Response Requested June 9, 2008

OK, I could do one of those Formal-Poll-Like Doo-Hickeys but I prefer your direct response via comment. So if you would oblige me PLEASE dear readers….

It’s short and sweet and easy but important to me, since I am a Geek and all. Additionally, it has to do with an upcoming post I’m planning. Additionally X2 it gives me a chance to make all my readers say Hi, including any lurkers (as a lurker on a majority of blogs I read, I get ya).

{–Questions–}

1. What OS Do you use (Windows/Mac/Linux)
2. What browser do you use (Firefox/Internet Explorer/Opera/Safari)
3. Do you use an RSS reader? (zOMG Yes/Sometimes/Rarely/No/What’s an RSS reader?)
3a. If Yes, what RSS reader do you use?

Thank you!!

Queen of the Dorks! June 9, 2008

So lately I’ve been humbled to receive many glorious accolades. Firstly, last week the super-cool Canimal put one of my pics up in her sim! (and right under Ms Willow Caldera’s nakkies pic! *pokes*)

And just now I found I’d won the vanquished title of “Dork of the Week!” from one of my new fave blogs (and not just cuz they have GREAT taste in WordPress templates *hrhrhr*), Who Let The Dorks Out. They’ve set up a Flickr group where you can submit all your favorite dork shots, which is heaven for me since I’m overflowing with ‘em (I have a bunch I have not uploaded yet…soon). The winning pic is below; it’s an older one but still makes me giggle everytime I see it.

FINE! June 8, 2008

Gawd! If you’re gonna make me post! *stomp* *stomp* *pout*

UUmmm…OK kidding. I couldn’t help it though, right now I’m in the mood for the dramatic.

Just got home from the RL fundraiser, part of which was a performance from a circus troupe run by friends of ours. A great show, “fiercely entertaining” I congratulated one of the performers. All around entertaining and surprising, even coming from this weeeeebit jaded Queen. One highlight was a real live sword swallower — he claims he’s one of only 36 sword swallowers in the world, and that the art itself as a performance is older than both singing and dancing on the stage. Not sure about the 36 thing, but he was highly entertaining and he yanked some poor gal from the audience to pull the blasted thing out. What?! I could have never done that, I would have stood there, froooozen not able to pull the thing out for fear I’d slice his innards clean through. He’d probably end up choking to death or something and then it would all be on my hands you see? You can see why I’m glad I wasn’t chosen.

Soooooo….Oh, here’s a fitting picture I took a few days ago. I got all dressed and set out to explore the Carnival of Doom, well little did I know when I attached that little ticket HUD that would be the last Second Life thing I was going to be able to do for awhile, aside from sitting on poseballs, walking around, taking pictures and logging out. Ahhh, the Second Life Carnival of Doom.

Additionally (a bonus, you could say): I contemplate a chicken.

I R Bad Blogger June 7, 2008

Yes yes yes. Post post post.

Tomorrow Later today OK probably most likely Sunday since tomorrow I’m doing a bunch of work for a Foster Kids Fundraiser (RL) I have a boring informative blog post.

Until then, I’m sneaking in something before I head to bed. It’s a picture!

Rave Pics May 30, 2008

Yay I’m finally done with the pics. The only things I did in photoshop was to add a bit of light to the avie’s. Oh and some got cropped too.

I was tempted to start effecting-out some of them, but I’m not sure which ones right now, especially since my eyes are crossing a bit. ;p And if I start that process it will never end and I’ll never post. See, I know my own tricks.

I’ve only included a few here; there too many to post on this bloggy (44 I think it ended up being) so head to teh flickr for the complete set!

[insert more witty chit chatty-ness here]…tra la la…tra lala…yes those are the morning birds singing outside my window, asking why I still have not gone to bed yet.

What are you still doing here?!? Flickr! Go!

So. Many. Pictures. May 29, 2008

So last night I attended the weekly Viper Pit hump-day party and it was a RAVE theme. Too much fun!

I took…a lot of pictures. A Lot. No, really.

No. Really.

450 pictures. In 2 hours.

When taking pictures of dancing with lots of particles, you have no choice but to keep two fingers on the trigger (in this case, the Control and ` key as I’m a “snapshot to disk” gal) and keep on shootin.

I probably would have topped 500 if my Hard Drive hadn’t sent me a nice message that it was about to puke from being so over-stuffed.

I think I’ve whittled the 450 down to 40…they all also need at least a lil bit of photoshop work which I plan on doing tonight, so hopefully I will get them up very soon. But there are some truly awesome shots I’m pretty excited about!

