Time Lords for the Cure: Relay for Life in Second Life

After what turned out to be a false start in participating in this year's Relay for Life fund-raising activities, I went ahead and formed my own team to help in this year's activities, called Time Lords for the Cure.  It's an opportunity for SL Whovians to help in a worthy cause while avoiding the unnecessary and ultimately destructive drama caused by others.

To this end I've invited some of my SL friends and acquaintances to join the team, but we're willing and happy to cooperate with other teams to help raise funds.  If you're interested, send me a notecard with your avatar default name (not the display name you may or may not be using) so I can add your name to the team roster.  If you're already in another team, no worries!  Have your team captain get in touch with me and maybe our teams can help coordinate on mutual or concurrent events.  Be sure to ask RFL team mentors about the rules pertaining to this so no policies are violated.  We don't want to spoil anything by inadvertently breaking any RFL rules.

I'll send out an updated rules notecard tomorrow night, along with another one containing donation kiosks and instructions, but here they are so far.*

1.  You can set out an American Cancer Society (aka ACS) donation kiosk in your shop, club, or private home.

2. If you work for tips, you can have people pay the kiosk instead.

3. You can offer a special item in vendors — but note that 100% of sales proceeds should be set to go to ACS, RFL, or both.  See the rules regarding donations through vendor sales.

4. Events — Good for ratings from (PG) to (Mature).

*: Please bear in mind that if you do plan to host adult-themed events (i.e. sexual or violent), you can hold them, but they can't be added to billboards.

5. Off-Line Donations.  You can donate via the team's RFL web page:

https://secure3.convio.net/tacs/site/Donation2?1009405.donation=form1&idb=1132674998&df_id=1009405&FR_ID=42558&PROXY_ID=42558&PROXY_TYPE=21

6. If you're in the 'Time Lords of Gallifrey' group, you don't need to join another one.  This will be the group used to coordinate events.

Group ID:  7f754248-ab36-db87-b76d-e807f0b8a0ad

Group Link in SL: secondlife:///app/group/7f754248-ab36-db87-b76d-e807f0b8a0ad/about

7. We're more than willing to work with other teams in the spirit of cooperation, be it on events or sharing information as necessary to help raise awareness of ACS-RFL.  We're all working toward the same goal, after all.

Our team mentor is Terran Magic.  Questions we can't answer should be directed to this person.

[[RFL Events]]

There will be some special on-site events (such as the SL Sci-Fi Convention) where our team may have a booth or be represented. Team members will be given the opportunity to provide RFL vendors selling their creations. Products are to be G or PG only; no mature or Adult.  Sales from such vendors MUST have 100% go to ACS-RFL.  See RFL rules pertaining to announcements or ads that you are doing this.

The Relay

The Relay for Life  will be held in July.  All teams will be invited to spend the weekend running in a virtual race to help raise funds.  We'll send further info on the campsite later this year, before the big event.  "Time for a Cure" is the theme this year, so let's show our TLoG pride and help raise funds to fight cancer!

Last year certain clowns decided to cause a bunch of grief for others during the RFL-ACS-sponsored Sci-Fi Convention by posting outright deceptions on an off-world blog.  Let's not turn this noble cause into another excuse to wage war against rival groups.  We're all supposed to be adults.  Let's act the part.  Violators will be ejected from the team and reported to ACS-RFL personnel to be dealt with.

*:  The above-posted team rules are a heavily-edited version of ones posted by Holocluck Henley, so if any wording seems familiar, that's where it came from.  Just letting you know up front.  Any changes or additions will be posted as necessary upon the request of Mr. Henley or RFL personnel.

Excellent Review Link: Curse of Fenric

Excellent review of the special edition DVD of "Curse of Fenric".  You can read it here.

http://timelordapprentice.blogspot.com/2011/12/curse-of-fenric-special-edition.html

Enjoy!

Doctor Who Series 6 and Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4, Decision Time, and Demolishing the Lies About Viewer 1

 DOCTOR WHO SERIES 6, SARAH JANE ADVENTURES SERIES 4

I was able to get hold of both seasons on DVD, and once I've gone through all episodes of SJA, I'll issue a review of the latter series.

