Please Take the Viewer-Poll

My friend and mentor Eddi Haskell has a poll running on his blog Eddi Haskell´s Second Life (url) on a eternally debated issue among residents of SecondLife; Which viewer we prefer. to use.

Please take the poll, you have six more days to leave your answer!

You will find the poll in the upper right hand corner.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

After constant crashes for more than two week and a lot of other technical problems, in both my realities. I decided to change my SecondLife viewer back to the Linden Lab Viewer 3 and to upgrade my hardware. And you will most like not believe it, but this time I actually checked that my graphic card is from NVIDIA, it has always worked better for me.

The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, is consequently much improved.

Added value is gained by the fact that I again have voice-capability, although I have not had time to try it out yet, but I do not expect any problems.

As for my much needed attitude adjustments and the way I interact with people around me, these issues may take a while longer. However, you must always remember that I am steadily working on improving myself to your satisfaction, but this seems to be a lifelong project. Until this goal is successfully attained I have promised myself to

1. take three deep breaths,
2. think twice, 
3. count to 1.000 and 
4. (perhaps) "sleep on it" before reacting.

P.S. (as a response to my bosom buddy Apmel´s comment): Miracles are not to be expected, nor do I give any guarantees. All I can say I will still react, but hopefully in a calmer and non-boring manner.

Introducing the Exodus Viewer

My buddy Ziggy Starsmith shares some interesting viewer-experiences with us and introduces us to a new and exciting third party viewer. This viewer seems to be designed for maximum performance. I for one am looking forward to trying it out.

Read more about it on  Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life: "The Exodus Viewer.... The New Viewer On The Block" (Url). Please don´t forget to see the video with the grungy but sexy Pesto Portland and his cute German accent. 

I Think I Love it!

This is a photograph using "depth" instead of "color", cool huh?

After reading the Swedish blogger Sven Idyll´s posts about the new Beta Viewer 3.2. and seeing the short explanatory videos he has posted there Linden Labs new instruction videos for Viewer 3 I just couldn't contain myself and was eager to try out the new viewer.

I followed my own previously described routine about how to Install a Fresh Viewer and then downloaded the new one. I must say I fell for it immediately. You can move almost everything around anyway you want it to get the thingies exactly where you want them to be and with the shapes you desire.

Is it strange I love the guys and girls at Linden Lab as much as I do? These brilliant people have given me everything I can ask for in a viewer.

Love you guys, have a round of beer on me (but no more than 30 of you and you must include CEO Rodvik Linden/Rod Humble) and chairman of the Board Philip Linden. (Rodvik is almost catching up with my all time favorite CEO Philip with this stroke of genius.)

Sorry for being unfaithful to you guys there for a while, but I am back home in the fold with ya´ll now!

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.
---

I was too uninspired for anything else today, so I share my acquired knowledge instead.

Firestorm Public Beta Has Arrived

My friend Ziggy Starsmith over on his blog "Ziggy On The Edge" today informs us that the new Forestorm Beta viewer is here.

Head om over to Ziggy´s for his review and a link to the download site

Emerald Viewer Blocked

Farewell Emerald

I will miss you my lovely Emerald viewer! I thought I could trust you and you had so many nifty features but reading the blogs now the truth has finally dawned on me.

I have been a total absolute fool to place my trust in a group of unsupervised adolescent gang of hackers, these brilliantly gifted but terrible children that have made up the dev team of Emerald. My complete lack of insight and knowledge about the technical and safety issues concerned with using a viewer and my realization now of what these young men and women could - and indeed possibly would - do to hurt me have forced me to make a decision.

I will never again use a viewer made by anyone except Linden Labs!

But I beg of you Philip Linden, my dearest interim CEO, please drop that terrible "Viewer 2"-project and pick up some of the slack from the Emerald viewer.

Emerald - The End

"This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of night we tried to die
This is the end

United we stand and divided we fall. Thus ends the final days of the Emerald Project.


Approximately 10 days ago I and a number of devs came together to reform the Emerald Team in the anxious hope of continuing the most popular TPV in Second Life. The incredible driving passion, flair for innovation, endless energy and camaraderie were all still there. Because of this, I was sure we could make this work.


