Sunday, July 31, 2011

Dalek Battle in New London!

Sadly, SL grid issues have thoroughly trashed my scheduled DJ event at the Maldovarium in New London today.  People can't log in, teleport, receive notices or messages, and so forth.  BUT...we were able to hold a Dalek battle in the now ex-mothership, which culminated in the destruction of said mothership.  Here are some snapshots taken of the battle.

Poor Static got his fender blasted off!
Emergency!  Emergency!
Jane's getting tough!
Laredo's looking a little exposed...

Kill da mean ol' Time Lord!


A Tennoob dressed like a Smoob?

Gang up!

Raising shields!

Mayo is a real Boy Scout!


Who's on the run?

Wellzy rushes to assist!

"Exterminate!"

"Exterminate!  Annihilate!  Destroy!"

Left 'em smokin'!

Uh-oh!  Dalek exterminated!
As you can see, there wasn't much left of the place after the Time Lords got through with it.  What a mess, huh?  The Daleks got their encased backsides handed to them.  I'm gonna try to log on to SL again and see if the grid is back up.  Check back later for more updates!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Doctor Who News Links

Steven Moffat chimes in on the series' new executive producer:

 The exec joining me on Doctor Who is Caroline Skinner - fresh from the wonderful Five Days, and still finishing up on a brand new show called The Fades (a fantasy horror series, written by Jack Thorne - I've seen episode 1, and it's BRILLIANT.) Somewhere between me laughing in a basement and choosing planets to invade, and Marcus Wilson raising armies, there has to be a Prime Minister actually running the whole thing. That's the job Piers Wenger and Beth Willis have been doing so wonderfully for the last few years. Now that Piers is off to movie land, that's the furnace Caroline will be walking into.

Okay, now I'm mildly curious as to the upcoming second half of Series 6, Series 7, and the future of the show.  Moffat was coming close to turning me off of watching with his poor direction.  Maybe some fresh blood in the producing team will help provide a much needed improvement.  According to the article, fourteen new episodes have been greenlighted and series star Matt Smith will be returning for them.  That's good, because I like him in the role of the Doctor.

Mark your calendars for August 27th, because that's when Doctor Who returns to finish up Series 6.  The BBC has helpfully dropped some hints as to what we may expect.

Keep watching for more updates on Doctor Who and more!

Stupid is as stupid does.

Someone IMed me in-world with a link to you-know-who's blog, the latest entry of which is now accusing my boss at Sci-Fi Enterprises of being an alt account, and not being in-world, I got the notice in my e-mail inbox.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is stuff that has to be seen to be believed, because otherwise you'd think I was pulling your leg.  Liar-boy even goes so far as to present screencaps that were sent to me by Raife Resident via e-mail as "proof" that it MUST therefore be me and no one else.  As usual, you-know-who can't be bothered to tell the truth.

Here's a concept I know you find difficult to understand, liar-boy: people can and do send me screenshots.  And very often, with their permission, I post those screenshots.  I know; it boggles the mind, doesn't it?  Because, you know, it's not like anyone would ever send me anything, right?  Because, you know, they might not have a blogspot account, or they may simply be having a lazy streak to do it themselves, or whatever reason.  Go figure.

The hilarity just keeps on coming from you-know-who.  First he lies about another region, accusing them of violating rules they didn't violate during a cancer fund-raising drive.  It gets so bad that the chair of the event in question has to step in and post correcting the record, and still the lies keep coming.  Then, when people post in his liefest after having been openly invited to post comments, one of his thugs threatens to report everyone who posted negative comments to their ISPs, which has the effect of prompting the chair of the convention to step in AGAIN and caution said thug about making threats.  (Because, you know, whining and issuing threats over the content of people's comments after publicly bad-mouthing another blog for not allowing comments isn't hypocritical at all.)  Then, after having blown off the post-convention meeting to party the night away at another lackey's company anniversary bash, he starts bitching about how he was bad-mouthed while he wasn't at the meeting, a meeting he could have made every effort to attend but didn't.  And now he's complaining because rules were imposed that would prevent him from getting away with launching another off-world liefest in order to escape facing the wrath of Linden Labs for breaking their terms of use on harassment of another person or group.  Gee, do you think maybe he's angry because the IFT Sci-Fi Alliance people in SL drafted rules that would prevent him from pulling another stunt like this again next year, with the very real consequence of getting himself booted from the convention if so much as one screencap is sent to convention heads during the event?  If you answered "yes," proceed to the next level.