I maintain my criticism of Moffat's tenure as head writer of the show as one fraught with inconsistency — on an overall storytelling basis, that is.  Moffat does well in doing one-off stories, but trying to keep a longer term story arc running and maintaining story continuity are two tasks he can't seem to balance.  We'll see how Sarah Jane Adventures' final season pans out.  Considering it was the last complete series of the show before lead actress Elizabeth Sladen passed away, there's going to be a certain poignancy watching that is bound to color my review, but I'll try to do justice with an honest one.

DECISION TIME

Now, I've been thinking a while on the events of the past year or so.  2011 was, needless to say, horrible for me, and a fairly large chunk of the SL side of things was my own fault.  Swiping prims from a copied Dalek avatar in a fit of impatience was pretty stupid, and that's going to haunt me for a long time to come, no matter that I paid back the guy whose builds were swiped and admitted what I did.

Since then I've passed the remains of Archangel Network over to others, and it now exists in the form of Sci-Fi Enterprises.  Right now the only things it sells are unscripted TTC exteriors and freebies, and that's it.  I haven't had the time or the inclination to package up my unscripted console builds, but I've been seriously thinking of changing that.  I'm tired of having them sit in my inventory gathering pixel dust.

Of course, even if I were to do that, what then?  Who'd buy an unscripted console?  The whole point of having a TTC in Second Life is to have a grid-wide teleporter that serves triple duty as a skybox and role-playing scene.  It kind of defeats the purpose if it doesn't actually do more than look pretty.

It doesn't help that two of my closest friends in SL are on indefinite hiatus from SL, and one of them was a scripter whose skills were slowly but steadily improving.  I was hoping that my consoles would one day be sold with a functioning set of scripts again, and that is true of two of them, which are sold through Novatech.  Those are the Steampunk and the Zero 3.0 console.  But the rest languish in my inventory, and that's just a waste.  I'd love to be able to script them myself, but I've had to accept that I'll never be able to find someone willing to teach me what I need to know.

So what are my options?  I can try to convince my scripter friend to return to SL, hoping she'll script my consoles for me, or I can hire someone else to do them up and do a fifty-fifty split on sales.  But then, given that the last scripter I had disrespected me, then stabbed me in the back by trying to take over my company, I've got obvious issues with the idea of letting someone else have that kind of advantage over me again.  I've been burned too often by trusting all the wrong people.  Never again.  I can always submit my builds to other sellers, but most of the Whovian TTC sellers in SL are either severely backed up on submitted builds or not inclined to have anything to do with me.

I'll have to make a decision soon as to what I want to do with my builds, and more than that,what I really want to do in SL.  I have goals I'd like to achieve, but never the means.  And really, there just isn't any point to having those goals if I can't ever possess the resources to accomplish them.  And then what's the point of even staying in SL?

Ya know what I'm sayin'?

 "VIEWER 1" IS NOT "GOING AWAY"

There are certain people going around spreading lies about the fate of SL Viewer 1.23.  They claim that because Linden Lab is no longer offering updates or support, this means that the viewers are going to go away any time now, so we had better get on the crappily designed, highly unstable, resource-hogging Viewer 2 and its clones — or we will be forced out of SL altogether.  The truth is that Viewer 1, or more accurately, Third Party Viewers (TPVs) that use the Viewer 1 graphic user interface (GUI), are going to be around at least until their developers decide to quit the projects.

One person to expose the Big SL Viewer Lie for what it is is Henri Beauchamp, the programmer who brought us Cool VL Viewer.  Henri's code work was incorporated into the latest Phoenix Viewer release, albeit grudgingly and still with the lies about Viewer 1 going the way of the dinosaurs.

Why is this claim a lie?  For one thing, no one making it is able to give a definitive date for Viewer 1 GUI being shut off.  This is because, according to witnesses, Rodvik Humble himself stated that Linden Labs "would NOT be turning off v1.x access - just that they would NOT be updating the 1.x viewer themselves, so their version would not be kept up with the new features - that would be the responsibility of the TPV coders."

