My Blog Stats - November 2014

The renowned Daniel Voyager often publishes his blog stats so I thought I'd give mine a whirl. Here goes, for what it is worth ...

From this data it appears I'm popular with Russians, Brits, and vampires that like bikinis and boobs. Is this how Woodward and Bernstein started?

Noobie News

Happy (late) St. Patrick's Day! I didn't spend much time in-world yesterday as I was out of the house far too long, but at least I had a nice Guinness (and then some) at a local pub to celebrate the day. I helped a noobie get acquainted with Second Life and tried the new Resident experience myself afterward and after reading Daniel Voyager's account of the new Destination Islands (click here for the post and my comment thereon). Here's hoping The Lab isn't intentionally screwing the pooch to kill off Second Life because I'm afraid that the new introduction to Our World is just that bad.

My view upon landing, using the Beta viewer.
Yclept Resident is a throw-away account to be deleted soon, btw. I tried well over a dozen names before
grabbing a random one from the dictionary. The lack of surnames forces folks into really strange
names and makes signing up a frustrating process, but that is another issue.

The infrastructure was created primarily by Damian Fate (no mention on his blog that he is involved in this project), Kwoo Oddson (the rock monster maker at Linden Realms, apparently). and Crazy Mole with a sim surround by Sominel Edelman. Of course, everything I could find is owned by Governor Linden.

Damian's build is very attractive. I've long thought of him as a wonderful designer.
Note the "Away" person to the right and the other Resident that figured out how to Edit Appearance, the two most common noobie experiences before asking for money or sex.

Very few people were chatty and no one I met seemed to know what do to at all. The How to pop up (see pic above) should be the first window to appear, I think to welcome new Residents. I understand that an international audience requires grapho-icon signage, but the setting was still too spartan to be noobie-friendly.

Simply walk into a portal and you are god-teleported to a random location from the Destination Guide based on the theme you pick. If you try to fly off the island too many times you are just booted to a random location.

I have to confess this is my second time through the new Destination Island. Yesterday I entirely forgot to take pictures. As part of the informal Resident Greeter group run by Daniel I'm tempted to leave Yclept on Destination Island, sending her new clothes, body parts, and good landmarks for noobs,  but likely she's be shuffled off to a new location upon logging in again.

Crazy Mole makes such pretty flowers that even vampires like them!
Right. Daylight vampires. *sigh* Even some in the fabulous Kim Harrison books are day-walkers, but she has
a pretty plausible explanation. I'll buy that for now, but I need to get Yclept into another avatar as soon as I can.

Like a day-walker Werewolf!!! Off to Adult World!!
Or not. As this account was not Age Verified, only the map opened to show an Adult Sandbox (SLurl) and a warning appeared telling me that I need to prove my age. I really went to the Art portal, landing at the SLACC (SLurl).

Maybe I did get to an adult area, as the following message showed up in Main Chat after I landmarked the SLACC:

You have been teleported by the object 'Destination HUD v1.1' on the parcel 'Norbo's Nipples, Leather Wear, Clothing, Animations and more'.

Hitting the Home button in the upper tool bar landed me at the Braunworth Infohub (SLurl), same as yesterday's test avie. It was very crowded so I turned on Always Run (Ctrl-R) and got out of there to relive my noobie experience.

Usra, Daniel, and M

Most of you know I have an alt named Usra. She's heavy into the Loco Pocos theme and tends to take over my posts when those adorable avies are concerned. In fact, she posted on the Lucky Kitty Crew blog today about some prize hunts involving Loco Pocos creators (Web). After that she headed over to the new Welcome Islands and Discovery Islands to wish people a Happy Easter and to give out Easter eggs. She ran into friend Daniel Voyager (the other bunny in the pictures below), blogger/reporter (Web) and M Linden, CEO of Linden Lab (Web). Sadly RL beckoned, but not before Usra helped out M with an LM to the fabulous Bare Rose clothing adjustment tutorial and talking about the new islands meant to introduce new Residents to Second Life. No chance to grill him on the use of Megaprims there, but the addition of a tutorial sandbox is being looked into and there are discussions about live helpers being present (remember Mentors?). Here are some pix (no, I didn't note the names of the other people):

M Linden (on the far right in all the pictures) kept commenting on how much he loved Usra's avatar so I gave him the URL to the Lucky Kitty blog post I mentioned then he broke out his Devil avie ("Now that explains a lot," Usra joked) and his ghost avie. I remember he was among the Lindens that filled the Loco Pocos sim last Halloween buying avies for the holiday. He seems genuinely nice and very interested in the fun aspects of Second Life. Much of our conversation was focused on the magic of the the world and how the new welcome experience was designed to foster that impression. Sadly, Lindens still hide from the presence servers so my attempts to hug him failed. Haven't hugged a Linden yet because of that, but maybe one day ...

Random Thoughts on SL Viewer 2.0

If you've missed the news, iteration 2 of the Second Life viewer is in public Beta. I had a pretty long discussion via IM with noted SLebrity and all-round good guy Daniel Voyager while playing with the software and he has some great insights on his blog. Following are my disjointed observations after tweaking and adjusting the software to meet my tastes. Please keep in mind that some of my comments are biased by my heavy reliance on the fabulous Imprudence viewer by Jacek Antonelli.

