Blog Sort of Broke

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Friday I sort of broke the blog. I added some debugging code to help with a problem I was trying to solve. When just reading the blog, you probably wouldn’t notice a problem. I didn’t until I was away from home this weekend. Then other problems kept me from fixing it via remote login to my work machine.

Blog Change to PAGES
Blog Change to PAGES

There is a problem with WordPress’ sharing that is built into Jetpack. You only see the problem when you write or read a multi-page post and you are using sharing features of Jetpack. The text I use on this site looks as you see in the image above: Pages: 1 2. That line of text and links is created by a WordPress function: wp_link_pages(). On the home page it works well. 

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Second Life Viewer 3.6.7-281236 RC

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Many of us like seeing what is new or need to get a bug fix that is in the works. Before the new viewer pipeline was implemented we just downloaded and installed beta versions of the viewer. With the new pipeline that is still possible, but it has gotten rather complex. It is easier to just install an RC viewer over the top of our main install of the SL Viewer and run a single SL Viewer.

Second Life Viewer 2013-38
Second Life Viewer 2013-38

I’m trying that for now and watching how things work. In general, pretty well. There are some Windows oddities I am still sorting out.

You can download a copy of the current Maintenance Viewer 3.6.7-281236 RC from the Beta/RC page. Before you install it, open your SL Viewer and check that you have Auto-Update and ‘willing to install RC’ options enabled. Then just install it as you could the main release SL Viewer. Some versions do wipe out your settings when installed manually. 

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An Interesting Oculus Rift Review

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Time.com has a review of the Rift by Lev Grossman in their entertainment section. Lev has some interesting takes on use of the Rift. See: Hands-On with Oculus Rift: Virtual Reality Is Almost Here, Finally.

 

Time's Coverage of the Oculus Rift
Time’s Coverage of the Oculus Rift

Lev points out that the Rift’s handling or you peripheral vision makes your experience much more immersive. Using a monitor leaves our minds dealing with all the stimuli being fed in via our peripheral vision. Lev found it much more relaxing using the Rift. I doubt that is the word I would have used. But, his point is well taken. 

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World Makers Episode 11: Dwarfins

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It is Friday and a new Drax File is out: Dwarfins. The makers of Dwarfins  Dante Spectre and Judy Chestnut are interviewed in this episode.

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Inara Pey has an interview with Drax on her blog today. See: The Drax Files 11: the power of creativity.

Drax expresses the direction he is moving with the Drax Files in the interview:

… and for the future, I feel I need to get even deeper into personal stories that are different to the ones we’ve seen; so in the little time I have, the five minutes, the balance does need to be shifted towards the personal story. Not versus the activity, per se,  but what sets it apart from the other stories, rather than repeating what’s in the other stories. It lies in the nature of my goal as well as what people say naturally, without me prompting them, because it seems what is foremost on their minds is the stereotype we are faced with. so sometimes, the subject I’m interviewing is responding in a defensive way, but also sometimes just pushing back, which I really love.

 

Kokua Viewer 3.6.6 Released

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Kokua/Imprudence Viewers
Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

A new Kokua viewer is out. This version has an OpenSim fix for the 4096 Bug. That is going to make lots of OS users happy.  Latif Khalifa, the Singularity Viewer developer, made a patch that fixed the issue. The patch was distributed to Kokua and Firestorm. So, three of the popular viewers in use on OS grids will have the fix.

The 4096 Bug is a long known bug that prevents the user from teleporting more than 4096 grid locations from their current location. It has been very annoying as large grids had to develop jump points, sort of half-way points one teleports to so they can reach their real destination.

Grid locations are a basic 2D X,Y coordinate system. Just as we have 3D X,Y,Z locations within a region, the region is located on a 2D GRID, which is why we call these grids. The actual locations in the grid-region system is GRID: X,Y plus REGION X,Y,Z. If the distance from GRID:X1,Y1 to GRID:X2,Y2 is more than 4096 units the teleport fails. We don’t normally see the GRID:X,Y values.

Whatever, this is a really nice fix for OS users.

This version of Kokua updates to use the SL Viewer code base 3.6.6 which has materials fixes.

There are about a dozen other fixes/features. See: Kokua-3-6-6 is released