Stuff

Second Life News – Week 25 Extra

2019/06/22 by Nalates Urriah

Second Life Moles – These are people that are paid staff working for Linden Lab. I suppose from home or wherever. We know them as the people that build the Public Works of Second Life™. At the moment they are building Bellisseria and SL16B.

The SL News Extra has an account by Bixyl Shuftan of a sort of interview-encounter with Abnor Mole, who’s name you’ll find is a take on the word Abnormal. Interesting article.

SL Complication – I follow Penny Patton’s blog The Digital Pasture. She mostly writes about the shortcomings of SL, what users are doing wrong, and how to circumvent the challenges or how the Lab could improve the situation. Not a frequent blogger. Her previous article was 9 months ago. The average, I think high, is one article per month.

She has another article in her series that focuses on creating NPC’s (Non-Player-Characters or bots). I hadn’t thought about it, but she makes a good point. See: Why Anticipated Second Life Features Go Unused Once Released.

Second Life News Week #25

2019/06/18 by Nalates Urriah

Other News

Today, Tuesday, was the Server-Scripting UG meeting with the quarterly music thing with Tukso this quarter.

TP/Crossing Disconnects – Lindens think they have most of the problem handled. They aren’t saying much as they don’t want to influence the bug reporting. I think additional fixes are in Blue Steel, but I don’t have any objective information to say so.

The Le Tigre and Magnum regions have the EEP fixes for legacy viewers… the ones we are using.

SL16B – Second Life’s Birthday Party opens on 20th June and runs to 8th July.

June 24 – This is the last day you can renew at the old rates for Premium Membership. Last Call.

Voice Maintenance – June 19^th the Lindens will be pulling maintenance on the voice system. They will start at 8:00 AM SLT. People may have problems while system maintenance is in progress. Watch Grid Status for an announcement of completion. You may need to relog after that to get voice working.

Facebook’s Bitcoin – Facebook is planning to get into the cyber-currency game. Their block-chain coin will be named Libra… free? Does anyone think they are providing a free service from the goodness of their heart? I don’t. The concerns being voiced are based on FB’s history of privacy invasion. Now, they will have access to your spending and earning information. A FB alternative is MeWe.com.

FaceApp – This has recently become is a small thing in SL. It is an app for mobile devices to edit portrait images. It is quite fun. I just wrote a how-to on getting it to run on a PC or Mac: The FaceApp and Second Life

The FaceApp and Second Life

2019/06/18 by Nalates Urriah

Browsing a Second Life™ Forum thread I was impressed with a photo by SL resident Opal Gustafson.

What a cute avatar (click to enlarge). CLICK… gotta like that one. A bunch of other people liked it too. Started a bit of a thing.

Seicher Rae saw it and commented none of her heads or AO’s had such a smile. Hmmmm… neither do mine. Seicher asked how she got the avatar to smile like that. The answer was FaceApp. The smile was made in post-processing, not in SL.

I have seen what I thought were SL avatars will big smiles. Even some profile pictures with smiling faces. Now I know where they come from.

So, what is FaceApp and where does one get it? It is an app for mobile devices. Google Play and Apple Store. Free and paid versions available.

If you know how to move images between your mobile device and your desktop the quick way to get these smiles is to put the app on your device and moves files back and forth.

Where is the Porn? Erotic? Just Sexy? A view from Second Life

2019/06/14 by Nalates Urriah

Whether in RL or Second Life™ people are interested in beauty and beautiful things. I am of the opinion SEX and the sexy can be beautiful… gorgeous, and/or stimulatingly erotic. Sex can also be crude, vulgar, and/or violent. While often being an expression of caring or love, flipping the coin over we know it can also be devoid of any caring for another and totally about self-centered gratification and control.

Whatever the case, it is hard to classify art as either erotic or pornographic. Those issues rage worldwide. You can decide what is which. I don’t care how you decide. Just don’t load your opinions on me. I just want to see what I consider titillating erotic art. Preferably without gallons of dripping body fluids. But sometimes that is just what I want.

Second Life News Week #24

2019/06/11 by Nalates Urriah

Other News

Server Deploy Posts – They are back… Last week speaking to Caleb Linden at the Beta Sever UG meeting I learned there was a problem and it would get resolved. It apparently has as there is a deploys posts this week.

Caleb posted the announcement Monday about noon SLT/PST. Yay!

June 24 – This is the date Premium Membership Rates increase. Until then you can renew for one more billing cycle at the current rate, US$72 per year, which is a deal. I just renewed. I am good until 2021.

With Premium, one gets a L$1,000 signing bonus (down the road) and L$300 per week. At the average exchange rate of L$250 to the US$1 that is L$16,600 or US$66.40. Net cost is $5.60. With a jump up to US$99 the net cost goes to US$32.60. That seems like a huge rise until one considers the cost of some other games.

Star Citizen with ships costing US$400 to $2,500 and EVE Online at US$15/month are particularly expensive. Other monthly games are often US$10 per month or US$120 per year.

More WILD Sex?

2019/06/11 by Nalates Urriah

A couple of weeks back there was a splash in the SL blogosphere about the Ruckus Let’s Smash Couch. I wrote about it like 4 weeks ago. See: New Sex in Second Life? The remarkable part is the animations.

When answering a question in the forum about who is making good animations, I mentioned Ruckus. (Demo area Location NSFW – URL OK) Some of the people checked out the Let’s Smash Couch. Seems most were blown away. It is impressive.

Now there is a Ruckus Let’s Smash Bed… (MP URL SFW) Caroline (URL NSFW) at Second Life Adventures says it is better than the couch. You’ll find the demo in the Ruckus demo area. Every time I’ve been there someone is trying out the bed.

What is Second Life’s Focus Magazine?

2019/06/08 by Nalates Urriah

If you like looking at pictures of Second Life™ or making them or want to learn how to make them, Focus Magazine will likely be of interest. If you are posting SL images to Flickr then it is very likely of interest, as they have a group on Flickr named, I’m too sexy for this … Read more

Second Life News Week #23

2019/06/04 by Nalates Urriah

Friday was the Third-Party Developers’ UG meeting. Lots of updates on what is going on. So, check the Other News. …speaking of Other News, I am changing the order of these posts. The more interesting stuff I’ll put at the start meaning Other News. That pushes Server and Viewer reports down the page. They are still here.

The Server-Scripting UG meeting was well attended 20+. Lots of questions and answers.

Other News

Teleport Problems – The Lindens think they have those fixed. They have been watching the new stats they started collecting weeks ago to find the problem. It is looking good… or at least, better. If QA and RC testing had gone well, we would likely have seen the changes go grid wide this week. Maybe next week.

My experience TPing and Crossing is better. I’ve been flying and sailing with way fewer disconnects. Flying in certain RC channels I have not disconnected. From time to time in main channel regions, I do fail to connect to the destination region and get disconnected. Still, way less often.

I do still get unseated… I get left behind as my heli or boat continues on. A number of times I have recovered and caught them and continued on. Other times the controls are borked and I delete the vehicles and relog.