Can Phoenix Viewer Be Resurrected? Yes. Will It? Unlikely.

Since the Firestorm elitists decided to kill off their most popular viewer, Phoenix, in favor of the buggy, crashtastic Firestorm, I've been looking for someone with the necessary programming skills to take the files I managed to save and use them to bring the viewer back in some form.  Unfortunately, there have been no takers as of yet.

It's a real shame, because Phoenix has always worked better than Firestorm and always will, mainly because of inherent flaws in the V2-V3 code that V1 never had.  The developers managed to fork Henri Beauchamp's mesh coding and incorporate it into Phoenix, and that helped keep the viewer alive far longer than they wanted to.  But when Linden Lab announced the move to Server Side Baking, the devs saw their opportunity to finally stop updating Phoenix, and so they did.  Far from LL throwing some nonexistent switch to shut down Phoenix and other V1-based viewers, the decision to kill Phoenix was always that of its own development heads.

Now, this isn't to say that Phoenix Viewer can't be resurrected in some form, updated to include SSB and other new "goodies" from LL, such as pathfinding.  Nothing is really "impossible".  But with no one willing to take on the task of updating the code and releasing it under another name, the chances of a comeback are pretty low.  That could mean an uptick in the number of Singularity and Cool VL Viewer users, however, since many SL users prefer viewers that work consistently, use fewer computer resources, and have an easy to understand interface.

So Phoenix Viewer is pretty much dead, and it isn't likely to come back, even under a different name.  That's too bad, because its building features were top notch.

Please Help

I'm going to need money to pay my storage fee for August, and I can't ask you for money again since you already donated but if you wouldn't mind sharing the donation link, that would be greatly appreciated.  The job I applied for at Vision Works is taking so bloody long to finish the paperwork to get me in, but I might actually start this week.  It still won't be in time for me to get my first paycheck before the due date though.  I also expect to have to pay out of pocket for tuition next month, unless the unlikely occurs and I get more financial aid.  Existing every day in mortal terror is wearing me down.

I need $143 by August 2nd to pay my storage unit fee, or I will lose everything I have left in the world.  I can't let that happen.  I just can't.  If I lose all my belongings, I'll never be able to get them back.  It's not important to anyone else, but it's all I have left.  Please donate at the link below:

http://www.gofundme.com/ClevelandVampire

If you've already donated, thank you.  If you haven't, I'm asking only for what you can afford.  If fifteen people donate just ten dollars each, I'll be able to pay off my storage unit for another month, and with any luck my paychecks from my upcoming job will help me pay for it the rest of the year.  It's said that Americans are a pretty generous people to those in need.  Well, I'm in need and I'm asking people to please help me out.  Thank you.

Massive Ego

You have to hand it to certain people for having a lot of gall.  It's said that there are signs that a person might be a psychopath.  Among them are a "grandiose sense of self worth", Pathological lying", a tendency for manipulating others in ways that are often harmful to them, "lack of remorse or guilt", shallow emotions, lack of empathy, living a parasitic lifestyle (leeching off of others), poor behavioral control, and sexual promiscuity.  Also included are impulsive behavior, flagrant irresponsibility, and refusal to own up to one's own actions.

Most politicians and lawyers and corporate executives exhibit most or all of these and other symptoms (as do all serial killers, but that's a matter for another post).  But since they're considered the elites of society, they get to run the planet however they see fit and get obscenely rich doing it, rather than being locked away in mental institutions where they belong.

Now to the point of this entry: someone really has a monumentally inflated sense of his own importance.  According to his delusional rants, an entire "community" in Second Life will wither away and die now that he's "quit" it.  Funny, but there are regions in SL the traffic of which have always exceeded that of his own, and yes, his former group might have technically had more members, but really, how many of them were active?  I've been to the region he once called home in his particular circle of elitist fanboys-and-girls, and it's always been practically deserted.  Others in the same "community", if it can be called that, got and continue to get much higher traffic, and whenever I venture there the places are always busy.  People go there, they hang out, they chat, and they enjoy each other's company.  These places actually have a sense of community missing from this self-important person's former region.

All of which leads me to conclude that, despite his ego's desire to be the sole reason his particular "community" even exists in SL, that it never existed before he came and will now die because he's no longer actively involved in it, the "community" will actually go on, just as it did before he came.

The lesson to be learned from all this is that no one person is so important to anything that his absence means the decline and fall of the entire tribe.  That is only true so long as people allow it to be, and I don't get any sense of anyone letting anything go away because one person has left.