What this means is that the CEO of Linden Lab himself is saying that there are no plans to turn off Viewer 1 access — no company is stupid enough to literally block access to its product for more than half its user base.  They're simply not offering updates or support for it anymore.  As long as TPV programmers are able to back-port features like mesh and other goodies, like Henri Beauchamp, Boy Lane, and the Singularity Viewer developers, SL Viewers that use the Viewer 1 GUI will stick around.  As one member posted on Henri's forum, the liars are starting with the false assumption that a viewer's features are inextricably bound to its GUI, and then using that false assumption to create a false rationalization for why they want to force everyone else who uses SL onto the Viewer 2 GUI viewers, namely, theirs.  But as was pointed out, "under-the-hood" features simply are not tied to the GUI.  At this point the only real difference between the official Linden Lab viewers and the TPVs generated using the Viewer 1 GUI is only...the GUI.

It is highly dishonest for people who love Viewer 2 GUI viewers and their clones, and despise Viewer 1 GUI TPVs, to claim that those viewers with the Viewer 1 GUI are going away.  They're not.  Linden Lab isn't claiming that they are turning off access to Viewer 1.  TPV developers who still like the GUI on Viewer 1 will continue to back-port Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 features into the Viewer 1 GUI until the only thing that is still "Viewer 1" about them is how the finished program looks on your screen; in fact, they're pretty much that way already.  If you don't like the Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 GUI, or if you simply find that the Linden Lab-approved viewers are still too buggy and unstable, you do have alternatives, and you will continue to have them for a while.

For your downloading enjoyment:

http://www.singularityviewer.org

http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/rainbow-viewer

Cool VL Viewer - http://sldev.free.fr

http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/windows/Phoenix_Viewer-1.6.0.1600_RELEASE_SSE2.exe


http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Mac/Phoenix_Viewer_1.6.0.1600_Intel.dmg

http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Linux/PhoenixViewer-i686-1.6.0.1600.tar.bz2

Christmas Eve Eve at New London!

Nonamei Scribe DJed tonight for a rocking pre-Christmas event in New London!  Here are some snapshots from this evening.

Kat as a sexy Faerie! 

gdn10595 dances with his sonic screwdriver. 

Laredo don't need no shirt!

Slartibartfass wins for wildest outfit! 

Paige Snowpaw! 

Our (literally) pint-sized DJ! 

No, really!  She's a super-tiny! 

 TheRani Reanimator dances like a fiend! 

Make that with a fiend! 

Calisto decided he didn't need no stinkin' flesh! 

A visitor to the sim got all antlery. 

Lost Who Episodes Recovered!

Krypton Radio has reported that two previously lost episodes from Doctor Who's early years have been recovered from a private collection!  According to the article, "Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure “Galaxy 4″ and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton’s “The Underwater Menace” have been returned to the BBC archive.  The episodes were thought lost forever, but had been  purchased by film collector Terry Burnett in the early 80s – Burnett hadn’t been aware that the canisters contained the lost footage."

If you're a fan of Classic Doctor Who, this should be a real treat.  With a tip of the proverbial hat to K.R., here's a YouTube clip from "The Underwater Menace".



Enjoy!

Jessica Lyon Proclaims Her Utter Contempt for Phoenix Users

In an insulting blog post that can basically be summed up as, "Here's a half-assed attempt at incorporating mesh into Phoenix, you whiners!  Now go install Firestorm already because we're through giving our users what they want!", Phoenix development team leader Jessica Lyon just alienated another chunk of what is probably going to be a rapidly dwindling user base.

Phoenix 1185 was, is and will always be our most stable release ever. Please do not expect this phoenix viewer with mesh to be as stable, it simply is not. If it has stability issues it's because it is now a hybrid of two different code bases. The bottom line is that a V1 viewer with a lot of V2 code hacked into the render engine is not going to give you stability as you've come to expect it from this project. Mesh was NOT designed to work with V1 code. We deliver you this viewer on an AS-IS basis.

Wow, that was unnecessarily harsh.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Lyon goes on to send a volley of hostility toward RLV users.

