2001 a blog odyssey

SLCP-1Without me actually realising it at the time, this blog passed the 2,000 published articles mark. I’m a bit boggled by that figure.

It was in August 2012 that I reached the 1,000 published posts mark – and that took some three years to achieve. So doubling it in just over a year tends to tell me two things: 1) the volume of my blogging has dramatically increased; 2) I really need to spend more time away from the computer screen! :D.

I’m actually not a great one for blog numbers; however, when I passed through the 1,000 published posts mark, I noted that this blog had some 250,000 hits in the 12-months between August 2011 and July 2012, so I thought it would be interesting to run a comparison for the same period in 2012/2013. I was not a little stunned to see that figure had increased by over 100,000. That so many so read and continue to find this blog interesting and look to it for information really does amaze and humble me.

It is the level of feedback that is given which encourages me to keep on writing and to make sure I make time on a daily basis to do so.

Another distinct pleasure I’ve had from all of this is being able to get out into SL and wander “the highlands and islands”, discovering some remarkable places and builds and meeting a huge number of creative and fun people. This in turn has helped put SL into a better perspective for me and remind me that, warts and all, it’s still an amazing place in which to spend time, and I’m again flattered that people do find my wibblings about places to visit worthy of note, and who show their appreciation for my photographic efforts via my Flickr stream and profile feed as well, all of which are very much appreciated.

It’s been quite the odyssey so far, one I currently don’t plan on stopping. To all of you who have encouraged me by reading, commenting, poking and suggesting, I again offer my sincere thanks.

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Lance provides further news on Dolphin

dolphin-logoIt’s been several months since the release of the last Dolphin viewer update (March 2013). This means the viewer is lagging behind many of the 2013 updates from the Lab, including things like Server-side Appearance, materials, etc.

Lance Corrimal, the man behind Dolphin is not unaware that this is the situation. His real life this year has been such that it has required almost all of his attention (including starting a new job which sees him travelling and away from home a lot of the time), all of which has limited the time he can devote to the viewer, as much as he’d like to be able to do so.

In July and August he gave a couple of short updates on his situation, which I also passed on through these pages, and on November 22nd, he posted a further update on the Dolphin website, which reads in part:

I am not exactly happy about what I have to announce here, but this is how it is going to be:

The next Dolphin Viewer is not going to be around any time soon.

I have looked at the mess that my current state of the sources would produce, and I have (finally but far too late) come to this decision:

I will start from scratch.

Right now, taking the current Dolphin Viewer source and just “shoe-horning” in everything new from the official sources produces a terrible mess that does not compile cleanly, let alone works. Besides, the last Dolphin Viewer has a quite large number of features that don’t work any more, due to changes that the Lab has made in the meantime, temp uploads being one of them.

So, I’ll basically have to reinvent everything. That will of course take some time. I’m guessing “several months” right now, not the least due to the fact that with my new job that I have been doing since April, I’m travelling a lot, so I’m not even home all that much. I’ll see how much I can do on my company laptop.

I will go back to my usual “release early, release often” policy, as soon as I have something that is properly branded as Dolphin Viewer and has more to offer than just the name.  I will plan to release at least a public beta as soon as I have something.

This would suggest that an updated Dolphin viewer is unlikely to emerge before the end of the year, and that we may be a few months into 2014 before one does. However, the upside of this is that Lance is not abandoning the viewer, which has enjoyed a loyal following. Patience remains the order of the day as he tries to balance the demands of real life and Second Life on his time.

One additional consequence of everything going-on for Lance right now is that he plans to  eventually stop building / providing openSUSE rpm packages for some of the other third-party viewers; as he notes himself, he just can’t seem to pack more than 24 hours into a day.

Further news / updates from Lance will be reported as they become available.

Viewer release summaries 2013: week 47

This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases page, a list of  all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy (and of which I am aware), including
  • By its nature, this summary will always be a week in arrears
  • The Current Viewer Releases page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
  • The Current Viewer Releases page also includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.

Updates for the week ending: November 24th, 2013

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version updated on November 21st to version 3.6.11.283787 (dated November 15th) – formerly the GPU table updates RC (download page, release notes)
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • No updates
  • Project viewers:
    • Fitted Mesh viewer 3.6.11.283899 released on November 20th – This viewer adds new “collision bones” to the standard avatar skeleton. Properly rigging mesh objects to those bones will cause the garment to adapt to changes in the avatar shape made using the avatar editor sliders and avatar physics (download and release notes)

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • Black Dragon updated on November 18th to version 2.3.8 (Maintenance #3) – core updates: UI updates; RLVa update; rendering fixes (release notes)
  • CtrlAltStudio Experimental version updated on November 18th to version 1.1.0.34376 – core updates: variable-speed walk / fly; Kinect gesture support for avatar movement (release notes)
  • Kokua updated on November 18th to version 3.6.10.30662  – core updates: parity with SL 3.6.9 / 3.6.10 code base; significant rewrite to area search with context menu active; link to grid support groups (if available in settings file) added to Help > About Kokua  (release notes)

V1-style

  • Cool VL Experimental version updated November 23rd to version 1.26.11.0 and again on November 25th to version 1.26.11.1 – core updates: 1.26.11.0 implemented “project interesting” updates; 1.26.11.1 fixed 2 bugs within the 1.26.11.0 release that prevented cache files to be written to the disk (losing the benefit of caching on return to visited regions) and which prevented object flags (touch, pay, modify, etc) to be propagated from the cache to the rezzed objects on cache updates (making it impossible to touch, pay, edit, etc random objects in the avatar’s field of view) – release notes

Text Clients

  • Group Tools updated on November 23rd to version 2.2.24.0.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links