• The 2.0 viewer is faster and more memory-friendly than any other viewers I've tried, official or otherwise. When I task switch on my i7-powered 27" iMac the other programs have whatever access to the 4GB RAM they need. Start up and shut down are also faster and even my avie seems to fly faster.
• Some changes will take a while to get used to due to extra steps needed for access or some new locations. File uploads are the 'worst' of these. Instead of using File > Upload one needs to open the Inventory pane then use the File menu there to upload. Next worse? Using About Land. No more simply clicking in the menu bar.
• Related to About Land and sorely missed: Avie coordinates in the menu bar.
• Chat is easier for me to see. Actually, the UI is generally easier on my eyes. I did bump the size up a bit, though, to compensate for what seems to be smaller fonts than in other viewers. The cute little profile pix in chat are ... well, cute. Handy, too. Not having the Inventory (and related windows) go translucent when not in focus makes them easier to use.
• Everything takes up more screen real estate, particularly the Conversations (AKA Communications) window. I quickly searched for a way to bind all the individual windows into one tabbed unit to preserve my sanity.
• I'm probably going to make a special folder for Favorites Bar LMs. Each will have an edited name for clarity.
• There are some items in the Advanced menu that need to be accessible otherwise, such as Stop Animating Me, Set Window Size (formerly in graphics preferences), Rebake Textures, and the Lag Meter. These are not Power User tools and should be more easily found. Horizontal tabs in the Conversations window would be nice, too.
• The 2.0 viewer needs to steal some items from Imprudence, such as double-click Inventory items to wear/take-off (including prim attachments). Every mini-map enhancement needs to be ported, pronto. Also, the quick access draw distance slider. Having fast access to the Sky Editor and presets is more for a Power Users, but it is sooooo handy.
• Inventory sharing is a nuisance in 2.0 if you are not close to the other avie and I can only guess why a separate Conversation window needs to activate if an IM chat is not active.
• As you see in the picture above, the Clothing folder from the standard Inventory is quickly available. I have yet to read about this, but I suspect it might have a relation to the "Link" function buried in the Inventory's advanced menus ("Select an original item, then choose this to highlight all linked items to it," says Help, whatever that means.). It does not increase your inventory size unless you wear an outfit. Then it is fully imported into the My Library's Clothing folder, just like before. "Clothing" is a misnomer as these are now and have always been complete avatars. I'm sort of excited, though, if this feature can be used for favorite outfits.
• The media Play button uses the Pause ❙❙ symbol to show it is playing and the Play ❯ symbol to show it is paused, just like an older iPod I have. All other media players I use are just the opposite. The volume control is "hover to see" and clicking it mutes everything. Quick access to details is via the "configure" button if you hover to get the volume slider. If I mute my computer via the keyboard, the SL volume speaker shows the International NO sign.
• And that brings us to Voice Chat, something I seldom use but had to hunt for to deactivate. It is in Preferences > Sound & Media as opposed to a conveniently named Voice Chat section.
• The Color Picker has many issues. The standard colors are not there and saving a custom color usually fails. For example, I can make and save a custom color to change the URL color in chat but that same color is not available for other items. Probably a bug.
• I like the Info buttons in the place tool bar and if the pointer is hovering over certain objects.
• Texture sizes and aspect ratios in Profiles are now all different. Many folks spend money or spend extra time making Pick pictures and profile pictures extra nice. The new viewer does these no justice. There is plenty of room to make these bigger. Let's get some standardization going as well. Here are the current aspect ratios of some SL textures. If you look you'll see the sizes were chosen by committee or chance. Or both.
• Also concerning the People tab: The Groups section of a person's profile needs a lot of work. The text is too small and the list is clumped together. Make the font bigger and set them all as bullet points, please. Blogger Hamlet Au has written about a controversy with the new Profile format's clumping of Second Life and Real World information on the same pane. As far as I'm concerned: Meh. I have fun with the RW section. As far as you should be concerned, this is my First Life.
• Now and then a pose ball stays highlighted after sitting on it (Right-Click > Sit Here) or object that you've edited or inspected (via the Info button on the hover tip).
• In the picture above the hover text in my hugger is off center. This happens with other HUDS that use hover text, too, but only in the 2.0 viewer.
• Ban Lines are now translucent yellow on yellower "warning" stripes like a police line tape.
• The top bar with Favorites and such needs to be collapsable to save screen space.
• The My Appearance pane could be done away with if the Wearing tab is moved into the Inventory panel. Usra, my model in the pic, pointed out that obviousness to me.
• I like the bottom tool bar. The new basic buttons can be hidden but the usual buttons are gone. Nope. No Build button. Mostly I used that to see if I could rez something on the parcel I was visiting. It will take some getting used to, but I like the tool bar in general.
• Of course a transition period is needed, but I'm very excited about the new layers available in Appearance. A tattoo layer has long been needed and the alpha layer will make boots and attachment-intensive avies a lot nicer.
• What?!? No more Inventory count? How many Whatsitz do I have?
• [17:49] Angela Seale: mention taht your wife HATES the interface [17:49] Angela Seale: the whole thing, it's just inconvienent, it's not user configurable, adn it feels clumsy like 2-5 building blocks [17:52] Angela Seale: it feels like it's "playskool" interface
• Conversely, I generally like the interface. If I hadn't seen v1.x first I'd probably be rather happy with this one.

On the whole I would have to say I like v2.0 and that most of the criticisms I've heard in-world and seen in print are mostly from folks who don't like change. Remember those who didn't like Windlight? There will be alternative viewers based on the Open Source Snowglobe and I'm sure these will have more appeal to Power Users and those with specialized needs. This viewer is aimed at new and casual users with many features that should still appeal to even more advanced users. It certainly meets that goal and then some.