Coal's Notes

No shit, there I was, sitting at Trivial Obsession, wondering, yet again, how so many people seem to know all sorts of weird trivia, when blort! Logged off. :P Wingo region went down, I guess. We all struggle back... but key people, like Sumar and Jacek, who were sitting on either side of me when everything went pancake-shaped, are gone. Nonetheless, Carl keeps it going. Word leaks out that teleports are borked. And logins. And then that the grid's going down. And Carl keeps the game going. Where's the damn iceberg, because you know, I think I've seen this movie?

However, it does mean that I am forced to write here. I should really learn to multitask better. You know, like blogging while sleeping, or in the shower, or driving the car. Okay, maybe not the last, that's dangerous.

So, neat things I've heard about. GavinLeigh Wake is blogging about Burning Man. I've made it a point not to volunteer for anything to do with that event, not because I don't want to, but because my younger sister is due to have her first baby any day now (she's started contractions, but apparently that just means it's coming sometime in the next three (THREE?!) weeks). Honestly, don't you think by now they'd be able to narrow it down just a bit better than that? So anyway, I'm trying to keep my schedule kind of loose and flexible. And not overextend myself (more than usual). Besides, rehearsals for the next show I'm stage managing start in a couple of weeks. (ack)

I don't have autoreturn turned on at the head_space store, and the other night, I found 880 scripted fires on that plot of land (the fact that nothing auto-returned says a lot about how silly it is for me to have this much land, but we won't touch that). I also found someone had left their box of junk for sale in my store! Hey! I mean, griefing with dumb fire objects is one thing... but... that's my store. Stop selling your junk there! So I thought "well, I'll just script me a sensory doodad that bugs me if there's something set for sale in my store that isn't mine, and that'll show them!" Er. Well, maybe not, I guess! No way to sense if something's set for sale. Unless I'm missing something obvious? I banged my head against it for a while, then went to Trivial Obsession (see above, re: iceberg).

Hehe. I'm getting distracted watching Sysops & Users.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Why are none of the cafe press t-shirts v-necked? Or black? I hate white t-shirts. I would buy a couple of these at least, if they made a v-necked and black version. Well, okay, maybe just the "wtf? idk" one.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After my last entry, I noticed that my last.fm thingie was taking forever to load, and since I rarely let it run anymore, it didn't have anything useful to contribute anyway. The new last.fm plug-in is a resource hog, and I'm not fond of it. You'll just have to guess what I'm listening to, or ask me, or, better yet, ask me to stream what I'm listening to. If I did, however, still use it, I'd be playing with the fun in-world sound system that Babbage made. Almost tempted to start running it again...

I also just noticed, when I went to the blog looking for the last.fm link above, that you can now get to the preview downloading page. Huzzah! (Guess I wasn't the only one to complain.)

The other bit of reorganization that's gone on recently is that I finally broke down and bought some furniture for the skybox.

Being the kind of dork that I am however, I wasn't happy with the furniture as it came. :D I pulled it apart, got rid of the coupley stuff (you couples can go get your own damn skybox) and reassembled it. And changed the colours. Why would I want a coffee table with remote controls? I don't have a television in SL. And if I did, your remote control texture wouldn't affect it. I certainly don't need a scripted coffee table book (soooo random!). I still need to redo all the pose balls, since some of them *wince* listen in open chat. And all of them randomly appear when you sit down on one. At any rate, I didn't think to take a good snap of them before the grid went down, but my new profile pic (see it on the main page of the blog) is of me sitting on the carpet.

I am so thrown off by the update today that I just attempted to make microwave popcorn using... the fridge. sigh.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today we get to see if the stylin' new group tools work as well as promised. It'd be a nice change if everything worked perfectly right out of the box. Raising the limit to the number of groups one person can join is nice, and the opportunity to create multiple ranks (instead of just Founder, Officer and Member) each with different abilities is fabulous. I suspect it'll work well for places like the Shelter, where there's currently half a dozen or so groups in place each with different managerial permissions. I don't remember what all the abilities you can grant are - I vaguely recall being told that "allow user to set home to here" wasn't one of them, which is goofy, but what do I know?

I was going to go check out the release notes while I was waiting for gridliness to return, but apparently the current grid status dominates all - can't visit any other secondlife.com site, like say... the page where you can download the preview. :P Poop. Happily, I found an older link directly to the release notes. Alas, although lots of info is given on the group roles - you're allowed 10 different ones... well, okay, 8 plus "owner" and "everyone"... they don't actually tell you what roles there are to choose from. Gar. I knew I should have spent more time on the preview grid.

It looks like in addition to the enhanced group stuff (thank god, no more vote proposals!), there are a number of other handy things that might sneak under the radar - the change to the interface when you're selling land, for example. To prevent people who don't read the help info from having their land swiped (hey, do you actually read those EULAs you accept? All of them?), the process now actually involves you specifically indicating you'll sell to "Anyone" when you set your land for sale. That's cool.

One new feature that I'm particularly enchanted with is "Selection effect particles can now be disabled independently (Tools->Show Selection Beam)". This means (if I understand correctly) those particles that go whooshing from my hand to the thing I'm editing can be turned off. A real bonus for someone who makes smaller objects. Like, for example, things that spin around your head?

We'll be seeing a lot fewer box heads soon - the new default attachment point is the right hand (somewhere lefties are banding together to protest). Any bets on how long until the first newbie complains that their hair is attached to their hand? :D

"Fixed a bug causing region crossing performance to degrade in 1.11" - wait. You mean I can actually walk up the ramp to Wingo without winding up outside of the building? That's just crazy talk!

"Group creation failure no longer charges you for creating group" - I hadn't noticed that they weren't going to charge anymore. That's cool. So now I'll want more than 25 groups, right?

I don't have any really appropriate picture to go here, so here's a gratuitous artsy landscape shot. I know I've said it before, but terrain water is sexy.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm sure it seems like I've been ignoring my blog. While I haven't been all that great at keeping up on it, the problem's been compounded in that the last couple of times I've tried to make an entry, I've had it mostly complete and then... poof. The cat stepped on the laptop power button (I'm serious!); the combo of the a/c and desktop tripped the circuit breaker; the toaster and desktop combo tripped the circuit breaker (I have a very old house with "interesting" wiring); and the delightful Windoze blue screened. :P It's like some cosmic plot to keep me from posting. I should probably investigate some sort of auto-save, or draft in something other than the Movable Type interface. But I will not give in! I will try to do better in the coming weeks.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well well well. Second Life Insider held their launch party at Radio Radio in Midnight City today. And a good time was had by all. Or at least by me. The rest of you lot can go soak for all I care. :P

Here's a shot of the gathered folks:

I'd be all impressed to have rubbed shoulders with some of SL's more famous residents except I'm too hot and sweaty IRL to bother. I hate summer. I wish I could ban it from my parcel.

I've just discovered (thanks to the above photo) that the Snapshot to Disk command, unlike the new regular snapshot command, does not have HUDs hidden by default. :P So the picture above was actually much larger, but I had to trim out my HUDs. Happily there wasn't much of importance under them. Oh wait. I think if I uncheck it in the regular snapshot thingie, then it doesn't show in the next one I save to disk. Okay, that's not too bad then. I really wish that the original snapshot function had been left for the point-and-shoot crowd, with the more advanced stuff for the SLR folks. I have no clue what SLR stands for, but it sounds good, doesn't it?

Gratuitous shot of my lake.

I was so excited to notice that my friends list is once more populated. :D Very disturbing to see no one you know on. At a time when you expect people to be on. 6am, you're forgiven for not being on (except you, Henrietta!), but other times, it's just... odd.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)