In the meantime, you’ll have to deal with this non-rave pic (below) I took recently that was languishing in my “upload and blog” folder. I love this SL hair (sexy hair from Shop Seu) because it’s sooooooo almost exactly like my RL hair (RL curlie ends achieved b/c I tend to twist it all back into a bun a lot but then take it down for some cheap and easy curlie looks). Actually, kind of funny: when I see my Avie wearing this hair from the back it actually kind of freaks me out that it looks so much like RL me.

Rave pics soon! <3

Mixed Messages May 26, 2008

Ok, this is quite amusing, if I do say so myself.

I was in a fit of general organization and clean up of my workspace/home skybox that floats above my [empty] store/crown….moving “living” up to the deck which is most relaxing fun area/coolest of all (windlight is my decorator). Of course I moved my sign I lovelovelove…

So I’m taking the ole camera for a twirl around the place when I realize…!!!…that I may be advertising something to anyone flying by that I may not, errr, intend.

I ah ho, indeed.

Giggle. Fit.!

SL Suggestion Box 1: Sculptie Render Pipeline May 25, 2008

Welcome to a new feature on my blog, where I act like I’m Very Smart and Provide Open Suggestions to the community and our Dear Overlords Linden Lab on ways to improve Second Life.

My first one is a particular Grrr of mine. The dreaded Sculptie Balls Syndrome.

I understand that yes sculpties will take longer to load as their data is in fact made up of an image. Here’s what peeves me: when I see a bunch of unrezzed-shape sculptie balls that are properly textured. The texture that makes up the shape of the sculptie is almost always ? most times ? a lot smaller than the “image” texture. It seems the rendering pipeline gives those bigger images the priority. Or at the very least it’s not prioritizing the shape image.

I’d *much* rather see a gray sculptie shapes than textured sculptie balls.

Couldn’t the call for the sculpt texture include some sort of “pipeline jumper flag” that says, Hey, put this texture first in the rendering pipline. Because now what happens is these are tending to load *very last* and it’s quite annoying.

From a user standpoint, Sculpties should render when the rest of the prims do. To the user it shouldn’t matter the “why”, you work that out under the hood to create a seamless experience. You don’t need to see a bunch of textured unrezzed scuptie balls, give me the shape before the texture.

It may seem like a minor point, but I think it’s one thing that irks a lot of people, and is certinaly not helping with keeping newcomers around… especially if they don’t get why everything is a bunch of odd shaped spheres.

Queen’s Public Service Announcement: HEAT! May 13, 2008

It’s gettin’ hot in here…ohgodwhathaveidonenowitstuckinmyhead…

Anyhoo…as the weather gets warmer in the Northern Hemisphere one thing we’ve got to watch out for is HEAT and your computer.

I’m having a feeling that a lot of peeps that are having recent crashes/freezing problems and blaming it on SL bugs are in fact running their machines too hot.

Even if they are oldbies at this SL thang, Windlight makes your graphics card work a WHOLE LOT HOTTER, so many people might not be expecting this. And it seems everybody and their mom has laptops these days, which are harder to keep cool. I happen to be a geek that cares for you, gentle readers, and I have both a desktop and laptop to give you both perspectives.

If you’ve got a desktop, you have a lot more control and you can easily open ‘er up (its ok, you wont hurt anything if you are careful) and check things out.

For SL the most important fan is on your video card! Your CPU also has a fan that is tre importante. And if you have a desktop, you should have a few other fans inside too. Basically your CPU and video card create the most heat, and the hot air will just lie there on top of your video card and/or motherboard, which is bad, m’kay? What you want to do is push that air towards the back to your power supply fan where it pushes it out the back vent.

Check for extreme heat by touching the case and feeling the air coming out of the back vent. If it’s boiling hot that’s bad! Make sure you have enough air flow in the room you’re working. If it’s hot you should be hearing fans working inside your computer. If you don’t hear fans, that’s bad! (unless you have the super quiet fans and if so then most likely you’re a geek so this whole entry is preaching to the choir, or a good reminder at least ) When it’s hot my G5 sounds like a freaking jet engine, I kid you not. I don’t mind it tho…it’s doing the Lord’s Work

For the desktop users….In desperate situations I have placed a normal floor fan directly in front of my desktop (most desktops have front vents). My boyfriend has his computer open all the time and has a fan literally blowing directly onto/across his video card. This is a bit crude, but will do the trick! Be sure to check that the fan on your video card works OK (with your case open, start your computer and watch the fans). Your CPU also has a fan. If any of these fans stop working, your computer can react in a number of ways, including freezing up completely, acting glitchy or freezy or suddenly just shutting down with no notice. The shut down is to save the precious parts! Because if you run it too hot for too long, it will ruin your video card or chip which is expensive to replace and no one wants that. There are also some desktop cases that come with gadgets plus softwares to help read the temp and warn you if it’s too hot. When your fans are dying they tend to make a lot of noises, so don’t ignore those noises! Those ball bearings do give out, but don’t worry, they’re like $3 to replace! Much cheaper than buying a new video card.

