Bits and Pieces 2013-30

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Ciaran Laval has a post about the 50% discount for educational groups coming back. See: Educational And Non-Profit Ventures See The Return Of The 50% Discount. The original Linden announcement is here: Updated Pricing for Educational and Nonprofit Institutions.

This is probably a good thing. But it is also probably a bit late.

A number of people think the cost of a region is too high. But, that is in the eye of the buyer. I was over on Lost Paradise today looking at Ae’gura. There were 6 users on in the last 24 hours and 17 over the last 7 days. At the same there were 50,000+ concurrent users logged into Second Life™.

Lost Paradise rents regions for US$40/month, the Lab $300±. For daily possible visitors in a day that is $6.67 per user in LP and $0.006 per user in SL. If you are doing business, SL is way cheaper. I know that is not a accurate cost per visitor comparison, but the cost ratio per visitor is accurate.

For educational groups that tend to bring their own students, a discount seems to be reasonable thing that should help everyone.

Hypergrid Business has articles this week on AviWorlds going offline and a how to tell when your grid is about to fold. Hmmmmm… 

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Rand Miller Interview Recorded Live at DMR

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For my Myst friends I’ve made a index and summary of a recent interview with one of the makers of the Myst series of games and Myst Apps.

Cavcon 2013 Photo by Alien
Cavcon 2013 Photo by Alien

The interviewee is Rand Miller, the CEO of Cyan Worlds, Inc., the maker of the Myst series, as well as a number of other games. This last Tuesday, July 23, in the DMR’s neighborhood (Myst Online in-game location) at a Cavcon gathering Rand was there to answer some questions.

Cavcon is about fan funding of the servers running the free to play Myst Online: Uru Live. 

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KokuaViewer.org Down

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I’m not sure what’s up today. The kokuaviewer.org blog and wiki are down today, just when I need a copy of the viewer for my new Win7. I’ll use an older copy.

The domain name is still working but PING is dead and a TRACERT dies in Comcast’s LA area. So, I don’t know if it is Kokua’s site or Comcast that is the problem.

Their back!

Viewer Pipeline Update

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The Viewer Release Candidate pipeline is operational. Get ready for some surprises. Remember. I’m writing as a Windows user. Things may be different on a Mac.

Open Source Meeting 2013-30
Open Source Meeting 2013-30

Oz Linden explained some of the thinking about and intended operation of the new pipeline. Part of the explanation was getting my terminology straightened out. Words convey meaning and people have to have the same meanings for the words being used to communicate. 

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Blender 2.68 Weight Painting Updates

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Gaia Clary, operator of Machinimatrix.org and purveyor of Avastar, has a new video tutorial out showing the changes in Blender 2.68 weight painting. This video is just about the changes, not a basic weighting tutorial. It is however a must see for anyone doing weight painting. 6:29 minutes.

[youtube LMeAnl-wEpo]

The addition of weight tools to the Blender Edit Mode is great. The improved vertex weight editing in the right-hand Properties panel of the 3D window, is a major help in figuring out what’s wrong with a weight painted object that is misbehaving.

You can discuss and ask questions in the SL Forum in: Blender 2.68: Weight Tools Overview. If nothing else stop by and thank Gaia and click the KUDO’s button.

Second Life News 2013-30

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I’ve been hoping the SSA feature would roll to the entire grid. The Lindens just aren’t listening to me. The main channel is going to get the Experience Tools package, which is an infrastructure upgrade that is basically invisible to us.

Content and Mesh Meeting 2013-30
Content and Mesh Meeting 2013-30

Blue Steel get the package that ran  on Le Tigre last week. This is bug fixes and a change to Materials handling to improve performance. It gets the Experience Tools upgrade and may be a fix or two.

Magnum and Le Tigre are going to get the SSA package. It updates to include the Experience Tools update and a couple of fixes. The combined region count for Le Tigre and Magnum is near 4,000 regions.

The way this is going we might see all three RC channels running SSA in week 31.

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