Dwell On It

2ndMe Launches Final Version and Offers Free SL Export

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:07:11 +0000

2ndMe, a fast growing service for Second Life residents, changed its status from beta to final on 16th of January 2012. All promised features like Adobe Flash 11-based core, animation and hardware acceleration support were successfully released. Also, from now on 2ndMe users enjoy free export of their avatars to Second Life.


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The golden rule of arts and sciences

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:14:57 +0000

SOPA isn’t dead. Far from it.

The people behind that bill and a host of other bills over the years are able to bring that bill, or its equivalent, back as many times as they please, until they have a legislature and president willing to pass it and sign it.

SOPA primarily is supported by money, but it is primarily only opposed by speech.

Money buys votes, essentially. It buys the votes of the legislature, because money buys your vote.

Fangs or GTFO

Tateru Nino — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:30:47 +0000

What do you think when you see an ad banner for Second Life? More to the point, what would you think if you were one of the many millions of people who knew nothing about Second Life?

Mostly, something like Vampire Wars, mixed with Farmville.


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Convalescence

Tateru Nino — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:57:15 +0000

I’m too sick to read, or write or do much of anything right now. Running a fever.

So, more on the parametric mesh deformer.

Lab requests feedback on Read more ...

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Qarl turns back on Lab rejection, “the code is open”

Tateru Nino — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:34:03 +0000

Following the seemingly specious rejection of the contributed prim-alignment tool earlier in the week, Qarl has declined to make the changes suggested by the Lab.

In the past, when code contributions have been made, the Lab has been willing to pull out all the stops to make its own contribution to the code in some cases, even going so far as to rewrite a contribution’s code from the ground up to meet its requirements or to overcome stylistic or technical objections.

The Lab has not chosen to do that this time and, while I cannot reasonably speculate on what the Lab is thinking and why – in this instance, the temptation is so very great.


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Linden Lab rejects Qarl’s prim-alignment tool

Tateru Nino — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:57:36 +0000

At least partly because it only really works with standard prims, you know, being a prim-alignment tool.

Actually, the Lab’s argument here seems to be that the alignment tool is incomplete (though I’d say it is more complete than a number of features I’ve seen the Lab ship over the last few years), and that since it provides assistance to only one set of fiddly, annoying tasks that it should not be included.


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The end of the world (as we know it)

Tateru Nino — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:44:33 +0000

I’m an end-of-the-world survivor. Through my life, there have been dozens of dates set for doomsday. Magic comets, mysterious asteroids, the second coming, planetary alignments, the rapture, you name it. People keep picking dates and years that the world will end – so many that I don’t think I’ve lived through a single year when there has not been at least one prediction that the world would end that year.

Stubbornly, the world has refused to end, much to the embarrassment and chagrin of many doomsday prophets.

Welcome to 2012.

Chunks of Twinity go offline in map-data fiasco

Tateru Nino — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:52:33 +0000

Metaversum GmbH’s virtual environment Twinity uses Google Maps and 3D mapping-data extensively to create cities, such as Singapore, London, Miami and New York City, match up virtual landscape and landmarks to their physical counterparts, and to make virtual buildings resemble the real thing. The correspondences between the virtual cities and the physical cities are a major feature of Twinity.

“Get creative and design your virtual apartment in an authentic real virtual city or create your own island to host parties, flirt and lead an extraordinary life!” quoth Twinity’s Web-site. “An authentic real virtual city”, huh? I wonder what an authentic fake virtual city might look like. Don’t mind me, the redundancy just rubs me the wrong way.

In any case, that all seems to have run afoul of some unspecified licensing fiasco.

You’ve got squat

Tateru Nino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:27:39 +0000

I don’t normally give a hoot about domain squatters, and they normally would not hold my attention for more than a second or so, but this is a rather amusing one.

Back on the fourth of October last year, one Steven Harrison of 15 Bilsdale Way, Bradford, West Yorkshire, DB17 5DG (information from the public domain-registrar records) registered the domain name lindenlabs.co.uk (sharp-eyed readers will immediately note that that isn’t the correct company name for Linden Lab).