Face facts, liar-boy.  You got caught in yet another lie, a HUGE one this time, and now you're grasping at straws trying to lay blame for your troubles everywhere except where it belongs, namely, on your own shoulders.  Now you're reduced to lying again about who's posting under which account because you just can't accept that your actions are pissing off people in addition to the ones you want to piss off, and some of those people you pissed off are in positions to make things very difficult for you if you so much as post one word of deceit against your enemies during next year's convention and it gets reported.

Here's a suggestion I know you'll never take: grow the f*** up, boy, stop your lying, and stop trying to place blame for your actions on everyone else.  No one told you to lie about anyone, and no one told you to keep on lying even after you got busted for it — by the head of the convention, no less, using his real name.  Here's another revelation you'll happily ignore: just because people send me screencaps and I post them doesn't mean they're me.  That's a pretty big leap even for you.  And for the record, liar-boy, swiping a few prims from a build someone else gave me — which I'm admitting to and was definitely wrong, so don't kid yourself into thinking I'm claiming sainthood on anything — isn't even close to being in the same league as the shit you pulled at the convention earlier this month, especially considering I admitted what I did and paid the original builder in compensation, a fact you and your merry band of suckups keep leaving out of your liefests.  What you have done goes way beyond anything I ever did, and you know it.  It's one thing to have a complaint with me.  That's a legitimate grievance that should have been settled between you and me.  But when you deliberately drag people you know had nothing to do with that into your wider war against another region, a war driven by petty jealousy over region traffic, you should know better than to assume the people you drag into it will stand idly by and let you get away with anything.  You are not so great and powerful that you can do whatever you want and no one else will speak up or do anything to reign you in.  Only the very wealthy and well connected can boast that privilege, and I'm pretty sure you don't fall into that category.

I know you're mentally deficient, liar-boy, and that you absolutely cannot stop lying.  It's a pathological thing.  You can't help yourself.  But your constant lying is damaging not only you, but the very group(s) you falsely claim to be defending.  If the damage was limited to just you and your merry gang of suckups, that would be one thing.  But you're actively trying to drag everyone else down with you, and this time you've got people who really haven't got the patience for your infantile behavior getting pissed.  Considering your track record, liar-boy, that's not surprising.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Ooh, Rainbow Viewer is back...But for How Long?

While chatting in the Singularity Viewer group in Second Life, someone was kind enough to point out that Rainbow Viewer, based on the old SL Viewer 1.22, has gotten an update as of July 10th.  You can read the newest entry here.

I used both Rainbow and Emerald viewers until Emerald went kaput last year for reasons explained in this blog entry.  From the ashes of the Emerald Viewer arose Phoenix, which had most if not all of the functionality and user-friendliness of Emerald, and a great graphics engine.  It has had its bugs, such as objects (both local and attached) suddenly de-rendering with right-clicking only working to re-render them sporadically, and conference and group chat windows not showing who else is participating, but overall the user interface was and always will be far superior to Linden Labs' Viewer 2 and several third party viewers based on it, like Kirstens.  Of course, Linden labs is jealous of third party viewers that give users what they like and want, and they're determined to kill off all Viewer 1-based viewers by breaking the code that allows them to function.

For its part, the Phoenix team decided it was better to suck up to Linden Labs than it is to make users happy, so they've been working long and hard on a viewer that is in most aspects that I can see identical to Linden Labs' Viewer 2, which they've called Firestorm.  The viewer is currently in public beta mode.  If this weren't bad enough, the Phoenix team apparently thinks that it can dismiss legitimate concerns with the user unfriendliness of Firestorm by insulting its users.
I'm happy to say though that the unhappy folks are only a small minority, however they can be very vocal, loud and discouraging.
Yeah, way to alienate your user base.  Maybe if you didn't respond to user complaints with such snark as "Viewer 2 is coming, get used to it," you wouldn't be forcing harsher replies.  Alas, some people never learn.  Oh well.  At any rate, with Linden labs forcing everyone to adopt its inferior Viewer 2 software and layout, it looks as though a lot of long term users will find themselves forced to leave Second Life for greener pastures.  Fortunately, Singularity's development team has managed to do what the Phoenix development team apparently refuses to do, namely, make a Viewer 2-based viewer that actually has the superior Viewer 1 layout and controls.  I heard through the user support group in-world that they are working on getting the mesh import feature, and that they are very close to succeeding in bringing it in.  No date was given, which is understandable considering that anything can happen which might delay release of an updated viewer.  But at least Singularity seems to be trying to make its users happy.  And they do seem to listen to people's concerns with a much friendlier attitude.