RLVa has not been updated in this Phoenix viewer release. This was my decision, not that of Kitty Barnett. Although I said some time back we would update RLVa in Phoenix it became obvious that the work/time commitment involved in doing so was simply not reasonable or responsible. Kitty is a very valuable asset to this team and I refuse to take her away from the ground breaking work she does in Firestorm and v2/v3 to put a large time commitment into a dying viewer code base. She is worth far more than that. If you want updated RLVa I would suggest using the Firestorm Viewer or Kitty's own Viewer Catznip. I offer you my sincerest apologies for going back on my word in regards to RLVa update in Phoenix, however I believe it was the right decision.

And now the condiment on this shit sandwich:

Please don't complain if this release doesn't work perfectly. If you find the viewer to be unusable you can return to our 1185 version without mesh or switch to the Firestorm Viewer. Complaints about the stability and usability of this release will largely go unheard, we did not modify the mesh code to work in V1 and will only spend limited time trying to fix issues resulting from it. Complaints about this project removing focus on Phoenix Viewer should go to me at [e-mail witheld by me — A.M.] .

Now, I get that customer support isn't something elitist tech heads are known far and wide for.  But even this lunatic ought to have sense enough to recognize that she's just invited a flood of angry e-mails with this.  How can a person spend an entire entry insulting and scolding her own user base and then be stupid enough to invite even more scorn than she's brought upon herself?  And her finishing move:

Phoenix Viewer is becoming harder for us to provide support for at an ever increasing rate. Almost all our support team members are using Firestorm (by choice) as their full time viewer, and being that Firestorm is now our default viewer this should be expected. Support for this release and the phoenix viewer in general will be far more limited this point on. Support will continue to try to help you but in many situations may be unable to do so. Please do not get angry at them if they are unable to provide help for you. Also, please remember... Our support team is not required to help you, they do so on their own accord because they want to.

In summation, "Suck it, Phoenix Viewer users!"

Now, I could go on to psychoanalyze Jessica Lyon's unhinged entry.  I could tell you that it is indicative of a spoiled little child who can't for the life of her understand why her backhanded attitude and lame insults toward her own user base aren't garnering her the respect and unbelievable oral sex she probably expected in return.  I could tell you that Lyon's attitude reminds me a lot of the Democrat Party of today, which continually insults its voter base while bending over backwards to placate the far right GOP that will still never respond with anything other than total political warfare with the ultimate goal of forever annihilating the Dems (hence my becoming a member of the Green Party in RL) — the only thing doing the opposite of what your base wants and then insulting said base accomplishes is to drive said base to go with another party, and that's always going to be true whether it's a political party or, in this case, a third party Second Life viewer.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad that the Phoenix development team finally decided to get around to producing a mesh-capable version of Phoenix, which always has been and always will be far superior to V2-V3-Firestorm.  But the fact is that as much as the Firestorm viewer itself is responsible for perceived negativity toward Jessica Lyon and her fellow clowns, so much more responsible is the shameful, over-hostile, elitist attitudes of the whole lot of them.  This is why alternate viewers such as Singularity, Cool VL, Rainbow, and other V1-based viewers will eventually outstrip Firestorm and the horrible viewers it's cloned from.

Phoenix Developers Release Official Firestorm Viewer to Mixed Reviews

So the official release of Firestorm is now available for download.  Many SL users, particularly those who never waste an opportunity to gush over Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 or dis Viewer 1, are singing its praises.  Unfortunately, many users are still experiencing the usual round of glitches and user unfriendliness.  Some criticisms include:

"hi hi just one question for you.... WHERE ARE MY GROUPS & FRIENDS ?"

"I'm having problems with the new version of firestorm. I can't rez and I have cleared cache, relogged. rebake and it's still not working. I've done this a dozen of times and i'm still a red cloud. Can anyone help me?"

