Second Life – Page 5 – The Kind Healer

libsecondlife and Emmigrating to Uru

You know, about a year ago I was fervently advocating Uru within Second Life, trying to get people interested enough to convert in some way and prove there are alternatives.

Recently, I’m beginning to re-think that strategy, and have held my tongue there (though continue to outwardly show that I’m clearly an Uru person).

From the rampant arguments among its residents and the ways that Linden Labs are not acting proactively enough, on what appears to be a sinking grid, this is *not* the masses that I want over in the Cavern.

The folks I know who would appreciate the wonder of that world are mostly people I’ve met there the past couple years, and have supported over that time. Now I want to help them emmigrate elsewhere – perhaps be able to get their creations integrated into an Age someplace within Uru Live.

Enter the libsecondlife open source project. They’re working on decoding the client/server protocol used by the system (with the support of the Linden Lab staff). As of yesterday I’ve been added to the project team; My contribution will likely be in the form of documentation more than coding – I understand a lot of the basics of what happens but don’t have the knowledge or time to work on the details therein.

One of its sub-projects is the ability to accurately export build data for use elsewhere (in particular they are exporting to an XML format that’s readable by a *Blender* offline build plugin). You can take the next logical step, and use the data from that Blender import to create optimized meshes for use within the PyPRP plugin used for Uru Age Building.

There are several challenges to this; A non-obvious one is a matter of scale since LL uses metric while Uru uses the English scales. The really big one is the fact that object packets are not yet fully understood, so an accurate export is not yet possible.

This is something I care enough about that I’m willing to sacrifice the time I’d use working on Uru modding (like the Pahts Shell) to assist in the project. Because one of my concerns is that I won’t be able to see my dreams of true emmigration be possible before the Second Life Grid collapses under its own weight.

Anyway, onward bound…
–TSK

The King Widgets

I had some time last weekend (after realizing that the other site upgraded relatively painlessly) and went a searchin’ for some tools to help configure my layout from anywhere – even work, in a pinch. ;)

I ran across a little goldmine over here. It’s a group of WordPress ‘Widgets,’ mini-plugins that work off a special widget plugin you can find here.

What I’m using from his list so far:
— King Framework – Required, its a library for the other stuff
— King Login – Used primarily to restrict my login/meta section to the main page
— King Text – It allows inclusion of HTTP/PHP files. Yay!
— King RSS – Much nicer-looking RSS feed, which allows different settings in different areas.

An example of what some of this allowed is available from my ‘Second Life’ catagory link. You’ll see two things a bit different:
— At the top of the sidebar, there’s an updating Lindex stat summary (mined on a regular basis from outside my webroot).
— Just under that, the RSS feed for the Linden Weblog has more entries listed.

I’m still playing with these, and some of the other widgets not listed. Should be fun…

EDIT – Hah. As I post this I (of course) run across some sort of bug, or combination of things that are creating a bug. More later, but the RSS feed is back to the main page only…

–TSK

Regarding the Second Life Security Problem Last Week…

[Disclaimer – Most of this is distilled from concerns that were raised both within their own forum and from ‘live’ discussion on the resident-run IRC channels.]

The story so far…

Well, there *was* a breach of some sort, but as of now they don’t know what exactly may have been taken. They’re getting close to finding out (as part of the ongoing investigation), but they decided to lockout the userbase last Friday as a precaution for everyone.

The two main items of information that I have concerns about were the passwords and the credit card data. Both were stored encrypted. However, the password you used there should be considered as invalid and not used anymore, anywhere (which is why I’ve been off the radar a while – I’m criusing many a forum and site to figure out which ones I used mine on :headbang: ). In my case, I had *just* changed the SL ones the previous week too, in an effort to make those accounts more secure. Bah. Why the password – for SL anyway – should be considered invalid is due to open source tools available now to login to the world and manipulate it, which could be modified to just send the encrypted password…

Credit card data is a coin toss as to what’s possible with an encrypted one. I’m in the same boat as many others, and my take right now is to keep a close eye on my balance for the next month or two. In the interim I’ll look into getting a new card and moving the many, many things I have on it (I need a new card anyway, the current one is falling apart again from wear ;) ). Linden Lab at this time is not being as forthcoming about the possibility of this data being grabbed, though I and several others are still pressing for a definitive answer.

I’m not as concerned about personal data, such as name, address, etc. My RL name is up for all to see, and from that I located the rest through the various ‘searching’ sites. I do know many in SL who care about this however, and am still following that aspect.

Changing the password should be easy enough – if you got the email notice last Friday, the link is there, plus trying to login to the site on a account not reset will re-direct you. The primary form of re-verification is the security question that should have been set during account creation; For older accounts there are a few others, including listing several people on your ‘Friends’ window. If all else fails you can call them; By now things should have calmed down (somewhat) at their Support Center.

If anyone is actually interested in hearing more updates, I’ll be happy to post them; Please comment…

–TSK

Updates

As I’ve left a couple things up in the air…

—–

Dentist – Visit #2 was last week, got things sealed up and a better temp filling in place. Now on the waiting game for the infected area around it to heal.

—–

SL Forums – It’s been clarified that only certain sections of their forum will be closed. In particular, the ones either 1) not directly involved with SL discussion, or 2) exploited too much by trollers. Also the group forums, but that’s in a few months.

That comes down to their General sections as well as Land and Economy, for the biggest offenders. Hopefully, that will calm things down a bit.

I may even consider ResModding again…

–TSK

SL Forum Closure – Feelings

More fun with Second Life today. A post on their aggregate weblog has announced that their local forum will be phased out.

Personally, this is mostly a good idea. The only reasons I use it today are the Personal Message system and perusing the scripting section. Both of these will be problematic going forward, but I’m going to inquire about hosting the existing (Scripting Library) content for the sake of sharing the information with the Teen Grid folks. That will likely require stronger controls about who’s allowed to post. Still thinking about it, and will inquire with Linden Lab…

As for the Personal Message system, I find it exceedingly useful to communicate with other SL residents offline (and in particular from work). This was crutial during my holding and maintenance of Numbakulla island, as the core officers are from the UK and I work 3rd shift EST. So I’m intensely curious how I’m going to be talking to folks offline from here on. The LibSL project is looking more useful than ever…

Anyway, slight rant over, off to craft an email or two…

–TSK