In the meantime, I've installed the new Rainbow Viewer update and it is working splendidly so far.  It is anyone's guess as to exactly how long it will remain functional, however.  As I've written, Linden Labs is working diligently to break Viewer 1-based viewers for Second Life.  Rainbow will probably end up joining Phoenix and all the other better viewers out there on the Viewer 1 trash heap.  But until that happens, I'll enjoy it and Singularity until they are no more or until I am no more.  I'll keep Firestorm around just in case its developers wise up, but chances are I won't be using it much, if at all.

UPDATE (10:09 PM EDT/7:10 PM SLT): Calisto Llewellin  has brought it to my attention that Singularity is indeed based on Viewer 1.  My apologies for giving the wrong information.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Phoenix Viewer Soon To Be Broken by Linden Labs, Horrible Firestorm To Take its Place

Reading through the dismissive blog entry on the Phoenix Viewer web site about complaints from Viewer 1 users, I couldn't help but be reminded of the replies in-world to people trying to use the Firestorm beta asking where various features were and getting unsatisfactory responses.  The general attitude was, "Viewer 2 is coming so get used to it".  Never mind that Viewer 2 is unusable for most people who started Second Life on Viewer 1.  Granted, Phoenix does have a video in which it claims to help users make their Viewer 2 viewer look more like Viewer 1 (using voice, naturally, and the volume isn't loud enough for people with impaired hearing).  But the issue here isn't just that by making a viewer that most Second Life residents who signed up before Viewer 2 can't use they are in fact helping Linden Labs to alienate a huge swath of its customers.  It's the condescendingly dismissive attitude in the face of legitimate complaints.

After all, no one told the developers who work on Phoenix Viewer to make it so that the inventory button doesn't show up at all unless you right-click the bottom of the viewer screen, and even then you have to hide another button as the trade-off.  And no one forced the Phoenix development team to make it so that the inventory menu remains hidden behind the chat window and that resizing the inventory menu isn't an option.  This means that every time you want to gain access to your inventory, you have to move or close the chat window in order to do it.  Phoenix Viewer didn't make you go through that nonsense.  Whatever window was active, that was the one that appeared on top of others.  And if you wanted to make another window active, all you had to do was click that window.  But Viewer 2 doesn't allow that.  Nor will it allow anything from inventory to be saved as an off-world .xml file — even if it's full-perm, and even if it's a texture image that is full-perm.  If you didn't make the object yourself, and if you didn't upload the texture image yourself, forget about making a backup.  So when Linden Labs servers decide to completely delete parts of your inventory, say goodbye to them forever.  The only way currently to make .xml backups of your full-perm inventory is to use a viewer like Meerkat, and soon that will be broken as it is Viewer 1-based.

In essence, the Phoenix development team caved in to Linden Labs and made their viewer an almost carbon copy of the unusable Viewer 2.  And by dismissing legitimate complaints from users as unfair attacks on volunteer staff who have been rude and condescending, a fundamental point gets lost: the Phoenix development team could easily have kept the viewer 1 layout while making the viewer itself compatible with Linden labs' demands.  It can be done because it already has been — by the Singularity development team.  The graphics engine on Singularity seems to have some deficiencies, like over-saturated colors, too-intense lighting effects, and a pixelated look making everything appear way too cartoonish.  But these are things I'm sure the Singularity team is working on, or will soon.  And they built their viewer to have the same layout and features Viewer 1 does while being compliant with Linden labs' unreasonable software demands.

Maybe instead of insulting its user base, which arguably made Phoenix Viewer the most popular one of choice for residents seeking an alternative to the unusable Viewer 2, its developers should actually listen to them and go back to the drawing board.  Just because they want to bend over backwards to please Linden labs doesn't mean they have to make their users suffer, or dismiss user complaints with insults.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Best in British Sci-Fi!

DJ Garf Serpente is rocking the house down at New London Village's canon recreation of the maldovarium right this minute!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/TARDIS/214/230/1602

Prize is 1,200L$ for best in British sci-fi, so come on down and join us for fun, music, and laughter!