Landon Explains Technical Woes

In rather surprising (to me) news, Landon Donovan won’t be part of the United States Squad for this summer’s world cup in Brazil. The 32 year old striker who has been capped a staggering 156 times will have to watch the world cup at home.

However better news for another Landon, with Landon Linden explaining the reasons for some of the recent woes of the Second Life service. This is the sort of blog post I like because it explains some of the difficulties the service experienced as well as pointing out some of the reasons, warts and all.

This blog post exemplifies why I have been so critical of Linden Lab’s lack of communications over recent years. Yes the subject matter is sore and yes users have had a hard time of it, but sitting down to explain why helps customers understand that the Lab are aware of the problems and are prepared to make moves to rectify them.

The blog post explains that the root cause of the problem was created a decade ago. This also highlights how difficult it is to maintain a service as dynamic as Second Life, what worked a decade ago is simply not the ideal way of going about things today and again the blog post explains this well:

Our intent at this point also is to remove the identifier assignment service altogether. It not only was the ultimate source of this outage, but is also one more single point of failure that should have been dispatched long ago.

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I’m Leaving On A Jet Plane

Ok so this blog is going on holiday for a fortnight, largely because the evil drow wizard who runs it is also going on holiday for a fortnight. Now being as this is a modern era and I’m a semi modern man, I will be taking mobile devices with me.

However here’s the rub, I’ll be hopefully locking them mostly in a safe as I’m going to the beach! Yes that place with sand, sea and sun! I may engage with Twitter though.

Now whilst I’m gone I would like you to do some things and have fun. First and foremost, I want you to visit Fantasy Faire. Trust me on this, you’ll like it. Hey you may not like Orcs, you may not like Elves, you may not like furries, you may not like Dwarfins but you will find something you like, there are hunts, live music, DJ’s, shopping! An awesome event like this should not be missed and at the end of the day, it’s for a very good cause.

Next I’d like you to sample Project Interesting because this is a venture from Linden Lab aimed at improving your Second Life experience, don’t be shy about trying this out, even if you go back to your viewer of choice afterwards.

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Fantasy Faire 2014 – Music, Magic And Technical Difficulties

Druscilla Ferraris

In a way that only a virtual world such as Second Life can manage, Fantasy Faire 2014 brought together two very diverse acts to entertain the crowds. Keeba Tammas and the Tiny Maniacs helping her were followed by Maximillion Kleene.

Maximillion Kleene

Being as this took place in Second Life and being as it was Fantasy Faire we had a mixture of the weird, the wonderful and the technical issues that people so readily brush aside.

Kaitlyn Odigaunt

In the first act the drummer came and went and then came back again without anyone really batting an eyelid.

Llewellyn Mistral and Morgan Darkstone

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Interesting Project To Load Scenes Faster

Ceri Quixote

Now first things first, if you’re planning on heading to FFR Radio Ship FaireChylde at Fantasy Faire to enjoy DJ’s, live music and possibly dance with a fifty foot woman, be aware that the ship has moved to the Heavesnlough sim and can now be found here.

Moving on to other matters Second Life related, Linden Lab yesterday blogged about a new and interesting viewer development. Well actually it’s not that new as it has been around since November in project viewer form, but now it is part of the latest update to the viewer and apparently helps one to enjoy faster scene loading, as the blog explains :

This update reduces the load and time it takes to draw objects in regions, meaning scenes appear more quickly and smoothly as you move throughout Second Life.

There’s also an accompanying video, which I’ll embed after the cut. The video is a Torley production, which makes me like it straight away. Anyway back to the project, the basic concept here is that objects that are closer to you should render first, meaning the scene should appear to load faster, that’s the theory.

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Fantasy Faire 2014 – DJ’s And Events

Fantasy Faire isn’t just about shopping, roleplay, hunts, prizes and auctions, no there’s more and this comes in the form of entertainment. The best way to keep up with the entertainment schedule is to read the Faire Happenings page, which gets updated regularly.

Now a point worth noting is that DJ and live music events usually take place onboard the FFR Radio Ship FaireChylde. This is a ship that is held in the air by a dragon. However yesterday the ship moved from The Palace Of Tears to a new location in Blackwater Glenn. This took many by surprise and I can assure you that a Dwarfin King falling surprisingly from the sky makes one hell of a surprising sound.

However the entertainment could still be found and Lisa Brune was entertaining the crew of the ship, as well as some stowaways.

Lisa Brune

I’m assuming the ship has been moved because the second part of the hunt is now open and that takes place in The Palace Of Tears sim.

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