Adventures in RC 1.23

I enjoy exploring the new Release Candidates because you find new and interesting functionality and sometimes cute little bugs. I don't panic about the bugs .... you know there will be hysterical JIRA's etc and most if not all will be fixed before it loses its Candidate status.

I played with the edit menu a bit to see if there were any changes:

• You'll see a couple of changes to the edit pages in the photo up above - one is that they moved the text about # of prims/objects to the top part - so it doesn't matter what page you're on you can see it. I like this one a lot.
• One thing that I haven't adapted to yet is a change in the pie menu - I tried to take a photo but couldn't. When I right clicked on my hair and chose edit - I got appearance. That's because edit is moved to the next page - you access it with the more button. This isn't true for everything - seems to be only for my attachments or things I'm wearing.

  
  

There was a plurk yesterday linking to a blog post which was all excited about alpha layers in skins etc. Nobody seemed to take it seriously. However, you'll note the alpha channel on my eyelashes seems to be missing. That's going to cause some angst. :)

One of the things I'm still poking at is that purple blob in the photo up top. That's one of those weird angles you can get on an object using your camera - but it's the first time I've seen purple objects inside my head. If that's what I've got I have to wonder what Crap will find. :)

I'm going back to see what else I can find. :)

Update: This is really really creepy!

It's amazing how we get used to things. Look at that photo of the map - notice anything missing? There are no green dots. In fact, there are no green dots anywhere on the map.

I feel like I'm all alone in SecondLife. There's an echo!

The Rezzable King Tut - Preview

If you don't belong to the SL Things To Do group, well you should (and check out the website). I don't know how Jenn has the time/energy to do everything she does in RL and SL but I'm willing to take advantage of her willingness to do it. :)

If you did belong you would have received a notice and landmark to the Rezzable King Tut preview. And you would have seen these sights.

Remember that this is still a preview - it's not finished. But it is fun to look around and I'm impressed by a lot of what I see. I'm not showing you everything here - I think it's only fair that you go check it out yourself. If I see little things I'm not crazy about - well they are few and far between. It is another terrific build by the Rezzable folks and will be deservedly successful.

A "Von"derful Break!

I've been working hard but Von Johin held a fan appreciation concert tonight at his Blue's Note Club. It was amazing! Von's fans are an exuberant bunch so move the sound slider to the left. :)

My favourite robot was there as well. I kept looking around for him when I should have been looking up. Don't know what I was thinking......

Did you know?

That advanced/character/Slow Motion Animations slows down your animations so you can get a photo of them? I didn't (mind you I'm sure there are thousands of things I don't know).

I learned this little nugget in a workshop on the MURKU Comics HUD at Orange Island today. The HUD is free for now and it's really neat - if you want to play with something cool go try it. There's a Wiki if you want some help with the functionality.

Me? I'm going to play with slow motion a bit first. :)

A project at last!

I've been building a new store on Taylor Bay - not to rent out though. I will be using it. It needs landscaping and some kind of product. :)

Crap and Arminasx have both posted recently about finding their reset button. Me? I've been searching for a spark to capture my interest and give me that excitement about creating something. I think I've found it. It's a complete departure for me and will take a while to bring to fruition. But I'm having fun on the trip. Which would be the point, right? :)

Hello Edloe! Can cats swim?

Well there used to be an island there. Did the battle finally happen? Did the martians win? I hate missing those memos.

Get Top Scripts - urp!

Even if you don't own land you know that lag is a huge problem and something that land owners spend countless hours worrying about and managing (well, they do if they care anyway). One of the problems with Taylor Bay when I first started renting there was the horrendous lag. This was caused primarily by the number of "high cost" active scripts running in some of the stores on the island (the arms dealer for example). When I first bought it I checked, and the total cost of the scripts on the island was about 14 ms. Understand, the recommended level to keep lag low is 3 ms.

Jon and I are the only two left on Taylor Bay and our total script cost runs about .8 ms. Very nice. :)

The latest version of Second Life allows us to see not only the top scripts of the objects on the island but also the avatars. When I went in this morning and checked top scripts, the total cost had more than doubled to almost 1.8 ms. I was the culprit.

Doesn't look like a script heavy avatar does it? I hid behind a hill and stripped down and then added components so I could find the problem areas. My ao accounts for .04 ms even when it's turned off. But that doesn't seem like a big deal.

The real problem is my hair. One of the reasons I chose my hair is that it kept my ARC under 450. So I thought this would mean I was a low impact avatar.

The script cost for my hair is .93 ms. More than both of our stores combined. ugh!

So I checked the script cost for one of the hairstyles I had rejected because of its ARC.

I never even got around to sizing this hair before I realized its ARC was 2200. Way higher than I'm willing to accept. However, when I tested it under the "Get Top Scripts" function it didn't register.

I went back to my regular hair and checked, and sure enough there was a retexturing script in it. I deleted the script and checked again and there really wasn't much difference. Of course that was because I deleted the script in the linked object. The problem is that there are two copies of an apparently unnecessary script in every strand of my hair. Every single strand.

I'm deleting the little buggers one at a time. I like my hair. I'm just not willing to live with all this ^*(&#%)*^$ script.

The moral of this tale is that those fashionistas creating all the wonderful clothes, hair etc. for the rest of us have got to be more responsible and more careful. Also, we land owners have to be a little understanding if we decide to blast somebody for having a high script cost. They might very well have no idea that anything they're wearing has 510 copies of a useless script in it.

sigh