WordPress Site Icon 2015 Tutorial

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This month WordPress added Site Icons. I saw this when I updated my site to the latest release of WordPress and in looking at what is new, I saw the Site Icon feature. I lost my site icon when I moved my site from a Windows server to a Linux server. So, I have needed to redo it for some time. So, I figured this might be a quick way.

New WordPress Site Icon Setting - 9/2015
New WordPress Site Icon Setting – 9/2015

Prior to this a site owner could only use the Windows Favorite Icon and the Mac equivalent to create an icon that can be used with bookmarks. Not an exactly a user friendly thing. With release 4.3 I thought adding the site icon got easier. But, the feature isn’t what I expected or what I think most of us will expect. So, here is how to use a WP Site Icon and create a favorite icon that is used with bookmarks.

The WP Site Icon feature is for theme builders. It doesn’t do much for site owners that aren’t into coding. Konstantin Obenland, release lead for 4.3, says,

This v1 marries Jetpack’s Site Icon module with the Media Modal, reusing code from the Custom Header admin. For now, the core-provided icons will be limited to a favicon, an iOS app icon, and a Windows tile icon, leaving .ico support and additional icons to plugins to add.

So, as best I can tell, implementing the feature on my site did nothing. That means the favorite icon I lost moving my site from Windows to Linux still has to be redone. At some point the WP peeps plan to add favorites icon support. 

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Second Life’s Paradise Lost

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If you haven’t heard… Paradise Lost is an artistic performance of Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden. It has been made into a movie, machinima. Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks are the movers and shakers behind the production and  Forren Ashford is the machinimist.

Huckleberry Hax has a good review of the movie and covers some of the back story. Check it out here: Paradise Lost: The Movie.

The news is there is a premier presentation of the movie this Friday, Sept 18 @ 4PM (presumably SLT) and it releases the 19th. Watching a machinima in Second Life™ may not seem that interesting. But, the production is about more than acting before a camera to present a movie. The use of sets, animation, and audience participation via RLV made it a unique experience in SL. The recording of the production into a movie is no less ambitious. Hax suspects the movie may make a new benchmark for SL machinima.

Basilique’s Performing Arts Company is the organization used to create the production and has its home in the region named Basilique (SLURL). Their blog is here. For Basilique news see: Regional news. For a calendar of events see: Basilique Events Calendar.

4 ways to watch Paradise Lost – The Movie – Limited seating. First come…

Net Neutrality – Sucks More

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You’ll get your fill of legal issues today… Net Neutrality is back in the news, not the mainstream news for the low information people. But, in the channels of the activists where more is heard.

Failure To Thrive [ The Gray Child ]
Failure To Thrive [ The Gray Child ]
It seems T-Mobile came up with a great competitive idea. They would provide their users music. The music data download would not count against their data plan. Basically listening to music on T-Mobile was to be free, as in no data cost. Neat, huh? I know that would be really good for me as my car radio died… getting fixed someday. I use iHeart on my phone until then.

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Copyright – Fair Use

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Copyright is basically a way for authors of books, songs, music, pictures, and movies to protect their work and profit from it. In Second Life™ we have to deal with copyrights. A new court case just clarified the requirement for consideration of fair use prior to filing a take-down notice.

This is an example of the problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjmbcLhtMYo

In the video above people are taking candied videos of their kids and those got compiled into a YouTube presentation. You probably noticed but didn’t think about the background music caught by the video camera. In a case known as The Dancing Baby Universal filed a DMCA take-down against a Ms Lenz because a song by Prince was playing in the background of her video. It wasn’t added later. It was what the baby was dancing to when the video was candidly captured. 

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Viewer Update – Quick Graphics

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We have a new release of the Project Viewer version 3.8.4.304916 that came out last Thursday. I saw it update my install when I went into SL this morning. This version apparently has some fixes that improve performance. Or it may just be that debug code has been removed. Whatever, I get way faster frame rates.

A number of bugs with Avatar Complexity have been fixed according to the release notes.

I am finding that most of my Jelly Babies come from high KB values, bytes of attachments. Setting my Complexity to MAX means something else triggers Jelly Baby render. KB triggers the Jelly Baby render just under 10,000KB. The default setting is 10,000,000b in Debug Settings’ RenderAutoMuteByteLimit. But, a 9.8mb avatar went Jelly Baby. Complexity was 98,000± with 29m2. So, I am wondering if there is some computation involved.

I’ve seen some ridiculous avatars in the new visitor hubs: Complexity 184,000, 33m2, and 341,000kb…

This viewer version is a bit more stable. If you have been wanting to try it, go for it now. It still sucks up memory and I clear it when the viewer starts slowing down. It takes longer to fill up memory now. I have used the viewer to visit new user landing areas with lots of people for about an hour and not crashed. I think I only cleared memory twice (using System Explorer – Free program)

Second Life Bits Week 38

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RSS Feed Change

I am not up on what is happening here. But, Oz Linden said something about upgrading the Linden systems to RSS2, from the RSS1 they are running now. RSS is: Rich Site Summary. Which is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Feedly reads the RSS feed from web sites to do its thing.

So, I expect this to be a change to the Linden web sites. Newer is better. Right?

310 - Primrose softblue
310 – Primrose softblue

SnapShot Panel Revisions

Many weeks ago we got a new Snapshot panel. The panel was designed by NiranV and has been revised by him again. The revision is being built into the SL Viewer now. There is some problem with the underlying Freeze Frame feature. Once that is resolved we will see the change appear in an RC Viewer. 

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