 "I just downloaded it and logged in and don't like it. I'm a red cloud and can't get that to change, can't seem to get the 'advanced' tab, can't find anything... don't like everything spread out along the bottom and top, I'm a builder and no textures are rezzing... I'm using a new laptop with Windows 7. a An inworld friend said I could make it be more like Phoenix, which I do like, and there is a video to watch to do that. I'll try that... otherwise, I won't use it :( "

"Can it be that mesh is still summat, ummm, alpha-ish? How these releases could pass QA and get rolled out is over my head. I’ve been playing around with mesh-clothes on both versions and had a lot of issues with clothes not fully rezzing or not rezzing at all. I hear from others who are using the current releases that they only see (or rather don’t) my alphas but not my mesh attachments. I've tweaked several graphics settings, cleared cache, did clean installs -- but overall to no much avail. The issues persist. Given that mesh is one of the key features, or rather _the_ key feature, of V3-based viewers, this is simply absolutely intolerable from a plain player’s point of view. I must confess that I consider this not even beta-stage behaviour. It’s a clear show-stopper in my opinion. I’m well aware that this is very likely an issue which has to be addressed by Linden Lab, but all the same… And no, I didn’t test this against the current Linden viewer. I don’t want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way through the ceiling."

"On to day 3 of trying to get a working version of this viewer. Kinda hard to get anything done when this pile of code keeps telling me i belong to zero groups. friends list empty of names. This is getting more frustrating than making hair"

"Hi having issue with the latest firestorm viewer...ok so basically i did a complete clean reinstall and it works magically for about 10 mins then i spontaneously crash....i really dont know why i've tried lower my graphics reinstalling...i've tried the lesser graphic version but i'm still having these issue's as i use my partners alienware aurora to run SL i dont feel like its my p.c's fault ...any theories?"

 "did anyone else crash upon initial running of Firestorm.. or simply put, sim crashed? or is it just coincidence that i logged into a sim that crashed as firestorm began to load the world?"

"I've never heard of a sim crashing because someone logged in with a particular viewer. I'd have to guess it was an annoying coincidence. I've been getting errors about something called the LLAppViewer. I've looked at the Jira and apparently there are at least two others with the same issue. I'm starting to think that the latest version of FS wasn't quite as ready for prime time as they thought. On the other hand, anything with LL in the name makes me wonder if it's an SL issue and has nothing to do with FS. Actually, I do like FS.... when it runs. Sometimes it will run for hours with no problem and other times it crashes every few minutes for no apparent reason. Maybe I was wearing the wrong color socks."

"It is a lot better than previous versions of Firestorm. I simply hate though that you are so careless with space. Take the "People" window for instance: - First an almost empty line with only a minimize button on it. - Then a HUGE almost empty line with the word "People" on it and another 2 small buttons (geee.. that couldn't be all on 1 small line)? - Then another line where I can filter people. I don't need it but.. IF you want to use, at least place the options button next to it so you can ditch another row of pixels - then 4 tabs that are hardly interesting. "Nearby" is the only one ever used by me. the "Friends-tab" is already in conversations / contacts. Same with the "Group-tab". "Recent" might or might not be useful. So far I hear nobody who ever uses it... so ditch it? - Then you have a seperate button to add friends next to options. rightclicking on a name and then adding a friend is much more intuitive.. so get rid of that button? - Then there is a yet another row with "Profile", "IM", "Call" and "Share". Again... those things you can all reach by rightclicking on a username. That is much more intuitive and you can save another unnecessary line. This is just one window that has it... but litteleraly all windows have silly almost empty space in them or totally unnecessary options. I will not go back to Phoenix because I realise the technology is obsolete. On the other hand.. you have a very very long way to go till Firestorm has the compact and easy to use feel that Phoenix has."

That's pretty much the same set of problems people have been having with V2 and V3 since their initial release, and now on the official, non-beta release of Firestorm.  "Cindy" writes:

The bottom status / menu bar is still covered by windows, still no text labels, inventory / outfit management is still split over 43487565 different windows with different functionality / look and feel instead of 1,IM notifications are still in the bottom right and get covered up and missed, and the bottom chat entry is still on the same line as the buttons instead of its own line that pops up above the button bar as needed.

In general, windows still have too much crap in them filling my screen with stuff I don't need to see and reducing my view of the world.