Now, a UK Fetlife (Fetlife is a social network for kinksters and the proudly perverted) user by the name of OneSadisticBastard (who may or may not be Steven Harrison) is claiming to be… well, the domain owner (and thus, essentially, claiming to be Harrison), and trying to sell the domain name to other Fetlife users, apparently with the intent of harming Linden Lab, if I read his messages correctly.


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American Library Association scales back Second Life presence

Tateru Nino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:04:48 +0000

The American Library Association (ALA) is closing down its island estate in favour of a more modest and affordable Second Life presence.


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Second Life viewer 1.23 disappears due to upcoming incompatible inventory protocol change

Tateru Nino — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:22:57 +0000

The venerable Second Life 1.23 viewer has disappeared from the list of official viewer downloads, as a part of an upcoming, incompatible change to the inventory transfer protocol.


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Qarl contributes alignment tool to Linden Lab

Tateru Nino — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:10:44 +0000

One of Karl Stiefvater’s more popular tools is his prim alignment tool. This tool has only ever appeared i Read more ...

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How to send Qarl money

Tateru Nino — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:17:32 +0000

There seems to be a little confusion about who is involved in the parametric deformer project. For the record, it isn’t me – for those of you that might have gotten a little confused. If you’re eager to donate money by way of saying thanks, then the person to send it to is Karl Stiefvater, perhaps better known as Qarl.

Inara’s excellent viewer frame-rate comparison

Tateru Nino — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:46:18 +0000

Just a quick note to get your year in Second Life rolling along nicely. Inara Pey – who is both an excellent and informative Second Life blogger, among her many talents – has a side-by-side frame-rate comparison of 8 different viewers under specific test conditions.

If you’re wondering how each viewer stacks up for raw performance for a given configuration, you’ll want to check out her results.

Qarl’s parametric mesh deformer on display, feedback sought

Tateru Nino — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:20:17 +0000

Yesterday (and I nearly missed it), Karl Stiefvater put up a preliminary look at the crowd-funded parametric mesh deformer. “I should specify immediately that it’s not done,” said Stiefvater, “but the heavy-lifting part of it is.”

“I’m giving it to you in this form now, so that you can give me feedback. There are decisions to be made which we should make together.”


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A good year

Tateru Nino — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:12:12 +0000

I’ve been reflecting back on how 2011 has been for Second Life. I didn’t make any predictions for the year, but on reflection, I believe it was a good year for Second Life. Perhaps the best year for Second Life that I can recall for quite some time.


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Searching versus ranking

Tateru Nino — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:59:23 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Second Life search, and the complaints that are made about it. That most say that it isn’t as good as Google Web-search, that some complain that the new-new system has them ranked lower down than the old-new system did, that they can’t figure out how to boost their rankings and so on.

I’ll start off with two maxims:

1. The goal of a search-engine is to produce search results ranked by relevancy.

2. The goal of SEO (so-called Search-Engine Optimisation) is to reduce or eliminate relevancy in search results.

It’s time for a change

Tateru Nino — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 07:49:44 +0000

I’m going to talk about expectation management and Second Life, so it is only fitting that I first talk about Star Wars, in 1977.

That Star Wars film (Episode IV, the first one made) was the most spoilerific effort that I have ever seen. For months before the premiere of the film the media was saturated with character-bios, plot summaries, clips of the film, and making-of featurettes.


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A marketing push

Tateru Nino — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:04:36 +0000

Someone recently asked me to check with the Lab and ask about the “Big Marketing Push” that the Lab said at SLCC that it was gearing up for. If I recall rightly, the question was along the lines of “Has it happened yet? Or is it still to come?”

I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten who it was who asked me – but I did ask the Lab and get an answer.

Translation failed

Tateru Nino — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:51:52 +0000

A lot of Second Life users are wondering about a strange message that their viewer is spitting out with distressing regularity. The message generally looks like this: Translation failed: the parameter ‘appId’ must contain at least ’16′ characters Parameter name: appId

What’s happening is that – as you might recall – Google’s transitioned its translation API from a free service to a paid service. The mystifying message spits out every time your Second Life viewer tries to translate some text into your language. The new viewer defaults to Bing, and that’s the service that is generating the error – it’s complaining that you haven’t provided an appId for the translation service.

Making the message actually go away, though, is actually simple enough.