Looking Back at Second Life 2012

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The Linden Blog has a new article this month titled: A Look Back at Improvements to Second Life in 2012 and Forward to 2013. It is worth the read, but it is pretty small. Having written 568 posts this year I thought it was a little light. So, I decided to look back over the year. I had no idea how much work I was getting into.

This article is the result of my look back at 2012. I have uploaded the WORD (docx) file I used to compose the article. I think it makes for a handy quick reference that can be searched. I find trying to search the blog for specific information less than ideal. So, if you want a quick reference to when things happened, get the file. Please do not re-post or publish it.

This article is long. But, check it out to see how many things you remember. I was surprised how much I had forgotten. I was also surprised how fast and how slow some things happened.

For a short version of this article see: 2012 – The Short List

Please forgive the poor use of tense. I found writing in past tense rather awkward. Also, notice I have made page numbers correspond to months.

Update: I have added the 2013 review here: Second Life 2013 in Review

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CHUI Project Viewer Update

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Ciaran Laval has an article about the recent update to the Lab’s CHUI Project Viewer. (CHUI = Chat Hub User Interface) Checho out the article: CHUI Project Viewer Gets An Update.

There are some new features and a bit of a change in organization of the Hub. I think it is getting beyter.

One nice feature is the access to past conversations. I’ve been using Notepad++ and digging through the hard drive to pull up conversations and transcripts of user group meetings. While I find that easy and don’t really need the feature, this will make the chat histories available to new users and those not into hard disk geekdom.

Astra Viewer 1.6.4.1 Release Review

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I keep wondering why I get so many hits on the Astra Viewer. My last review was in November 2011. The web site for the viewer seems to have disappeared.  I had assumed that development on the viewer had stopped. But, it seems not.

Astra Viewer 1.6.4.1 Splash Page
Astra Viewer 1.6.4.1 Splash Page

One can Download Astra Viewer from Github: aurora-sim / Astra Viewer – Download. This version is 7 months old. I can’t really see where it is being actively maintained. But it seems to get updated every 3 to 6 months, which would suggest a new update may arrive at any time.

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#SL news #3 Week 51

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It is the Christmas Season and in the merriment some news is leaking out about things to come.

Avatar Baking

I think most of you have heard a public countdown clock is running on Third Party Viewers (TPV) being able to deliver this service. Those that don’t change over will render avatars as grey or clouds.

Yuzuru Driving to User Group Meeting
Yuzuru Driving to User Group Meeting

What is less known is the new service only uses the HTTP protocol to deliver baked textures. In most ways this is a good thing. However, a number of people in Japan are seeing problems with HTTP texture being slow. Most of the rest of the world outside of Asia is NOT seeing that problem. They see a speed up. So, if you are in Japan and you are seeing a slower HTTP delivery of textures, get in touch with Monty Linden. But, be sure you know it is not your computer and be sure you can add information to the discussion before contacting Monty. 

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Google Sign In & Security

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Working with some new client computers I ran into some VERY annoying problems with the Google Chrome Internet Browser. There is an initial Sign In which seems hard to turn off.

Browser Market Share
Browser Market Share

In my search to find out how to turn off the annoying Sign In I learned several things about Chrome and Chromium. If you don’t know, The Chromium Projects according to Chromium’s home page are:

The Chromium Projects include Chromium and Chromium OS, the open-source projects behind the Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, respectively. This site houses the documentation and code related to the Chromium projects and is intended for developers interested in learning about and contributing to the open-source projects.

While I knew about Chromium being the open source side of Google’s Chrome browser, it had not dawned on me that this was the place to get information about Chrome. Duh! Well… we all have our stupid moments… and I didn’t even have to go blond. It is not the end-all-be-all source and Chrome often does not work as Chrome does, has files in different places, and different or missing registry entries at least they have some information that can help. It is very much like Linden Lab viewers and Third Party viewers… the same but different. 

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