1. Never do anything important when its Friday the 13th and a Full Moon at the same time.
2. Rainy days suck. Tornado Watches even more so.
–Alan
Author: Alan Kiesler
Cancelled the Sabbatical
Anyone following the posts in ‘Second Life’ catagory will note I got trounced big-time by the 1.7.x release. I was not the only one, and was annoyed enough (since this was the second major release this happened to me), to pick up and get away from SL for a while.
Well, apparently many more did that before I could, as with the 1.8.x series things have been gradually getting better. Still have very annoying texture issues, even on the frugal Numbakulla sim. But LL appears to be working on it, and at least I can move about for the most part again.
So, I’m giving things a second chance, will see how things turn out in the next month or two.
Mind ya, there is still this looming thing going on with Cyan, the Something Else project, and Uru as well perhaps. It would be a nice birthday present if they could have some official announcement around the time of the Shutdown two years ago…
–Alan
What I’ll go through sometimes for a small thing…
My little IRC system is a Linksys NSLU2 NAS re-flashed with the [OpenSlug][OS] Embedded Linux, and running an [Irssi][irssi] connection over screen (for remote bouncing about). I recently decided to enable perl support into this distribution of irssi, as the stock binary is not setup that way.
Boy, am I starting to regret that…
Well, spent over 9 hours Friday/Saturday getting the cross-compile working on an HP running Fedora Core 4 in 64-bit. Finally started lurking in Freenode IRC channels #openslug and #oe to realize that the ‘stock’ source tarball at OpenSlug is a bit old, and is better to use [OpenEmbedded’s][OE] Monotone compile-from-scratch. That also failed, and I’m currently getting my Sager up and running enough on FC4 to try an all 32-bit environment next.
So, why the heck am I so intent on getting perl support with irssi? So I can begin doing in-IRC queries on a regular schedule. I may just give up and try a different approach (querying the appropriate place directly from the ‘slug’ as its known), but I figured this would be a ‘simple thing.’
Good Lord, what have I gotten myself into?
Well, now that I’ve started I at least want to get a cross-compile of some sort *working.* So I’ll continue to poke at it as time permits, and learn more about Linux as a benefit.
I’ve also earned two new IRC channels on my watch list. So its not all bad…
–Alan
[OS]: http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/OpenSlug/HomePage
[irssi]: http://www.irssi.org
[OE]: http://oe.handhelds.org/
Many a Coincidence This Weekend
Just a quick note for now, maybe flesh it out later…
It seems several things have been happing the last few days on the Uru scene:
– The DRC forum has slowly sprung back to life, in a way. It appears that Laxman is running some experiments again. Additional word appears to be (I need to confirm this) that the site has broken away from Ubisoft’s hosting and/or control, which may have prompted the experiments. It’s definately prompted a wipe of the forum user accounts.
– With the DRC site stirring also comes some old players returning to forums, as well as some of their home UU shards. They’re hoping for the best, and are catching up on events to see what’s in store. A big wave goes out to any of you whom have stopped here from one of my Uru forum sigs. Like everyone else, I can only wait and hope, but I’m glad to ‘see’ y’all again.
– By sheer coincidence (perhaps due to my finding out I took over the ‘Uru’ tag in technorati), I wandered about and found the weblog of Alahmnat, one of the most well-respected moderators on the Ubi forums. There’s a very illuminating post giving another good reason why Cyan closed the Myst series; When I have time I’ll say more, but the weblog should be on the sidebar as of now.
Wow, this is a lot to happen over the x-mas weekend. Tis definately busy. Perhaps what I’ve done to help this year has not gone to waste after all. I can still hope.
–Alan :link:
SL embracing a ‘Pay’ model like There – Part 2
Over [here][sl-t1], I mentioned that LindeX has generated quite a bit of income for Linden Lab. The current update as of last night is 3.6 Mil L$ at an average of about 265L$/1US$ (this rate has held now for the past week). Over the weekend the volume was over 4.2 Mil L$.
That’s coming out to about US$475-550 take to LL a day now (before ‘# transaction fees,’ still no word on that), about a 20-40% jump in one month. That’s coming out to about US$180K/year if the spike occurs every weekend. Not bad.
Now, yesterday, its been announced that the Developer’s Incentive is to be phased out. As [some in the forums][forum] have mentioned, this is another US$120K/year that will be available for LL’s internal use as well.
That will be US$300K (minimum) each year that will now be available for other things – like, say, another five well-paid developers (or another 8-10 beginning ones). Or an expansion to the data/asset system and/or how the whole mess is backed up.
The forum thread has arguments going several ways, all of them possibly valid to some degree. It is to some extent a belt-tightening move; They really could use the money for more people in such an enormously growing userbase. I’ve stated multiple times that LL needs to re-focus outwardly from a development standpoint to a stability, customer service, and automation standpoint. They’re on that road, I can see the signs (from personal experience), but they *do* need the money. The idea of them milking SL for all its worth before its cancellation is a bit premature right now, since I think we all need to wait on what LL has in mind – and also to discuss even if the DI can be salvaged as something else that’s not gamable.
One of the biggest things they’re going to need to do short- to mid-term is get more subscription payments, such as the Premium account or some similar method to ensure a more stable income base. I’ve heard a few suggestions by *residents* now that sound, at its core, a lot like There’s ‘pay US$ for our currency’ model; Talk about full circle (see my first link, aka the earlier post). Admittedly its in smaller doses, but that will be more dangerous to the impulse buyer – and better off to LL in the long run by as much L$ running through LindeX as possible. That could work, but it begins to make me wonder just what the hell I’m doing in SL in the first place, as – originally – an Uru-fugee who was looking for a new home.
I don’t have an answer as of yet (none that I have enough details to put forward anyway). I need to think about it, see what the Lindens say and do in the next couple days, and send another followup as we all learn more.
And, I wonder, where the influx of Therians to SL are these days (most of them joined around the time I did) – and if they’re laughing their asses off right now.
[sl-t1]: https://sungak.net/weblog/archives/23
[forum]: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=78329