Zig-Bam-Boom

I am sure you all know of Ziggy Starsmith. Ziggy is (to quote myself from a comment on his blog) "my dear, sweet, charmingly hotheaded, fiery and wonderfully passionate but extremely rash darling buddy". On his blog (Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life) he regularly rants wildly about different viewers, sim-crossings and such things. To put it succinctly, Ziggy does not - and I emphasize not - love Linden Lab and that company´s customer or product services as much as I usually do.

Well, after my horrendous experiences inworld yesterday I was extremely close to agreeing with him. It was the second worst night of my whole existence in SecondLife. Whatever I did, and even if i did nothing at all, I crashed, crashed, crashed and - yes, you probably guessed it - crashed again and again.

The laird at the lowest point

I was white with rage and fuming with smoke coming out of my ears and my nostrils flaring  To top it off. my dear, sweet and loving son Guyke takes the time to inform me "I and Janttu are actually running Firestorm viewers on the Ultra graphic setting and are having no problems at all!" 

Murdering one´s stepson is not considered acceptable in polite company, but I was just seconds from doing just that. Luckily I crashed and was thus saved from that fate.

The impertinent boy also told me to upgrade to Windows 8 and to abandon the official Linden viewer (Viewer 3) and install Firestorm again. So after my last crash, the one following the murderous thoughts, I did just that to cool myself down.

The upgrade to Windows 8 Pro was simple and cheap (around US $40). The upgrade assistant did all the work well. I love the sleek new look 

But when I tried going inworld again with my Windows 8 Pro platform and the Firestorm viewer, guess what happened? You got it, I crashed, crashed and crashed! Then I decided to call it a night and try again today, reports will follow.

Simple Question

‘Your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?’, was the simple and highly pertinent question the American graphic designer Paula Scher of Pentagram asked when she was presenting her sketches for the new Windows logo.

I love it! It´s clear and beautiful in a no-nonsense way.

(More about how I happened to came across this yesterday in a post later.)

Install A Fresh Viewer

Hear ye, hear ye, gather around for the second technical sermon by The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, nowadays a.k.a. The Sublime TechMaster General of All Things concerning SecondLife.

So quoth the laird:

You've been in SecondLife a good while now and have most likely gone through loads of viewer updates or even changed viewers a couple of times. All the while you have been fiddling about and messing around with your viewer settings until you have completely forgotten what you did, where you did it or even why you did it.

You probably think - like I did - that every time you uninstall a viewer and install a new one it´s a virginal and completely fresh install. Well, the thing is it isn't a fresh installation at all because all your fiddling about and messing around with the previous viewers have been saved on your computer. 

To get a fresh installation this is what you must do in Windows. All of those who belong to "The Holy Sect of Mac", sometimes also known as "The Latter Day Church of Job" must find your own way.

1. Uninstall your viewer (this is best done from the Control Panel - Uninstall a program).

2. Click on the Start-button in the lower left corner of your screen (see symbol). When you click the Start-button a menu appears with a search field at the bottom.

3. in the search field type %appdata%. 

4. Press enter. After you have pressed enter a new menu appears over the Start-button which contains a folder named "Roaming"

5. Click on the Roaming folder. When you do that a box appears containing loads of different folders.

6 a. Look for and delete the folder named "Second Life" or the name of the viewer you were using.

6 b. While you are at it you might as well also look for and delete any folder with the name of any of the previous viewers you have used; Firestorm, Phoenix, Emerald, Viewer 2.0 or whatever they have been called.

6 c. Go to your [username]/AppData/Local folder and in that folder look for and delete the folder named "Second Life" or the name of the viewer you were using.

Do not worry, none of your Inventory in SecondLife will be lost. That is all stored on the Linden Lab computers.

7. Empty your Trash.

8. Reboot Windows (which means restart your computer, Ars taught me that)

9. Download and install your new viewer

10 Congratulations, you now have a fresh start in SecondLife!

So endeth the second - and probably last - sermon of the Sublime TechMaster on All Things SecondLife. Please note, the TechMaster was taught this trick by the formidable Ewa Aska, owner of Vadstena Castle.
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I was too uninspired for anything else today, so I share my acquired knowledge instead.