If you have a laptop…well, it’s bit more difficult (don’t be opening up your laptop!) but there are still things you can do. For about $20/30 or so you can invest in a laptop stand thingy (and yes, that IS the technical term). They come in a billion different kinds, some just elevate (which is very important), some are metal with a fan to act as a heat sink and will cool things off quite nicely! If you have an (Intel) Mac laptop (MacBook or MacBookPro) you already know how freaking HOT they can run…so download an free app called SMC Fan control which gives you control over your internal laptop fans. Whenever I run SL on my MBP I ALWAYS run SMC Fan Control. The app won’t let you mess things up, in fact it never lets you turn the fan off or lower than what it would normally run, but does allow you to run them super high and keep things reeeeally nice and cool. If you can’t control your internal fans, the most important thing you can do for a laptop tho is ELEVATE. Get the dern thing off your desk/lap and let the air flow under and over. If it’s still too hot get a regular fan and place it next to your elevated laptop blowing from left to right or right to left (across your laptop, if you will). Feel your laptop and find the “hot spot” (Usually there’s a few definite hot areas) and try to point the fan toward those.

So just remember folks…when it comes to computers, HEAT IS NOT COOL.

OMG I’m terrible. Just terrible.

ARC is Not the Boogeyman May 5, 2008

Call me crazy, but I just don’t get the all the hubbub and suspicion around town about the ARC, saying that it’s Big and Bad and All Wrong because “it doesn’t take into account the user’s graphics card capabilities”.

If that were true, then the ARC would have no real value because there would be no real scale, making the number (mostly? absolutely?) useless. And here’s why:

Let’s say I design something, but I have a kick ass system. Perhaps I’m concerned with making laggy things, so I check the ARC. Shows great for me! Perfect, it’s not laggy at all!

But then someone with a crappy graphics card buys my thing and it slows them to a crawl. They check their ARC and it’s thru the roof! Which ARC is right? Is it a laggy thing or not? There are as many answers to that as there are points in a circle (infinite!)

Or situation B: It’s a full, laggy event. The witch hunt begins: Everyone turns on their ARC’s and starts talking. Oh, look person A is huge! make them go bald! But someone else says, no that person’s fine but PERSON B, that’s the one that’s killing it for me…..etc etc etc who’s right? everyone? no one? The number becomes arbitrary, meaningless.

Look people: here’s what (I think, in my very humble opinion) the ARC’s about. Before this, all we had was folk legends about AO’s lagging down events, or whatever you want to believe this week. Laggy events were handled like witch hunts, each person with a different pet theory about what’s causing the lag. Most of the pet theories are wrong.

The graphics guys at LL do understand how certain things cause more work than others to render. That’s obviously how they assigned their points. ON A COMMON BASELINE.

Believe me, I don’t think it’s a perfect system, but it’s better than folk lore. I think some things are noticably missing from the points assignment, like sculpties, and taking into account a texture’s size which can make a big difference.

But it’s a beginning. It’s a snapshot, a general idea about how laggy one thing is compared to another. Everyone could be in red and if you’ve got a great system that can handle it, you should have no problem seeing it all, have high fps, etc. Good for you, now get outta mai face The rest of us do contend with lag and it’s nice to know that hair A has a large ARC so maybe it’s not a good idea to wear it to the next fashion show or orgy room or Insert Laggy Event Here.

The ARC is a development tool, much like if I create web pages I should check the pages to make sure they work on older versions of browsers and in different OS’s. If it only told me what things were to me, that wouldn’t help me create items in a smart way, nor understand the impact I’m having on my poor Minimum System Requirement-having customer or neighbor or visitor or victim.

The fact is, LL always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to “it runs so slow!” but so much of that slow is caused by you and me and everybody. The ARC sets to put the User behind the Content in a place of having more information.

User Generated Content may be the Shining Star of Second Life, but it’s also it’s Primary Problem.