Alas this was not  to be. Linden Lab has made demands of the team that are impossible to meet. Among the demands not listed publicly elsewhere was to publicly release an RC without any ability to load the emkdu or llkdu files. This was do-able. The final demand was to ‘delete’ 3 key members of our team. While making this demand, Linden Lab was quite aware that this was effectively the guillotine to the project.


This is the opportunity for a fork project to develop and create a TPV version of snowstorm, which is what Linden Lab really wants. I am aware of a number of small projects underway now, and I wish them the best, the very best in their endeavors.


For you, the user, what this  means is that there will not be any further releases of the Emerald Viewer after today. The existing releases will continue to operate until Linden Lab decides to terminate their access and end Emerald once and for all.


There will be one final version of the Emerald Viewer released here later today; that is, the viewer we’ve been working on for the past six months. It would be a shame to let the efforts of the developers who put so many unpaid hours into this project go to waste.


This virtual world is ever changing and must be, otherwise it will stagnate. This incredible environment will continue.

Arabella Steadham
Communications Manager"

Emeraldgate - update

Read all about it on "Eddi Haskell´s Second Life"

Eddi Haskell also gives us this piece of advice: "My strong advice to you is not violate TOS, which clearly states your account can be suspended if you are using Emerald or any other non-approved viewer. Linden Labs does not play games. And this is a very bad mess right now. (...) But there is another reason not to use Emerald right now, especially if you are concerned about privacy issues.

What some key managers at Emerald have done is simply outrageous. It may even be criminal."

I highly recommend you read the full post on Eddi´s blog and also this post by Douglas Green of "Harrisburg Second Life Examiner".

For me this is a question of trust. I don´t like the thought of my computer being used in someone else´s illegal activities. Neither am I comfortable with the thought that my privacy may have been breached.

The attempts to conceal the wrong-doings and the nonchalant way in dealing with it when it was revealed in spite of that, calling it "mistakes" and "shenanigans" and attempting to explain away and minimize what had in fact happened also upset me.

The Emerald viewer debacle

The Emerald viewer has been my favorite way to access Second Life for a long time.

After the recent criminal activities on that viewers developement team, which you can read about on other blogs,("Tinas universum" or "Eddi Haskell´s Second Life"), the viewer was taken off the Linden Labs "Third-Party Viewer Directory" yesterday.

This means it is now against the TOS to access Second Life with the Emerald viewer If you do that anyway you can get into some major problems with Linden Lab and your account can get suspended (see the link below about Eddi´s experiences).

Hopefully my friend Eddi Haskell is correct in his assessment that the Emerald viewer probably will be quicky reinstated, but the recent events have caused me to lose all trust in the people involved with that viewer.

I hate changing to a new viewer, does that mean I am getting old already? (I am so NOT allowing comments on that - at least not if you agree!) I already tried the official viewer and hated it...

If I do not answer you in SL you know the reason, I am only trying to learn how to control my new viewer. Aaaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhh...

OrmDricka för Haiti

Ikväll var jag på OrmDrickas evenemang för att uppmuntra och uppmanaoss att skänka pengar till stöd för jordbävningsoffren på Haiti.

Det var en trevlig kväll där Frostland skötte musiken. Det blev en utmärkt blandning.

En annan av mina favoriter sirhc var också där (han tillhör ju OrmDricka-gruppen). Han var som alltid i sitt snöleopardskinn. Denna kväll utmanade han de närvarande med att han skulle klä av sig naken om någon donerade 100 LD. Självklart var jag snabba att följa uppmaningen! Naturligtvis gjorde jag detta endast för att ni, kära eventuella läsare, skulle kunna få se honom i all sin avklädda glans på denna blogg! (Så självuppoffrande kan bara jag vara...)

sirhc in the buff

Tyvärr blev det bara ett "ass-shot" eftersom han trilskades genom att använda sin kära Vampi för att täcka framsidan - men alltid något!

En annan lättklädd person på OrmDricka denna kväll var Sofie. Denna gången röstade jag för henne som vinnare i tävlingen men  - som vanligt - var det någon annan än den jag röstade på som som vann!

Sofie badandes i champagne

Jag måste också berätta att det faktiskt var ikväll jag för första gången upptäckte vilken intressant guppande effekt man kan få på kvinnobröst med Emerald-viewern, den som alla hetrisar har snackat om i flera månader men som jag aldrig har märkt. (Jag är nog mer bög än jag själv tror, eller...?!)