So, it's better than the old firestorm but still contains the all the crap I didn't like about V2. You have added SOME v1 appearance, but all the badness of V2 is still there all over the place.

...

 Still no script pre-processor. OK, that makes Firestorm useless for scripting now as I was using that feature extensively, and once you have used it, ALL your scripts now NEED to use it if you want to edit them. Delete from hard disk.

...

I've been pushing to get the issues I've listed addressed since the first pre-release of FS. I must say that I'm very very disappointed that all the issues I created jira entries for are still problems in the "final" release. These are "core" to me and many others. My tone is based on the frustration of seeing some of our most critical concerns being ignored.

So what does FS give me that I can't get in other viewers? In other words, what is better about FS? Considering Mesh is in several v1 viewers so far it comes down to one, ONE little thing. Mulitiple clothing layers (such as wearing 3 shirts at once.) That's it. Why would I switch?

I was told by many many people to basically "shut up, it's still a beta, they will fix it!" Well, here we are, it's not not a beta anymore and still has some of the worst usability flaws ever seen in a modern software product.

I've been told that V1 viewers are a dead end, ancient technology, obsolete. Nobody has proven that however because it's not true. There is NOTHING that is currently in a V2/V3 viewer that can't be ported back. And guess what? Anything useful IS being ported back. If not already done, it's in progress.

I've been told that it's harder to make V1 viewers with V2 features than V2 viewers with a V1 GUI. Well, I have to point out that FS has been in development for 18 months by a team and is still lacking basic V1 GUI simplicity and usability, and that Mesh was ported to V1 viewers in 6 months by one guy. Ain't the truth a bitch?

As for Mesh, agreed it's not ready. Not at all, especially for clothing due to the lack of a parametric deformer (the ability for Mesh clothes to be re-sized or automatically sized to actually fit your avatar.) In-world objects though it's pretty cool, but as I can get it in Singularity or some of the other V1 viewers, I have no need to perform self-flagellation and use FS to see it.

According to the most recently available statistics from LL, more than 50% of the users still use non-mesh viewers so it's a little loony to wear mesh hair / clothing as you look like you are totally naked wearing a box or sphere on you to the majority. Best to wait until Mesh viewer adoption has reached critical mass (>90% of users.)

...

I've been hearing that opinion that V1 viewers will cease working as LL turns off services being repeated over and over since 2.0 first came out.

Let's set the record straight. First and foremost, while LL initially indicated that some back end services may be retired, they have since backed down on most of that retirement such as the NON-web profiles.

But here is the kicker - any viewer that is still maintained will continue to work. Why? Very simple. Any V1-only protocol that is retired will simply be replaced with the V2 version as needed - just as Mesh was ported over. We will still happily use the far superior V1 interface as more V2 features and protocols are pulled in. That's it. That's the whole secret that the Firestorm team and it's cheerleaders don't want you to know.

The Phoenix/FS team has declared that the next Phoenix will be the last. Don't let them fool you - after all, the Phoenix rises from the ashes, right? Isn't that what the name is all about? It's open source. I'm sure it will be forked and maintained by avid fans. I know several people who are holding off doing any work on it until the final version is stabilized Even if Phoenix doesn't in itself get picked up, other V1 viewer projects regularly are picking up ideas and code to integrate back in to their alternatives.

In my not-so-humble opinion, Phoenix is still far and above the feature king. It's the most usable and user friendly viewer available, bar none. It is suffering a bit from performance issues however - Singularity has it beat hands down there, but that should get resolved with the Mesh back-end.

 Even people who enjoyed the beta version are having problems with the official release.

 I loved the Beta. The Beta crashed sometimes, but it worked pretty well.

Now the new one is remarkably slower. It still doesn't keep settings, such as window positions. But now it doesnt even keep my graphic settings. I was hoping to get a fixed version, but now it turns out to be worse.

I didnt check out the mesh upload capabilities. But im not sure if I can trust them yet.

I'm not using Phoenix anymore, but I won't be using this version of Firestorm either. I'll just wait for a version where the show stoppers are fixed, because they are really annoying.

 And that about sums it up: Firestorm still isn't ready for official release.  I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever be.